Web retailers step up their performance in November

Web retailers know the importance of maintaining performance as they head into the heart of holiday shopping. Web site consistency improved among big web retailers in November with 22 merchants achieving a consistency rating of “excellent,” according to Gomez Inc.

Top 500 Guide

In November, 16 retailers received a rating of “good,” nine got “fair” and two received “poor.”

The consistency ratings take into account differences in the speed of web page delivery across multiple visits and the frequency a retail site is unavailable because of downtime. The variability of response time and the number of minutes out are combined to create each retailer’s consistency rating, Gomez explains.

In November, the top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 98.13% and an overall consistency average of “good.”

Top 50 Web Site Performance Index: Consistency November 01 , 2007 - November 30 , 2007 Retailer Consistency Rating Consistency (seconds) Availability (%) Dell Excellent 9.92 98.98 Scholastic Excellent 10.46 96.32 Zappos Excellent 9.78 99.44 Musicians Friend Excellent 13.33 99.25 Macys Store Excellent 11.19 99.40 Footlocker Excellent 10.68 99.24 J. C. Penney Excellent 11.25 99.23 PC Connection Excellent 9.23 99.33 Victorias Secret Excellent 13.96 99.13 Saks Fifth Avenue Excellent 11.90 99.42 Office Depot Excellent 10.73 98.28 The Home Depot Excellent 14.59 98.98 L. L. Bean Excellent 15.11 99.18 Chadwicks Excellent 14.04 99.24 Nordstrom Excellent 11.17 99.15 HSN Excellent 13.05 98.71 Sears Excellent 12.72 97.45 Sony Style Excellent 15.19 97.80 Overstock Excellent 11.77 98.74 Avon Shopping Excellent 11.14 99.14 Netflix Excellent 11.38 99.06 Circuit City Home Excellent 16.15 98.29 Coldwater Creek Excellent 11.60 99.45 Williams-Sonoma Good 13.49 99.22 Wal-Mart Good 17.30 98.60 Staples Good 14.42 98.71 Benchmark Average Good 14.11 98.13 Newegg Good 15.37 98.00 Blue Nile Good 11.98 98.87 HP Shopping Good 13.85 98.69 Amazon Good 15.44 98.39 Buy.com Good 16.07 99.00 Tiger Direct Good 16.85 98.52 Barnes & Noble Good 15.55 98.80 1-800 Flowers Good 15.07 83.03 FTD Good 14.60 98.73 Quixtar Good 14.85 98.67 Drugstore Good 14.49 98.24 Best Buy Good 16.96 97.05 Costco Good 15.99 99.01 CDW Fair 14.54 99.09 QVC Fair 17.41 97.22 OfficeMax Fair 17.38 97.82 Toys R Us Fair 17.80 97.07 Neiman Marcus Fair 11.56 99.25 Target Fair 17.09 96.92 Oriental Trading Fair 18.18 96.70 Peapod Fair 13.09 98.59 Gap Fair 19.53 96.81 Apple Store Poor 20.39 94.34 CompUSA Poor 16.11 98.03 All data for this report is collected by the Gomez Last Mile network, 30 times an hour from Dial Up, Low and High Broadband users across the United States, 24 hours a day except between 3AM to 6AM EDT. Consistency Rating A qualitative representation of consistency ratings that are created with the lowest total score (Consistency + Availability) being normalized to 100. Above 98 = Excellent, above 95 = Good, above 85 = Fair, and below 85 = Poor. Consistency is the range between the high and low values of one standard deviation from response time. Availability is determined by the percentage of tests that fail to correctly load. Copyright© 2007 Gomez, Inc.