Web site consistency remains on an even keel

Web site consistency stayed even among big web retailers in October with 22 merchants achieving a consistency rating of “excellent,” according to Gomez Inc.

Top 500 Guide

In October, 18 retailers received a rating of “good,” eight got “fair” and three 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 October, the top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 98.54% and an overall consistency average of “good.”

Top 50 Web Site Performance Index: Consistency October 01 , 2007 - October 31 , 2007 Retailer Consistency Rating Consistency (seconds) Availability (%) Dell Excellent 9.21 99.09 Zappos Excellent 10.59 99.64 Footlocker Excellent 11.26 99.46 Scholastic Excellent 10.77 98.02 OfficeMax Excellent 11.76 99.49 Victorias Secret Excellent 12.88 99.28 Macys Store Excellent 11.38 99.39 J. C. Penney Excellent 11.06 99.41 Chadwicks Excellent 13.33 99.27 L. L. Bean Excellent 13.46 99.30 The Home Depot Excellent 13.23 98.97 Musicians Friend Excellent 14.53 99.01 Quixtar Excellent 9.75 99.22 Saks Fifth Avenue Excellent 12.95 99.29 PC Connection Excellent 9.90 99.25 Avon Shopping Excellent 10.52 99.41 FTD Excellent 11.85 99.20 HSN Excellent 13.00 98.67 QVC Excellent 14.91 89.54 Sony Style Excellent 16.66 98.38 Coldwater Creek Excellent 11.21 99.42 Circuit City Home Excellent 15.38 98.75 Nordstrom Good 11.97 99.21 Blue Nile Good 11.01 99.30 Office Depot Good 10.98 99.02 1-800 Flowers Good 12.96 99.09 Netflix Good 11.45 99.17 Target Good 15.28 97.76 Wal-Mart Good 16.11 98.47 Newegg Good 14.68 98.90 Amazon Good 14.16 98.96 Benchmark Average Good 13.61 98.54 Overstock Good 12.69 99.13 Staples Good 13.54 98.77 Williams-Sonoma Good 13.58 99.27 Sears Good 13.37 98.16 Drugstore Good 13.42 98.63 Buy.com Good 15.79 98.86 HP Shopping Good 13.95 98.82 Tiger Direct Good 15.92 98.10 Barnes & Noble Fair 15.04 98.88 CDW Fair 14.69 99.07 Costco Fair 16.39 98.94 Peapod Fair 13.03 98.96 Neiman Marcus Fair 11.71 99.40 Toys R Us Fair 17.48 97.21 Best Buy Fair 18.32 97.05 Oriental Trading Fair 18.33 96.96 CompUSA Poor 14.75 98.97 Gap Poor 19.94 96.27 Apple Store Poor 20.50 93.96 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.