Performance of E-Tailer Web Sites Improved Christmas Week as Online Holiday Shopping Wound Down, According to Keynote

Business Wire, Dec 30, 1999

Business Editors

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 30, 1999

Performance for Shoppers At Work and At Home Last Week Better Than

Pre-Holiday Period

The performance of the leading holiday shopping web sites improved as the holiday e-shopping season wound down from its peak during the week after the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the "Keynote 1999 e-Shopping Holiday Watch" being performed throughout the holiday season by Keynote (Nasdaq:KEYN), the Internet performance authority(TM).

Site performance overall for the week ending December 25 improved over the previous week and also outperformed the pre-holiday e-shopping season the first week of November.

Overall performance improved 13.3 percent from the previous week for online shoppers at work, and 14.1 percent from the pre-holiday season for the week ending November 6. For online shoppers at home, overall performance improved 5.4 percent from the previous week and 3.5 percent from the week ending November 6. Keynote will continue to measure the performance of the major e-tailing sites through January to track the possible effects of online gift returns.

Based on Keynote's data from over 600,000 measurements during the week ending December 25, Lands' End, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and eBay ranked highest in performance for e-shoppers at work, each with average web-site performance faster than 3.2 seconds. For e-shoppers at home, Barnes & Noble, eBay, CDNow, and Wal-Mart ranked highest, each with average web-site performance 15.51 seconds or faster. The ten top shopping web sites measured by Keynote averaged 3.66 seconds for e-shoppers at work on T-1 and T-3 lines, an improvement from 4.22 seconds the previous week, and faster than the 4.26-second average the week ending November 6. The ten sites averaged 18.63seconds for e-shoppers using 56-Kbps modems from home, an improvement from 19.69 seconds the previous week and faster than the 19.31-second average the week ending November 6.

The following table shows the measured performance (in seconds) and availability rates from December 19 to 25. Availability rates reflect all failures to download a web page or any of its components because of content, web-server or Internet errors.

                Keynote 1999 e-Shopping Holiday Watch

                      At Work                    At Home
======================================  ============================
Site         Performance  Availability  Performance  Availability

Amazon.com      2.97         99.8%         21.29         88.1%
Barnes
 & Noble        3.73         98.9%         14.63         88.2%
CDNow           3.53         96.2%         15.19         85.1%
eBay            3.17         99.0%         15.12         87.5%
eToys           3.55         96.8%         18.05         85.9%
Gateway         4.04         99.4%         17.58         86.7%
Lands' End      2.65         89.6%         17.98         88.0%
Macy's          3.98         99.3%         27.19         87.9%
Wal-Mart        3.08         99.6%         15.51         88.3%
Wine.com        5.87         98.6%         23.80         89.4%
==============================================================
Average of
 all sites      3.66         97.7%         18.63         87.5%

According to Dan Todd, Director of Public Services at Keynote, "Web-site performance is typically very good the week of Christmas. Online traffic overall is reduced as people take off from work, and this improves performance across the board, for users at home and those still at work. It will be interesting to see how performance may be affected by online gift returns the next few weeks."

The average performance at work last week ranged from 2.65 seconds for the fastest e-shopping site measured to 5.87 seconds for the slowest. Availability at work ranged from 89.6 percent to 99.6 percent. For e-shoppers at home last week, average performance to access the same ten sites over 56-Kbps modems ranged from 14.63 seconds for the fastest e-shopping site to 27.19 seconds for the slowest. Availability at home ranged from 85.1 percent to 89.4 percent.

"Consistently high levels of performance and availability across all Internet access points around the world are crucial to attracting and retaining online customers in the highly competitive marketplace of the World Wide Web," said Umang Gupta, chairman and CEO of Keynote. "Our scientific measurements and reports highlight these all-important quality of service factors to the public during the 1999 Internet holiday shopping season which is expected to be the biggest and most-competitive yet." A recent study from Zona Research concluded that $4.4 billion per year in e-commerce sales in the U.S. may be lost due to unacceptable download speeds and the resulting user abandonment of online transactions.

About the Keynote 1999 e-Shopping Holiday Report

Keynote is measuring from October 24 through the end of January the performance and availability of ten popular holiday shopping sites which were selected based on visitor data collected by Media Metrix (Nasdaq:MMXI) and other sources. Keynote's measurements reflect the experience of e-shoppers both at work on T-1 and T-3 communication lines and at home on 56-Kbps dial-up modems. The Keynote 1999 e-Shopping Holiday Report will serve as an unbiased resource for information and analysis on the quality of service experienced by online shoppers during the holiday season, with regular updates posted on Keynote's web site at www.keynote.com. The ten web sites selected for the Report belong to Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN), Barnes & Noble (Nasdaq:BNBN), CDNow (Nasdaq:CDNW), eToys (Nasdaq:ETYS), eBay (Nasdaq:EBAY), Gateway (NYSE:GTW), Lands' End (NYSE:LE), Macy's (NYSE:FD), Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Wine.com.