Europe Press Room: 2009
Tesco Direct Ranked Number One Overall for Web Performance in New Keynote Systems Study
LONDON, UK – 26 January, 2009 – Keynote Systems UK today announced that Tesco Direct was the best site overall in terms of speed and availability, according to a comprehensive study of UK online retail sites by Keynote Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote, the global leader in on-demand mobile and Internet test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience. Other online retail sites included in the study – which was conducted from 1 December to 1 January 2009 – were: Amazon.co.uk, Argos, ASDA, Comet, Currys, Dabs, HMV, Lovefilm, Pixmania.co.uk and Play.com.
The study for the UK online retail industry used Keynote’s global test and measurement network to provide comprehensive performance data from an end-user perspective. The study details how each company’s Web site performed versus competitors using Transaction Perspective™, the highest accuracy Web performance monitoring solution in the market today, whose agents closely-mimic the actions of a consumer using an actual browser to perform scripted tasks.
Overall customer experience
Tesco Direct achieved pole position with strong ratings in both reliability and responsiveness. It was very fast and had an acceptable availability of 98.7% compared to the industry average.
| Overall Rankings | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Tesco Direct |
| 2 | Play.com |
| 3 | Pixmania.co.uk |
Play.com was overall runner-up, topping the rankings in Overall Reliability, and coming third for Overall Responsiveness. Pixmania achieved third place in the Overall Rankings.
Keynote Systems benchmarked the online retail sites in two major categories; Reliability, which measures a site’s ability to service its customers without errors or outages; and Responsiveness, which measures a site’s ability to provide highly responsive and consistent page downloads.
Overall Reliability
| Overall Reliability (indicator of high availability and low downtime) |
|
|---|---|
| 1 | Play.com |
| 2 | Argos |
| 3 | Tesco Direct |
Play was the most reliable Web site just beating Argos and Tesco Direct to top position. However, a number of UK retail sites continue to have very poor overall availability; every site had at least one hour of peak outage with some sites showing over 100 hours. The industry average was 3% downtime on average, significantly below the 0.50% that Keynote recommends. Indeed several sites were unavailable for more than 15% of the time. Even the best sites barely made Keynote’s standard of 99.5%.
Overall Responsiveness
| Overall Responsiveness (how quickly pages loaded) |
|
|---|---|
| 1 | Tesco Direct |
| 2 | ASDA |
| 3 | Play.com |
The Tesco Direct Web site had the best response times, and with ASDA and Play.com it made up the top three quickest sites in the study. Four of the sites had major issues with load handling, reporting major peak period slowdowns, suggesting that their sites were unable to handle the load created by the holiday traffic.
Keynote notes that most of the sites monitored were very slow, taking more than four seconds on average to load pages, while Keynote recommends an optimum two seconds. For some sites the home page was very slow, taking up to six seconds to load, while for others the checkout pages proved to be slowest.
“With 2008 proving to be a bumper Christmas for online sales, it’s clear that retailers need to have their sites in order if they are to prosper in the current uncertain climate,” said Martin Stern, Regional Manager – UK & Ireland, Middle East & South Africa, Keynote Systems. “This research helps identify the key players that have performed well – by making sure that their sites are both reliable and responsive. Given the importance of online sales, and reports that 3.8 million people spent a total of £102 million on Christmas Day alone, no retailer can afford to disappoint Web site visitors or risk losing out to a competitor because of poor availability and slow response times. Christmas comes around every year, so there’s no excuse for retailers to be caught out by the inevitable peaks in traffic.”
Keynote’s Transaction Perspective® is the industry’s most accurate measurement tool that provides full visibility into the performance and availability of Web transactions from the true end user’s perspective. It uses the actual Internet Explorer browser to generate real transactions from locations all over the world, delivering the insight to benchmark performance and availability against the competition.
The Keynote Competitive Research study is available for purchase from Keynote. For more information or details on purchasing the complete study, please visit: http://keynote.com/keynote_competitive_research/industry_studies/retail_index.html
To learn more about Keynote’s Transaction Perspective® please visit: http://keynote.com/products/web_performance/performance_measurement/transaction_perspective_products.html
About Keynote
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”) is the global leader in on-demand test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience. For over a decade, Keynote has been providing measurement data and testing capabilities that allow companies to understand and improve their customers’ online and mobile experience. Keynote has four test and measurement businesses: Web performance, mobile quality, streaming & VoIP, and customer experience/UX.
Known as The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority™, Keynote has a market-leading infrastructure of 2,600 measurement computers and mobile devices in over 240 locations around the world. Keynote’s 2,800 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies including American Express, Dell, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone and YouTube.
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority, Perspective and WebEffective are registered trademarks and The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority and True Experience are trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2008 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Editorial Contacts:
Corinna Krueger, Keynote Systems, 001 650 403 3412, corinna.krueger@keynote.com
Ryan Whelan and Kathryn Mills-Webb, Johnson King, +44 (0) 20 7401 7968, keynoteteam@johnsonking.co.uk
