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Performance Tracking > 2024 Holiday Season
The 2024 holiday season has ended with US retail sales growing by 3.8% compared to last year, according to Mastercard's SpendingPulse. Shoppers focused on online shopping, which grew by 6.7%, while in-store sales increased by 2.9%. Items like clothing, jewellery, and electronics were especially popular. Cities such as Tampa and Phoenix saw significant increases in online shopping. Overall, the season showed that consumers are spending steadily, with many looking for good deals and convenience.
After monitoring ten online retailers and analysing the data, we at WebSitePulse have published our "2024 Holiday Retail Performance and Uptime Report". It is an annual report where, for the 18th year in a row, we have monitored the leading US online retailers, measuring and evaluating their availability and speed during that busy time.
For this Performance Report, WebSitePulse measured the performance of the websites' home pages and a complete web transaction like an end-user would interact with the website.
The report measures both the Uptime and Response Time of the websites as well as measurements of the multi-step online transactions, which were made every 15 minutes, simultaneously from 3 different monitoring locations: Washington DC (US East Coast), Los Angeles, CA (US West Coast) and Chicago, IL (US Central).
The overall speed of the monitored online retailers' websites was good, except for a few fluctuations on Black Friday and a few days before. cdw.com, costco.com, and officedepot.com have experienced connectivity and speed issues during the monitored period. Check our 2024 Holiday Season Report Highlights for more details.
We found the daily average response time from all monitored websites was 6.023 sec, 0.2 seconds slower than last year. The daily average responses by location are as follows:
Compared to last year's performance, the three leaders had the same response time, and the slowest site this year performed an average of e 0.7 seconds slower than in the 2023 Holiday Season monitored period.
The overall uptime of the monitored online retailers' websites was satisfactory during the whole monitored period except for some minor downtime during the monitored time, the most significant on Black Friday and from Christmas Eve through New Year's Eve. For more information, check the report highlights.
The daily average uptime for the entire group of 10 websites for the 2024 holiday season was 99.79%. The daily average uptime by location is as follows:
* Amazon.com has occasionally implemented an anti-bot system, which has likely affected our monitoring process.
Average Response times for the whole period
Average Uptime for the whole period
We wish you a Prosperous and Error-free New Year!
Best regards, and takeITeasy™ with WebSitePulse™
Iavor Marinoff, CEO
Methodology:
Performance and availability are measured for a typical travel-related booking web transaction at 15 minute monitoring interval, every day, 24/7. The WebSitePulse application monitoring service is used to collect data and to create the reports.
The steps in each transaction are comparable for all websites, and reflect the real online buyers' experience. The simultaneous monitoring is performed from three locations of the WebSitePulse global monitoring network. In case of a detected malfunction or unavailability, the system performs automated error verification from four independent resources and only after the above procedure is performed and has returned consistent results, the detected error is confirmed, recorded, and included in the daily performance reports. In these cases, an advanced WebSitePulse exclusive feature comes into play - Forced Monitoring -, which automatically switches to a 3 minute monitoring interval for increased accuracy.
About WebSitePulse:
WebSitePulse is a leading provider of global, independent, and objective availability and performance monitoring of web sites, servers, network components, web applications, e-business- and email round-trip transactions.
Contact:
For more information about this report please contact:
George T., CTO
phone: 1-407-380-1600
email:
Reproduction:
WebSitePulse launched the Performance and Uptime Reports program to keep the general public and the Internet community informed about the performance of specific websites and the challenges their webmasters, owners and operators are facing on a daily basis, especially when the web traffic intensifies due to some special events through the year. Some of the most popular web destinations, related to each particular event, are selected for the purpose of the Reports, and data from their performance measurements is made available on the WebSitePulse public website.
With the intention to broadly disseminate this information for the benefit of the Internet community, we encourage the use of this information without prior approval and under the following Terms and Conditions:
The Data from the performance measurements cannot be changed or manipulated and should be used "as is".
WebSitePulse 2024 Holiday Retail Performance and Uptime Report Summary
The 2024 holiday season has ended with US retail sales growing by 3.8% compared to last year, according to Mastercard's SpendingPulse. Shoppers focused on online shopping, which grew by 6.7%, while in-store sales increased by 2.9%. Items like clothing, jewellery, and electronics were especially popular. Cities such as Tampa and Phoenix saw significant increases in online shopping. Overall, the season showed that consumers are spending steadily, with many looking for good deals and convenience.
After monitoring ten online retailers and analysing the data, we at WebSitePulse have published our "2024 Holiday Retail Performance and Uptime Report". It is an annual report where, for the 18th year in a row, we have monitored the leading US online retailers, measuring and evaluating their availability and speed during that busy time.
For this Performance Report, WebSitePulse measured the performance of the websites' home pages and a complete web transaction like an end-user would interact with the website.
The report measures both the Uptime and Response Time of the websites as well as measurements of the multi-step online transactions, which were made every 15 minutes, simultaneously from 3 different monitoring locations: Washington DC (US East Coast), Los Angeles, CA (US West Coast) and Chicago, IL (US Central).
The overall speed of the monitored online retailers' websites was good, except for a few fluctuations on Black Friday and a few days before. cdw.com, costco.com, and officedepot.com have experienced connectivity and speed issues during the monitored period. Check our 2024 Holiday Season Report Highlights for more details.
We found the daily average response time from all monitored websites was 6.023 sec, 0.2 seconds slower than last year. The daily average responses by location are as follows:
- Washington DC (US East Coast) – 5.768 sec
- Los Angeles, CA (US West Coast) – 6.480 sec
- Chicago, IL (US Central) – 5.815 sec
Compared to last year's performance, the three leaders had the same response time, and the slowest site this year performed an average of e 0.7 seconds slower than in the 2023 Holiday Season monitored period.
The overall uptime of the monitored online retailers' websites was satisfactory during the whole monitored period except for some minor downtime during the monitored time, the most significant on Black Friday and from Christmas Eve through New Year's Eve. For more information, check the report highlights.
The daily average uptime for the entire group of 10 websites for the 2024 holiday season was 99.79%. The daily average uptime by location is as follows:
- Washington DC (US East Coast) – 99.80 %
- Los Angeles, CA (US West Coast) – 99.79 %
- Chicago, IL (US Central) – 99.78 %
* Amazon.com has occasionally implemented an anti-bot system, which has likely affected our monitoring process.
Average Response times for the whole period
| # | Target | Los Angeles | Chicago | Washington | Avg. resp. time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | michaels.com | 2.243 | 1.973 | 1.887 | 2.034 |
| 2 | ruralking.com | 3.530 | 2.273 | 1.840 | 2.548 |
| 3 | hallmark.com | 4.031 | 2.221 | 2.730 | 2.994 |
| 4 | cdw.com | 4.972 | 4.481 | 4.540 | 4.664 |
| 5 | gobros.com | 5.446 | 5.124 | 4.712 | 5.094 |
| 6 | amazon.com | 5.710 | 5.232 | 4.934 | 5.292 |
| 7 | officedepot.com | 6.097 | 5.915 | 6.054 | 6.022 |
| 8 | la-z-boy.com | 8.788 | 8.522 | 8.593 | 8.634 |
| 9 | rileyhome.com | 9.974 | 8.642 | 8.644 | 9.087 |
| 10 | costco.com | 14.010 | 13.766 | 13.745 | 13.841 |
Average Uptime for the whole period
| # | Target | Los Angeles | Chicago | Washington | Avg. uptime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | michaels.com | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% |
| 2 | ruralking.com | 99.988% | 99.990% | 99.999% | 99.993% |
| 3 | gobros.com | 99.969% | 99.969% | 99.968% | 99.969% |
| 4 | la-z-boy.com | 99.990% | 99.951% | 99.963% | 99.968% |
| 5 | cdw.com | 99.947% | 99.969% | 99.967% | 99.961% |
| 6 | hallmark.com | 99.910% | 99.908% | 99.910% | 99.909% |
| 7 | costco.com | 99.901% | 99.896% | 99.928% | 99.908% |
| 8 | rileyhome.com | 99.843% | 99.903% | 99.867% | 99.871% |
| 9 | officedepot.com | 99.715% | 99.724% | 99.732% | 99.724% |
| 10 | amazon.com | 98.686% | 98.474% | 98.586% | 98.582% |
We wish you a Prosperous and Error-free New Year!
Best regards, and takeITeasy™ with WebSitePulse™
Iavor Marinoff, CEO
Methodology:
Performance and availability are measured for a typical travel-related booking web transaction at 15 minute monitoring interval, every day, 24/7. The WebSitePulse application monitoring service is used to collect data and to create the reports.
The steps in each transaction are comparable for all websites, and reflect the real online buyers' experience. The simultaneous monitoring is performed from three locations of the WebSitePulse global monitoring network. In case of a detected malfunction or unavailability, the system performs automated error verification from four independent resources and only after the above procedure is performed and has returned consistent results, the detected error is confirmed, recorded, and included in the daily performance reports. In these cases, an advanced WebSitePulse exclusive feature comes into play - Forced Monitoring -, which automatically switches to a 3 minute monitoring interval for increased accuracy.
About WebSitePulse:
WebSitePulse is a leading provider of global, independent, and objective availability and performance monitoring of web sites, servers, network components, web applications, e-business- and email round-trip transactions.
Contact:
For more information about this report please contact:
George T., CTO
phone: 1-407-380-1600
email:
Reproduction:
WebSitePulse launched the Performance and Uptime Reports program to keep the general public and the Internet community informed about the performance of specific websites and the challenges their webmasters, owners and operators are facing on a daily basis, especially when the web traffic intensifies due to some special events through the year. Some of the most popular web destinations, related to each particular event, are selected for the purpose of the Reports, and data from their performance measurements is made available on the WebSitePulse public website.
With the intention to broadly disseminate this information for the benefit of the Internet community, we encourage the use of this information without prior approval and under the following Terms and Conditions:
- WebSitePulse should be referred as the "Source" of the information;
- WebSitePulse should be acknowledged as the owner of the copyrights of the information in the Reports;
- The texts of the Reports could be changed or altered to better suit the needs and the style of the publisher without prior notice to WebSitePulse. However, the integrity and the meaning of the information should be preserved;
The Data from the performance measurements cannot be changed or manipulated and should be used "as is".
