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Performance Tracking  > 2012 Valentine's Day

WebSitePulse 2012 Valentine's Day Retail Performance Report Summary


The predictions of increased sales on Valentine’s Day came true and we saw yet another rise in the numbers for the major retailers. The song may go that “All We Need Is Love”, but apparently this Valentine’s Day the average American also needed about $ 126.03 to show their appreciation for their better halves. This drove the holiday sales up by 8.5 % compared to last year thus making the total amount spent $17.6 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. Of course, men spent more than twice as much as the women ($112.65 vs. $51.56) and the most popular gifts were as usual – flowers, candy, dinners out and jewelry (not necessarily in this order).

In terms of online performance, the holiday was also a very good one. There were no notable issues and we can safely say that the overall performance of the sites was better than last year’s. Although there were minor issues at times, there were no major incidents which might have affected the shopping experience and the potential sales.
You can take a look at the summarized numbers in the charts and graphs below.

Average Response times for the whole period
#TargetSan Francisco, CAChicago, ILWashington, DCAvg. resp. time
1harryanddavid.com4.6753.5215.0584.418
2brookstone.com11.4595.8664.5747.300
3helzberg.com13.0597.66112.73511.151
4pagoda.com22.00111.7109.08414.265
51800flowers.com22.67111.85413.56016.028
6ftd.com55.62627.02022.19134.945
7vermontteddybear.com48.97435.18232.91239.023
8candy.com59.84743.40345.27849.509

Average Uptime for the whole period
#TargetSan Francisco, CAChicago, ILWashington, DCAvg. uptime
1pagoda.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
2brookstone.com100.000%99.971%100.000%99.990%
31800flowers.com99.923%99.983%99.943%99.950%
4harryanddavid.com99.901%99.945%99.967%99.938%
5ftd.com99.615%99.986%100.000%99.867%
6vermontteddybear.com99.703%99.687%99.689%99.693%
7helzberg.com98.853%98.852%98.867%98.857%
8candy.com98.543%98.772%98.693%98.669%

Best regards, and takeITeasy™ with WebSitePulse™

Iavor Marinoff, CEO

Methodology:
The 2012 Valentine's Day Reports reflect a complete fullpage web transaction, representative for the End Users' interactions with a website. The reporting period covers the dates between February 1 and February 15, 2012. Performance and availability measurements are made for a typical multi-step fullpage 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 shopper experience. The simultaneous monitoring is performed from 3 US-based locations of the WebSitePulse monitoring network: San Francisco, CA, Chicago, IL, and Washington, DC. In case of a detected malfunction or unavailability, the system performs automated error verification from 3 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".