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Performance Tracking  > 2007 Holiday Season

WebSitePulse 2007 Holiday Retail Performance and Uptime Report


The Holidays are the most important time of the year for the online retailers, and it's not without a reason: according to a BIGresearch survey, the Internet will influence 30.2 percent of holiday sales this year, up from 28.9 percent last year. Also this year, Cyber Monday, the ceremonial kickoff to the online holiday shopping season, is expected to be more promotional than ever as retailers offer one-day promotions and special offers to bring holiday shoppers online. The stakes are being raised for retailers to provide a consistently positive, more sophisticated experience for the online holiday shoppers.

WebSitePulse is monitoring ten of the most popular online shopping destinations for the 2007 Holiday Season. The Reports reflect a typical online purchase transaction, like selecting an item, adding it to the shopping cart and checkout, representative for the End Users' interactions with a website. Measurements of the multi-step transactions are made every 15 minutes, simultaneously from 3 different US cities. The reporting period covers the dates between November 21, 2007 and January 5, 2008. For complete details, please check the Methodology we used for this report.

Daily Report for January 04, 2008See report for:


WebSitePulse reports the following results from web performance measurement of the websites participating in the the Holiday Retail Performance and Uptime Report:

The daily Average Response time from all monitored websites was 4.588 sec.

The Average Response time as measured from the US East Coast (Washington, DC) was: 4.060 sec.
The Average Response time as measured from the US West Coast (Los Angeles, CA) was: 5.561 sec.
The Average Response time as measured from US Central (Chicago, IL) was: 4.144 sec.

The Best Response time measured from the US East Coast was:2.138 sec.
The Best Response time measured from the US West Coast was:2.385 sec.
The Best Response time measured from US Central:1.984 sec.

The typical shopping transaction took the least time for circuitcity.com visitors - 2.189 sec., while the visitors of bestbuy.com had to be the most patient, as the shopping transaction there took in average of 7.546 sec.
Three of the monitored websites delivered above-the-average response times for their transactions, while seven of them demonstrated below-the-average daily performance.

The daily average uptime for the entire Group was 99.53%.

The Average Uptime as measured from the US East Coast (Washington, DC) was:99.45%
The Average Uptime as measured from the US West Coast (Los Angeles, CA) was:99.53%
The Average Uptime as measured from US Central (Chicago, IL) was:99.62%

Five websites were available with no interruptions - 100%.
Seven websites' availability was above the average, while three sites dragged the average down with below-the-average availability.

Report Highlights

No events of particular importance or possible negative impact on the online visitors' interaction with the Websites included into the 2007 Holiday Season report were detected during the reported period, and according to WebSitePulse, the Group delivered the expected levels of End-User experience and Customer satisfaction.

Please, scroll down for Detailed Reports and Charts provided by WebSitePulse:

Daily Response Times
Legend:
    amazon     bestbuy     circuitcity     compusa     kmart 
    radioshack     sears     target     toysrus     walmart 

Average Response Times for January 04, 2008
#TargetLos AngelesChicagoWashingtonAvg. resp. time
1circuitcity.com2.3852.0442.1382.189
2kmart.com4.1101.9843.1123.069
3toysrus.com4.5102.7672.2763.184
4radioshack.com5.0463.2692.8603.725
5compusa.com3.5543.7884.1013.814
6sears.com4.8652.8243.9103.866
7target.com5.6494.0403.0794.256
8amazon.com8.6316.6015.4366.889
9walmart.com8.6826.7536.6007.345
10bestbuy.com8.1797.3697.0897.546

Average Response Times November 21, 2007 - January 04, 2008
#TargetLos AngelesChicagoWashingtonAvg. resp. time
1circuitcity.com2.9232.4541.7222.366
2toysrus.com4.1442.9621.5532.886
3kmart.com4.4533.0103.4663.643
4radioshack.com4.9103.8612.4803.751
5target.com5.4394.3212.7484.169
6sears.com5.4413.8834.3024.542
7compusa.com4.1035.2584.4484.603
8amazon.com8.6367.0765.5877.100
9walmart.com8.7937.2326.0737.366
10bestbuy.com9.1798.0617.2408.160



Hourly Average Response Times
Select individual website to display:


Legend:
    individual site response times     monitored group average response times 


Average response times by hour for January 04, 2008
TargetHours
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
amazon6.726.646.497.057.499.107.186.956.586.676.636.736.716.796.666.626.366.876.777.187.086.706.716.68
bestbuy6.956.807.388.327.366.917.436.757.407.197.057.238.618.116.916.867.227.0710.208.976.497.998.747.14
circuitcity2.682.813.042.281.722.472.301.731.611.901.861.811.901.691.951.912.112.011.922.712.542.482.492.61
compusa5.753.683.653.713.333.653.553.723.673.763.813.784.563.703.713.823.983.753.733.653.773.613.603.60
kmart3.283.813.292.632.604.044.452.763.622.833.312.732.853.292.892.792.802.723.262.892.572.992.632.61
radioshack3.183.354.623.824.099.004.283.393.693.453.303.523.233.323.393.233.443.413.223.133.313.343.443.26
sears5.274.703.975.203.833.933.693.613.763.733.663.474.543.673.683.783.643.563.713.343.833.423.273.52
target3.924.103.994.024.864.624.033.824.304.264.614.135.374.144.254.375.313.903.873.924.264.233.724.17
toysrus2.492.563.623.663.4110.744.263.732.882.702.662.552.492.413.013.762.302.652.322.362.472.362.552.50
walmart7.207.287.146.147.467.757.587.507.307.907.217.387.597.337.617.307.287.227.217.347.517.667.337.09


Average response times by hour November 21, 2007 - January 04, 2008
TargetHours
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
amazon7.257.117.197.667.247.126.846.716.626.726.866.916.866.856.947.187.307.307.267.447.307.337.257.21
bestbuy8.258.548.078.638.288.137.667.627.917.958.138.418.138.107.948.168.428.408.408.078.368.038.178.10
circuitcity2.402.252.312.291.811.882.693.001.812.662.542.162.081.982.082.232.372.352.362.422.383.942.412.42
compusa5.374.574.494.573.573.873.733.733.743.853.974.454.734.334.514.514.604.494.585.975.855.615.695.66
kmart3.453.693.733.392.803.043.042.782.902.923.703.793.353.473.723.313.663.664.218.044.063.693.823.24
radioshack3.803.803.914.493.735.723.763.533.363.323.313.333.703.333.363.543.773.733.713.753.773.763.823.76
sears4.384.424.474.293.413.673.643.673.804.464.294.694.765.125.115.345.104.834.824.505.196.164.684.21
target4.314.244.284.353.874.163.963.883.893.873.913.924.013.893.964.194.434.334.394.504.434.414.504.43
toysrus2.572.603.002.852.666.113.232.692.352.303.333.294.323.582.162.332.482.442.442.472.532.462.512.59
walmart7.587.467.446.827.037.176.956.986.967.037.067.147.257.337.197.517.887.857.837.567.727.777.577.94


Uptime

Uptime January 04, 2008
#TargetLos AngelesChicagoWashingtonAvg. uptime
1sears.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
2target.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
3toysrus.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
4radioshack.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
5kmart.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
6amazon.com100.000%100.000%99.790%99.930%
7bestbuy.com99.660%99.740%99.570%99.657%
8walmart.com99.370%99.480%99.160%99.337%
9compusa.com98.950%98.760%98.470%98.727%
10circuitcity.com97.290%98.190%97.470%97.650%

Uptime November 21, 2007 - January 04, 2008
#TargetLos AngelesChicagoWashingtonAvg. uptime
1target.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
2amazon.com100.000%99.986%99.981%99.989%
3radioshack.com99.940%99.995%99.994%99.976%
4toysrus.com99.933%99.909%99.963%99.935%
5bestbuy.com99.508%99.274%99.442%99.408%
6walmart.com98.964%99.004%99.056%99.008%
7circuitcity.com98.702%98.725%98.731%98.719%
8kmart.com98.416%98.316%98.389%98.374%
9sears.com97.825%97.815%97.880%97.840%
10compusa.com98.002%97.591%97.860%97.818%

Methodology:
The 2007 Holiday Season Reports reflect a complete web transaction, representative for the End Users' interactions with a website. The reporting period covers the dates between November 21, 2007 and January 5, 2008. Performance and availability measurements are made for a typical multi-step 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: Los Angeles, 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".