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Performance Tracking  > 2014 Valentine's Day

WebSitePulse 2014 Valentine's Day Online Retail Performance and Uptime Report


After the holiday season in 2013, which ended the beginning of January 2014, retailers are now preparing to welcome the next huge shopping fever – St. Valentine’s Day.

More customers are now purchasing gifts online as it’s easier, cheaper and faster – just a few clicks away. According to an article on prweb.com, "the migration to digital is a transition, not a trend." The article also states that "consumers spoke loud and clear with their time and wallets in 2013, telling the market that gains by online retailers were no accident.”

Therefore, those retailers which are awaiting St. Valentine’s shopping with hopes they will be successful in sales this season, must - by all means - take a good care of their websites. In order to really satisfy the online shoppers, they must know that now being competitive and successful is not just about what they sell, but also how they sell it. As high traffic volume is expected during February 1st and February 16th, online retailers must make sure their websites are up and run fast 24/7. High downtime and response time mean disappointed customers – regardless of how great your Valentine’s gifts are.

As usual, we are going to monitor 7 of the most popular online retailers for Valentine’s day gifts. In the previous years, many of them had 100% availability and excellent performance, but let’s not forget that online shopping’s popularity has been growing as "it’s a transition, not a trend.” While traffic load is increasing with every shopping season, online customers become more pretentious regarding the websites’ performance. Thus, some websites might not be able to bear the heavy traffic and/or keep low response time just as they did in the previous years. Stay tuned and keep an eye on the daily stats we’ll be publishing for each of the monitored websites.
Daily Report for February 16, 2014See 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 9.11 sec.

The Average Response time as measured from the US East Coast (Washington, DC) was: 8.143 sec.
The Average Response time as measured from the US West Coast (San Francisco, CA) was:9.426 sec.
The Average Response time as measured from the US Central (Chicago, IL) was:9.762 sec.

The Best Response time measured from US East Coast (Washington, DC):3.006 sec.
The Best Response time measured from US West Coast (San Francisco, CA):2.124 sec.
The Best Response time measured from US Central (Chicago, IL):3.525 sec.

The typical shopping transaction took the least time for pagoda.com visitors - 2.885 sec., while the visitors of ftd.com had to be the most patient, as the shopping transaction there took in average of 15.040 sec.
Four of the monitored websites delivered above-the-average response times for their transactions, while three of them demonstrated below-the-average daily performance.

The daily average uptime for the entire Group was 99.99%.

The Average Uptime as measured from the US East Coast (Washington, DC) was:99.97%
The Average Uptime as measured from the US West Coast (San Francisco, CA) was:100.00%
The Average Uptime as measured from the US Central (Chicago, IL):100.00%

Six websites were available with no interruptions - 100%.
Six websites' availability was above the average, while one site 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 2014 Valentine's day 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:
    brookstone     ftd     vermontteddybear     1800flowers     helzberg 
    pagoda     harryanddavid 

Average Response Times for February 16, 2014
#TargetSan FranciscoChicagoWashingtonAvg. resp. time
1pagoda.com2.1243.5253.0062.885
2harryanddavid.com3.4936.7285.8835.368
3brookstone.com7.01810.8695.4437.777
4helzberg.com8.45111.3808.7939.541
51800flowers.com10.97110.4227.5199.637
6vermontteddybear.com18.30111.57910.69313.524
7ftd.com15.62313.83115.66715.040

Average Response Times January 31, 2014 - February 16, 2014
#TargetSan FranciscoChicagoWashingtonAvg. resp. time
1harryanddavid.com3.6937.4844.9715.382
2brookstone.com7.18211.2035.5697.985
31800flowers.com11.11510.9077.4399.820
4pagoda.com7.09311.64210.8539.863
5helzberg.com8.95312.2749.06010.096
6ftd.com15.84714.59812.86114.435
7vermontteddybear.com24.05711.62113.83516.505



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 February 16, 2014
TargetHours
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
1800flowers9.589.4810.389.829.4710.469.539.8011.228.958.9110.179.889.8110.519.888.609.689.169.138.748.899.559.73
brookstone7.787.657.487.066.6014.178.476.846.286.806.797.805.857.1010.417.686.426.407.767.487.728.409.937.77
ftd13.5514.4114.4513.6214.1815.0913.7913.8413.6213.8213.7714.4213.8921.9316.9825.6113.4213.3613.2314.0313.5313.0013.5519.86
harryanddavid5.364.775.144.863.949.354.365.124.616.145.065.675.205.725.065.055.784.484.664.886.094.846.745.96
helzberg9.458.419.738.178.888.499.749.018.779.149.3410.6310.9110.049.6510.3310.3110.159.3810.049.7010.409.339.00
pagoda3.002.762.693.022.703.933.583.023.383.172.762.642.552.572.962.752.922.482.512.652.612.732.853.03
vermonteddybear15.1812.3711.7612.0417.6223.2712.1311.8711.8411.9811.9212.0211.7714.3317.3214.3511.6912.2712.0012.5611.8112.2416.6013.65


Average response times by hour January 31, 2014 - February 16, 2014
TargetHours
000102030405060708091011121314151617181920212223
1800flowers9.4110.629.579.729.899.499.469.709.709.419.9710.089.659.819.939.869.779.969.819.7910.2510.189.939.71
brookstone8.018.147.567.498.458.848.138.488.128.157.707.947.677.887.977.827.607.568.057.997.898.108.098.02
ftd13.9314.4614.2814.1914.1114.0514.2514.0414.2914.3814.5414.8014.9615.1214.5715.1314.5114.1114.5615.1314.0614.2514.1114.62
harryanddavid5.145.245.255.046.036.115.215.325.105.155.425.455.195.335.505.395.305.275.335.355.555.555.375.58
helzberg10.1610.499.6810.0211.9410.049.5510.0510.029.409.429.809.839.9210.089.839.849.9710.1210.0210.3610.7810.4410.52
pagoda10.3110.489.7710.8210.4710.2611.8710.8610.5310.069.979.679.199.009.089.029.149.089.099.129.479.859.889.72
vermonteddybear14.6415.9316.0015.2718.1618.4919.5017.2218.8917.1618.6115.1815.7215.6116.2616.6116.6016.8017.8214.3214.3314.8816.0916.02


Uptime

Uptime February 16, 2014
#TargetSan FranciscoChicagoWashingtonAvg. uptime
1pagoda.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
2harryanddavid.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
3helzberg.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
41800flowers.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
5brookstone.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
6vermontteddybear.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
7ftd.com100.000%100.000%99.770%99.923%

Uptime January 31, 2014 - February 16, 2014
#TargetSan FranciscoChicagoWashingtonAvg. uptime
1harryanddavid.com100.000%100.000%100.000%100.000%
21800flowers.com100.000%99.971%100.000%99.990%
3ftd.com100.000%100.000%99.925%99.975%
4helzberg.com99.949%99.969%99.986%99.968%
5brookstone.com99.679%99.638%99.672%99.663%
6vermontteddybear.com98.527%99.159%98.331%98.672%
7pagoda.com96.857%96.928%96.902%96.896%

Methodology:
The 2014 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 January 31 and February 16, 2013. 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: 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".