Web site consistency improved among major web retailers in May with 27 merchants achieving a consistency rating of “excellent,” according to Gomez Inc. The top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 98.07%.

In May, 16 retailers received a rating of “good,” six got “fair” and one received “poor.”

The consistency ratings take into account differences in the speed of web page delivery across multiple visits and the frequency a retail site is unavailable because of downtime. The variability of response time and the number of minutes out are combined to create each retailer’s consistency rating, Gomez explains.

Top 50 Web Site Performance Index: Consistency May 01 , 2008 - May 31 , 2008

Retailer Consistency Rating Consistency (seconds) Availability (%) Dell Excellent 11.09 98.93 QVC Excellent 12.80 99.01 Scholastic Excellent 11.41 98.61 Coldwater Creek Excellent 10.67 99.14 Zappos Excellent 12.88 99.34 Office Depot Excellent 11.70 98.75 Nordstrom Excellent 12.75 98.92 L. L. Bean Excellent 15.73 98.71 Quixtar Excellent 12.95 98.46 Newegg Excellent 14.00 99.01 Overstock Excellent 13.17 98.85 J. C. Penney Excellent 12.43 99.01 Sony Style Excellent 19.02 98.46 Circuit City Home Excellent 16.44 98.29 Macys Store Excellent 14.11 99.06 Footlocker Excellent 15.51 97.83 Saks Fifth Avenue Excellent 14.98 98.87 HSN Excellent 15.06 98.19 The Home Depot Excellent 16.01 98.50 Sears Excellent 17.44 98.46 Avon Shopping Excellent 13.37 99.06 Victorias Secret Excellent 18.16 98.43 CompUSA Excellent 17.03 98.10 Drugstore Excellent 14.33 98.61 Williams-Sonoma Excellent 16.04 98.54 Amazon Excellent 15.47 98.42 Buy.com Excellent 17.54 98.72 Musicians Friend Good 18.14 96.89 Staples Good 16.24 98.82 Costco Good 16.09 98.86 Tiger Direct Good 17.96 97.90 Benchmark Average Good 16.11 98.07 Best Buy Good 17.43 98.52 Chadwicks Good 16.40 98.85 Neiman Marcus Good 13.67 98.56 PC Connection Good 14.30 98.00 Barnes & Noble Good 18.81 97.82 1-800 Flowers Good 17.89 97.69 FTD Good 18.98 97.81 Netflix Good 16.01 98.82 Blue Nile Good 15.34 98.66 Wal-Mart Good 20.10 97.02 HP Shopping Good 19.04 97.66 OfficeMax Good 19.79 97.78 Apple Store Fair 21.37 96.43 Oriental Trading Fair 20.22 95.88 Peapod Fair 14.32 98.65 Toys R Us Fair 20.09 95.21 CDW Fair 19.77 97.78 Target Fair 20.90 92.23 Gap Poor 20.49 93.49

All data for this report is collected by the Gomez Last Mile network,

30 times an hour from Dial Up, Low and High Broadband users across

the United States, 24 hours a day except between 3AM to 6AM EDT.

Consistency Rating A qualitative representation of consistency

ratings that are created with the lowest total score (Consistency +

Availability) being normalized to 100. Above 98 = Excellent,

above 95 = Good, above 85 = Fair, and below 85 = Poor.

Consistency is the range between the high and low values of one

standard deviation from response time.

Availability is determined by the percentage of tests that fail to

correctly load. Source: Internetretailer.com