Special 'Romance Index' Ranks the Fastest and Most Reliable Websites
and Mobile Sites
SAN MATEO, Calif., Feb 18, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
Keynote
Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote
Systems (NASDAQ:KEYN), today announced the top performers on its
'Romance Performance Index' created especially for Valentine's Day 2011.
Other than a few performance hiccups, the results showed that most of
the mobile and connected websites dealing in gifts, greeting cards,
chocolates, flowers, wine, online dating and restaurant reservations did
remarkably well considering the onslaught of visitor traffic typically
experienced in the lead-up to Valentine's Day.
On the mobile Web, OpenTable was the fastest site with an average speed
of 2.62 seconds to download the homepage to a wireless device and
Ghirardelli was the most reliable site with an availability of 98.64
percent. Here's an overview on the top five mobile performers in
download speed and reliability:
Top Five Sites on Keynote's Romance Mobile Performance Index:
| Rank |
|
Mobile Site |
|
Load Time (seconds) |
|
1
|
|
OpenTable
|
|
2.62
|
|
2
|
|
Match.com
|
|
2.64
|
|
3
|
|
Amazon
|
|
6.98
|
|
4
|
|
FTD
|
|
7.85
|
|
5
|
|
Victoria's Secret
|
|
8.14
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Rank |
|
Mobile Site |
|
Reliability (%) |
|
1
|
|
Ghirardelli
|
|
98.64
|
|
2
|
|
Match.com
|
|
98.57
|
|
3
|
|
FTD
|
|
98.44
|
|
4
|
|
OpenTable
|
|
98.38
|
|
5
|
|
KL Wines
|
|
98.35
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Load Time (seconds) |
|
Reliability (%) |
|
Average of 11 Mobile Sites
|
|
7.94
|
|
97.68
|
Source: Keynote Systems, Inc.
Herman Ng, mobile performance evangelist at Keynote said, "Overall,
almost all the mobile sites performed quite well during the two week
period up to and including Valentine's Day. A few of the sites
experienced latency in the two to three days leading up to the weekend
before Valentine's Day. We speculate that this was a result of end users
trying to complete Valentine's plans before the weekend. With the
exception of one mobile site, there were no major outages or service
interruptions."
Ng continued, "The mobile sites of OpenTable and Match.com have a very
light weight design making them the fastest sites to load on mobile
devices. Both were ranked as top five performers. While it's true that
keeping a mobile site's design simple will generally improve speed,
sites such as Ghirardelli and FTD that had more content still performed
relatively well in terms of both load time and reliability. They both
have page sizes over 100KB but their load time was faster than the
median and their reliability ranked 1st and 3rd respectively.
They are to be commended. Two of the mobile sites we measured over the
two week period that had the slowest load time also had the lowest
reliability, and one of those sites also had the most content compared
to all the other sites."
Mobile websites selected for the index were: Amazon, 1-800-Flowers.com,
FTD, Ghirardelli, Gifts.com, Godiva, KL Wines, Match.com, OpenTable,
ProFlowers and Victoria's Secret. The mobile data was gathered on an
hourly basis beginning on February 1 until midnight February 15 from San
Francisco, New York, Chicago and Dallas and was downloaded to the
iPhone4 on AT&T, EVO on Sprint, DroidX on Verizon and myTouch on
T-Mobile.
On the connected Web, OpenTable was the fastest site with an average
speed of 2.06 seconds to download the homepage and Hallmark was the most
reliable site with an availability of 99.97 percent. Here's an overview
on the top five connected Web performers in download speed and
reliability:
Top Five Sites on Keynote's Romance Connected Web Index:
| Rank |
|
Connected Web Site |
|
Load Time (seconds) |
|
1
|
|
OpenTable
|
|
2.06
|
|
2
|
|
Hallmark
|
|
2.19
|
|
3
|
|
123 Greetings
|
|
2.44
|
|
4
|
|
Red Envelope
|
|
2.56
|
|
5
|
|
Ghirardelli
|
|
2.56
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Rank |
|
Connected Web Site |
|
Reliability (%) |
|
1
|
|
Hallmark
|
|
99.97
|
|
2
|
|
Victoria's Secret
|
|
99.96
|
|
3
|
|
Ghirardelli
|
|
99.92
|
|
4
|
|
Match.com
|
|
99.88
|
|
5
|
|
FTD.com
|
|
99.87
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Load Time (seconds) |
|
Reliability (%) |
|
Average of 17 Connected Web sites
|
|
3.52
|
|
99.62
|
Source: Keynote Systems, Inc.
Dave Karow, senior product manager of Internet performance at Keynote
said, "While the fastest site, OpenTable provided a lean page with just
a few images, the other top scorers in speed were quite visually rich.
Kudos to all of the top five for delivering a compelling experience in
less than three seconds! The entire index of sites performed well
throughout the whole period, with only a few isolated incidents. All in
all, these sites were well equipped to handle whatever chocolate, flower
and greeting seekers had to throw at them."
Websites selected for the index were: 123greetings, 1-800-Flowers,
Amazon, Blue Mountain, Egreetings, FTD, Ghirardelli, Gifts.com, Godiva,
Hallmark, JacquieLawson.com, K&L Wines, Match.com, Open Table,
ProFlowers, Red Envelope and Victoria's Secret. The connected Web data
was gathered every 15 minutes beginning on February 1 until midnight
February 15 from 10 geographically dispersed locations on six different
networks, using an Internet Explorer 7 browser: Boston (Verizon),
Chicago (Savvis), Dallas (AT&T), Detroit (Level3), Houston (Level3), Los
Angeles (AT&T), New York (Sprint), Philadelphia (Verizon), San Francisco
(Sprint) and Washington D.C. (Qwest).
Follow Keynote on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/KeynoteSystems
and www.twitter.com/Keynote_Mobile
About Keynote
Keynote Systems (NASDAQ:KEYN) is the global leader in Internet and
mobile cloud monitoring. We provide companies with solutions for
continuously improving the online experience. Founded in 1995, Keynote
delivers testing, monitoring and measurement products and services for
any enterprise including online portals, e-commerce sites, B2B sites,
mobile operators and mobile infrastructure providers. Keynote products
and services help companies improve customer experience in four areas:
Web performance, mobile quality, streaming and real user experience
testing.
Known as The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority(TM), Keynote has a
market-leading on-demand infrastructure of over 3,000 measurement
computers and mobile devices in over 275 locations around the world.
Keynote's 2,800 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies
including American Express, AT&T, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia,
Google, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can
be reached at www.keynote.com
or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.
Keynote(R), DataPulse(R), CustomerScope(R), Keynote CE Rankings(R), Keynote
Customer Experience Rankings(R), Perspective(R), Keynote Red Alert(R), Keynote
Traffic Perspective(R), Keynote WebEffective(R), The Internet Performance
Authority(R), MyKeynote(R) , SIGOS(R), SITE(R), Keynote(TM), The Mobile & Internet
Performance Authority(TM), Screen Sensing Technology and Keynote FlexUse(TM)
are trademarks or registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the
United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. © 2011 Keynote Systems, Inc.

SOURCE: Keynote Systems, Inc.
Keynote Systems, Inc.
Dan Berkowitz, 650-403-3305
dberkowitz@keynote.com