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Performance Tracking > 2018 Valentine's Day
The St. Valentine's Day fever is now over and it was a successful one for many retailers, including online gift stores. Although only 55% of the Americans celebrated this year's St. Valentine's Day, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicted the estimated total planned spending would be $19.6 billion (source: forbes.com).
For eleventh years in a raw WebSitePulse monitored seven of the leading gift websites during the St. Valentine's Day hype, and compiled the WebSitePulse 2018 Valentine's Day Online Retail Performance and Uptime Report.
For the purpose of this Performance Report, WebSitePulse measured the performance of the websites home pages as well as a complete web transaction like an end user would interact with the website.
The report measures both Uptime and Response Time of the websites as well as measurements of the multi-step online transactions which were made every 15 minutes, simultaneously from 3 different monitoring locations: Washington DC (US East Coast), San Francisco, CA (US West Coast) and Chicago, IL (US Central).
The overall uptime and speed of the monitored online retailers' websites were quite good during the whole monitored period.
We have found out the daily average response time from all monitored websites was 4.652 sec. The daily average responses by locations are as follow:
This year brookstone.com was the speed leader among the 7 monitored gift websites with an average response time of 2.208 seconds, followed by pagoda.com (2.832 sec) and harryanddavid.com (2.945 sec). Far away at the bottom of the table was ftd.com with 9.938 seconds average response time which may have frustrated some of its visitors and led to less sales.
This year we have 3 winners with uninterrupted availability (100% uptime): 1800flowers.com, ftd.com and harryanddavid.com, followed by helzberg.com (99.990%) and brookstone.com (99.951%). Surprisingly, at the bottom of the availability chart stands the fastest website for the monitoring period - pagoda.com with 99.416% which means it was not accessible for about 2 hours during the whole monitored period.
Average Response times for the whole period
Average Uptime for the whole period
Best regards, and takeITeasy™ with WebSitePulse™
Iavor Marinoff, CEO
Methodology:
The 2018 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, 2018. 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:
The Data from the performance measurements cannot be changed or manipulated and should be used "as is".
WebSitePulse 2018 Valentine's Day Retail Performance Report Summary
The St. Valentine's Day fever is now over and it was a successful one for many retailers, including online gift stores. Although only 55% of the Americans celebrated this year's St. Valentine's Day, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicted the estimated total planned spending would be $19.6 billion (source: forbes.com).
For eleventh years in a raw WebSitePulse monitored seven of the leading gift websites during the St. Valentine's Day hype, and compiled the WebSitePulse 2018 Valentine's Day Online Retail Performance and Uptime Report.
For the purpose of this Performance Report, WebSitePulse measured the performance of the websites home pages as well as a complete web transaction like an end user would interact with the website.
The report measures both Uptime and Response Time of the websites as well as measurements of the multi-step online transactions which were made every 15 minutes, simultaneously from 3 different monitoring locations: Washington DC (US East Coast), San Francisco, CA (US West Coast) and Chicago, IL (US Central).
The overall uptime and speed of the monitored online retailers' websites were quite good during the whole monitored period.
We have found out the daily average response time from all monitored websites was 4.652 sec. The daily average responses by locations are as follow:
- Washington DC (US East Coast) – 4.327 sec
- San Francisco, CA (US West Coast) – 5.074 sec
- Chicago, IL (US Central) – 4.555 sec
This year brookstone.com was the speed leader among the 7 monitored gift websites with an average response time of 2.208 seconds, followed by pagoda.com (2.832 sec) and harryanddavid.com (2.945 sec). Far away at the bottom of the table was ftd.com with 9.938 seconds average response time which may have frustrated some of its visitors and led to less sales.
This year we have 3 winners with uninterrupted availability (100% uptime): 1800flowers.com, ftd.com and harryanddavid.com, followed by helzberg.com (99.990%) and brookstone.com (99.951%). Surprisingly, at the bottom of the availability chart stands the fastest website for the monitoring period - pagoda.com with 99.416% which means it was not accessible for about 2 hours during the whole monitored period.
Average Response times for the whole period
| # | Target | San Francisco, CA | Chicago, IL | Washington, DC | Avg. resp. time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | brookstone.com | 3.065 | 2.043 | 1.515 | 2.208 |
| 2 | pagoda.com | 4.210 | 2.433 | 1.853 | 2.832 |
| 3 | harryanddavid.com | 3.114 | 2.908 | 2.813 | 2.945 |
| 4 | 1800flowers.com | 4.074 | 3.854 | 3.674 | 3.867 |
| 5 | helzberg.com | 2.773 | 4.403 | 6.161 | 4.445 |
| 6 | vermonteddybear.com | 8.104 | 6.271 | 4.611 | 6.329 |
| 7 | ftd.com | 10.175 | 9.974 | 9.665 | 9.938 |
Average Uptime for the whole period
| # | Target | San Francisco, CA | Chicago, IL | Washington, DC | Avg. uptime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1800flowers.com | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% |
| 2 | harryanddavid.com | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% |
| 3 | ftd.com | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% | 100.000% |
| 4 | helzberg.com | 100.000% | 99.983% | 99.988% | 99.990% |
| 5 | brookstone.com | 99.943% | 99.937% | 99.974% | 99.951% |
| 6 | vermonteddybear.com | 99.728% | 99.742% | 99.708% | 99.726% |
| 7 | pagoda.com | 99.406% | 99.380% | 99.462% | 99.416% |
Best regards, and takeITeasy™ with WebSitePulse™
Iavor Marinoff, CEO
Methodology:
The 2018 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, 2018. 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".
