Amazon top mobile retail Web site: Gomez

By Chris Harnick

November 21, 2009

Amazon mobile site

Gomez found that between Nov. 1-15 the average response time for 14 mobile retail sites was 4.73 seconds and that the sites were available, on average, 98.74 percent of the time.

Gomez said that retailers need to pay attention to the mobile Web and improve their mobile sites. The new mobile Web retail benchmarks joins Gomez’s monthly mobile Web benchmarks in banking, airlines and search.

“I think one of the facts that is not surprising is that the people that are the best retailers on the traditional Web also did a good job on mobile sites,” said Matt Poepsel, vice president of performance strategies at Gomez, Detroit.

“We look at it as there’s only one Web – you go on it on your PC at home or on your mobile device, there’s no difference, it’s all just shopping,” he said. “It’s almost noteworthy that the people that are good retailers are good in general across all channels.

“I’m a little surprised retail outperformed banking and airlines and it’s pretty noteworthy that retailers are doing a good job on mobile Web even though not all of them are doing well.”

Mobile banking benchmarks

The performance benchmarks from Gomez and dotMobi take into account different aspects of mobile Web performance.

Mobile retail benchmarks
Amazon and QVC topped the mobile retail Web benchmarks.

Amazon had a response time of 2.85 seconds and an availability of 99.86 percent of the time.

Mobile search benchmarks

QVC had a response time of 2.94 seconds and an availability of 99.84 percent.

Target had the lowest response time of 6.96 seconds and Buy.com had the lowest availability percentage at 95.47.

Retail giant Walmart landed in the middle of both response time and availability clocking in at 3.84 seconds and 99.09 percent.

Mr. Poespel said that he thinks that it is very important to point out that the mobile Web has been a mystery to retailers and that some do not think it is possible to get metrics and compare data against the competition.

“Now is the time to really get on top of things,” Mr. Poespel said. “With the economy really in doldrums retailers can’t take chances with user experience.

“Consumer expectations are really high and not every retailer is meeting these expectations,” he said. “I think the first thing retailers need to do is really understand the mobile experience from the user perspective – it’s critical to do that and not only rely on internal metrics.”

Mobile search, banking and airlines

Mobile banking saw Chase receive two stars overall, with Wells Fargo in the top spot with four bars.

Wells Fargo also topped the availability category at 99.83 percent.

In the mobile airline category, JetBlue was tops in response time and consistency.

US Airways had the lowest overall score with one bar.

During the month of October, Google took the top spot in discoverability and readiness with five bars, while Amazon was top in availability with 99.81 percent and a response time of 3.71 seconds.

MySpace and MSN both received a two-bar overall rating.

Overall Yahoo outperformed the other search engines with a five-bar rating. Ask.com received a one-bar rating.

Arthur Mateos, general manager of emerging technologies at Gomez said, that Yahoo’s rating was unusual.

“Search company Yahoo gained the distinction of being the only company in the entire set of benchmarked companies to attain a five-bar rating, while Wells Fargo was at the top of the class for banking with four bars and Northwest and Southwest with four bars tied for top honors for airlines,” Mr. Mateos said.

“Search companies as a group seem to be much more savvy than airlines or banks in making their sites available to their mobile customers, with an average discoverability rating of 4.2 compared to an average of 2.4 for both airlines and banks,” he said. “This is perhaps not surprising, as search companies are in the business of helping people find things. 

“Airlines and banks should follow the lead of the search companies and adopt best practices in making their sites more discoverable by their mobile end users.”