Mobile Web sites still not meeting consumer needs: Gomez
December 29, 2009
Mobile airlines benchmarks
Mobile Web sites for airlines such as American and Southwest improved download times according to Gomez and dotMobi’s November benchmarks, but consumer needs are still going unmet.
According to Gomez, November is traditionally a busy travel month, so the quicker download times were welcomed by frequent flyers. However, Gomez found that the average mobile banking site downloaded quicker and more consistently than the average airline site.
“Mobile Web performance held up well during the month of November, with the majority of airline, banking and search sites delivering consistent performance,” said Matt Poepsel, vice president of performance strategies at Gomez, Lexington, MA.
The performance benchmarks from Gomez and dotMobi take into account different aspects of mobile Web performance for sites in the airline, banking and search industries.
Airlines
JetBlue and Southwest Airlines scored a perfect score of five in overall performance.
Mobile search benchmarks
On the other side of the spectrum, U.S. Airways received a one and consistently placed at or near the bottom in the categories of discoverability, readiness, availability, response time and consistency.
AirTran, American and Continental all received a score of five in the readiness category.
Banking
Not one financial institution received an overall perfect score of five.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo got four out of five bars in the overall ranking.
Out of a possible five, Chase received a 1.5 for discoverability.
When it came to availability, Wells Fargo took the top spot with 99.73 percent.
Search
Google and Yahoo both received fives in overall performance.
Ebay and MySpace received twos and Ask.com rounded out the bottom with a one for overall performance.
The two search engines also tied with AOL with five points for discoverability.
Amazon performed best in terms of response time coming in at 3.46 seconds. Google followed with 3.80 seconds.
Expectations
Mr. Poepsel said that consumers' needs are still not being met.
“While performance levels remained consistent with previous baselines during the month of November, it is clear that the user’s expectations around 100 percent availability and around 2 second download time are still not being met,” Mr. Poepsel said.
“As more and more mobile users visit these Web sites, this expectation gap may inhibit future visits, searches and purchases," he said. “As mobile Web site operators finish 2009, it’s critical to properly baseline their mobile application performance.
“For these companies, measuring and improving the end user’s mobile experience would be a fantastic New Year’s resolution.”