Behind the Numbers: Sites Clean Up Their Performance Act

Dec 20 1999

Despite ever-increasing traffic, top sites are performing better and better. During the first week of December, Media Metrix counted a record 49.5 million people surfing, yet Keynote Systems reports download times at major business sites were less than six seconds - half of what they were in January. Although surfers have come to expect such speedy performance, it's important to remember that download times fell below six seconds only once during 1998, and that was during Christmas week, when most corporate surfers are logged off.

Business sites aren't the only ones getting faster. Keynote also monitors the time it takes to complete a stock-order transaction on online brokerage sites. Since measurement began in June, the average transaction time has dropped from 25 seconds to 20 seconds. More discouraging is the reliability of these sites: On average, just 83 percent of the online brokerages were available when Keynote computers tried to complete a transaction during the first week of December.

Keynote uses a complex process to calculate its performance measurements. Its Business 40 Index is derived from automated software agents that measure homepage download times from 40 well-known Web sites across the Net at corporate connectivity speeds . Each page is downloaded every 15 minutes from 68 measurement locations around the U.S., resulting in more than 65,000 data points per day. To calculate the Online Brokerage Index, Keynote measures transaction time in the same manner, Despite ever-increasing traffic, top sites are performing better and better. During the first week of December, Media Metrix counted a record 49.5 million people surfing, yet Keynote Systems reports download times at major business sites were less than six seconds - half of what they were in January. Although surfers have come to expect such speedy performance, it's important to remember that download times fell below six seconds only once during 1998, and that was during Christmas week, when most corporate surfers are logged off.

While more miles of cable, faster routers and improvements in bandwith have accelerated Net performance in 1999, consumers have also had an impact. "User expectations are driving increased online performance, whereas a year and a half ago this wasn't the case," says Keynote VP Gene Shklar. Market research appears to support this claim. The latest NetSmart report finds 84 percent of Internet surfers consider slow download times a major frustration, second only to difficult navigation. Slow sites are clearly running scared: Poor site performance may result in losses of $4 billion this year, according to a report by Zona Research.

To attract and keep these sales, Net firms are tuning up their sites, often looking to outside firms for performance enhancements. "One of the most interesting improvements [in Internet performance] is in the area of content distribution," says Brendan Hannigan, director of network strategies at Forrester Research. By caching frequently accessed pages on closer and less-congested servers, surfers see Web pages faster. Companies like Sandpiper and Akamai are among the major contenders providing variations of content distribution - a $2.1 billion market by 2003, according to the Internet Research Group.

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Behind the Numbers: Sites Clean Up Their Performance Act