Major online shopping sites continued their crawl to Christmas Day, displaying continuing inconsistent and slow performance for holiday shoppers attempting to purchase gifts on the Internet, Keynote Systems reported today.

For the week beginning Monday, Dec. 15 and ending Sunday, Dec. 21, Keynote's e-commerce transaction index showed that the overall average response time for completing a transaction was 14.77 seconds, while the success rate for completing a transaction was a poor 94.88 percent.

The best performing sites on the index had an average response time of 7.52 seconds, and a success rate of 99.73 percent, the Internet research firm said. The worst performing sites on the index had an average response time of 27.81 seconds, and a success rate of 86.47 percent.

For the last four weeks beginning on Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional kick-off of the holiday shopping season until this past Sunday -- many sites on the index delivered average to below average performance overall for consumers attempting to purchase gifts online, Keynote said. The average response time for completing a transaction during this time period has ranged between 14 seconds and 17 seconds, while the success rate for completing a transaction has ranged between 93 percent and 96 percent, according to the firm.

"This has truly been a case of the 'perfect online holiday shopping storm,'" said Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst in Keynote's public services group, in a statement. "A confluence of factors have occurred this shopping season and some of the largest online retailers clearly were not prepared for the shopping onslaught.

"As we headed into the holiday shopping season the economy had shown increasing signs of life. The shifting economy coupled with consumers' increasing comfort buying gifts online met with powerful unplanned events beginning shortly after Thanksgiving including a blizzard in the northeast, a blackout in San Francisco, an earthquake in central California and heightened terrorist alerts," he continued. "These factors combined to drive record-breaking online shopping visitors and revenue, but disappointing online performance from some of the nation's largest retailers."

By: DocMemory
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