Best Buy, Sears and Barnes & Noble: Top Performing Mobile Web Sites

Best Buy, Sears and Barnes & Noble are the top performing mobile Web sites based on home page performance according to a recent study performed by Keynote Systems Inc., a mobile and Internet test and measurement firm.

Home page average times measured in the study ranged from 8.3 seconds in the best case of Best Buy to 34.4 seconds in the worst case. Search results ranged from 4.5 seconds for Walmart to 37.9 seconds.

The Keynote Systems study also shows that mobile Web sites have much higher error rates than non-mobile sites. The overall range of availability was between 97.6% for Foot Locker to just 74.7%. Consumers on the wired Web expect 99.5% or better availability, so even the very best mobile Web sites are not fully meeting expectations. Additionally, in the Keynote Systems study only two mobile sites achieved an overall availability better than 90%, and three sites were below 80% overall.

Keynote Systems measured the performance of 10 retail mobile Web sites from November 18, 2009 to January 4, 2010. The 10 sites included in The Keynote Systems Mobile Holiday Shopping Study were: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Costco, Dell, Foot Locker, Musicians Friend, Sears, Target and Walmart.

The study measured the download performance for three pages on each site: loading the mobile site home page, searching for product and getting information about a specific product.

The study was performed by Keynote Competitive Research, a division within Keynote Systems. Full study results are available online by clicking here.