Major Shopping Sites Performed Well In Holiday Season

Major holiday shopping sites performed “extraordinarily high” this year, with computer makers accounting for two of the top three performers, a Web tracking company said Wednesday.

Companies with the highest average success rate from the online shopper’s perspective were, in order, Gateway Inc., Dell Inc. and auction company and retailer EBay Inc., according to AlertSite.com, based in Coconut Creek, Fla. Performance rates for the companies were 100 percent for Gateway and 99.99 percent for Dell and EBay.

In terms of average response time from Nov. 23 through Dec. 26, Dell topped the list with 1.77 seconds, followed by Gateway, 2.12 seconds and EBay, 3.14 seconds.

The averages for the 10 shopping sites tracked by AlertSite.com were 4.3 seconds in response time and a success rate of 99.52 percent.

“In general, the vast majority of these numbers in terms of success rate are extraordinarily high,” Ken Godskind, vice president of marketing for AlertSite.com, said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. were No. 8 and No. 9, respectively, in success rate because of temporary outages each company reported on a single day in December. Wal-Mart had a response time of 99.24 percent and Amazon.com 98.43 percent. Sears, Roebuck & Co.’s site had the lowest success rate on the list, 97.9 percent.

In terms of average response time, Target Corp.’s site was last at 7.8 seconds, AlertSite.com said.