Major Retail Sites Still Struggle With Online Performance

Major online shopping sites continue to struggle in delivering fast service and completing sales to holiday shoppers, an Internet performance tracker said Wednesday.

However, retailers showed some improvement last week in handling the stampede of shoppers, recording an overall success rate of 95.98%, which is better than the previous week's six-week low of 93.68%, Keynote Systems said. Keynote analysts found that performance on the sites last week dropped at the beginning of the workday but improved as the day wore on.

The online holiday shopping season peaks about 10 to 14 days before Christmas, experts say. So expected increases in volume this week could create problems for those sites that have not been tested and readied for the expected shopping rush, Keynote said.

Overall response time last week was 15.03 seconds, which was slower by several seconds than the three weeks before Thanksgiving.

Online consumers spent $8.5 billion in November holiday shopping, up 55% from the year-ago period, according to Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive, and Nielsen/NetRatings.

Keynote sells Web performance-measurement and management services to companies.