Service Metrics Gives Helping Hand to Holiday Shoppers; TurboSanta
Rates Retail Web Sites' Performance Naughty or Nice
BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- To help reduce online shopping frustration due to the ''World Wide Wait'' this holiday season, Service Metrics(SM), Inc., the world's leading provider of applications and services that measure the consistency, availability and performance of Web sites, today announced the creation of TurboSanta. Available November 15, the new service, located at servicemetrics.com, will list performance and availability ratings for more than 100 retail sites including the National Retail Federation's list of the Top 100 U.S. Consumer Internet Retailers. TurboSanta will include 13 shopping categories such as toys, apparel, books, music/videos and electronics, enabling consumers to identify the fastest e-commerce sites within each category. The Service Metrics ratings are updated daily to give e-businesses, the press, analysts and consumers alike a view of what shopping at top sites will be like from day to day. Among companies listed on TurboSanta are Amazon.com, eToys®, egghead.com, L.L. Bean®, Buy.com, eBay(TM) and the Gap®.
According to predictions by Harris Interactive, online retail sales this holiday season will reach $9.5 billion, averaging $562 per online shopping household. As online retail activity booms, consumers become more and more Net-savvy and user expectation and demand increase exponentially. In addition, new e-commerce sites are launched every day, increasing the competition for brand awareness and sales. To remain competitive and meet the ever-growing demands, it is critical for Web sites to provide the highest levels of performance and availability.
''In such a competitive marketplace, e-retailers understand they cannot take performance for granted or users will simply click on to the next store,'' said Tom Higley, president, CEO and co-founder of Service Metrics. ''TurboSanta provides an accurate, up-to-date index of the fastest, most reliable Web sites to help consumers decide where to shop.''
Service Metrics measurement methodology has been reviewed and assured by PricewaterhouseCoopers as providing an accurate and objective assessment of a Web site from the end user's perspective. Service Metrics systematically measures sites from multiple geographic and network locations across the United States and around the world from Data Collection Agent (DCA) computers representing diverse user populations and network backbones/ISPs. Service Metrics measures the number and type of errors to determine availability ratings and monitors the time it takes to download the images, text, formatting and all other aspects of a Web page or sequence of pages for performance scores.
About Service Metrics, Inc.
Based in Boulder, Colo., Service Metrics, Inc. is the world's leading provider of applications and services that measure the consistency, availability and performance of Web sites. Collecting more than 1.5 million Web page measurements per day, Service Metrics provides e-business decision-makers the information they need, in real time, to improve quality of service and drive return on investment. Through its SM-WEB(SM) and SM-SCENARIO(SM) measurement services, its patent-pending SM-WEBPOINT(SM) application and the new SM-SOURCETRACKER(SM) application, Service Metrics systematically measures, from an end-user perspective, a Web site's performance over a period of time and provides companies with information to analyze and implement the necessary changes for optimum Web site performance. Service Metrics was founded in June 1998 and has received financing from SOFTBANK Technology Ventures, IDG Ventures, Pequot Venture Partners, Nexus Group, LLC, Fidelity Ventures and Bluewater Capital Management, Inc.
For more information on Service Metrics or its products, contact Service Metrics at 4900 Nautilus Court, Suite 200, Boulder, CO 80301; telephone: (303) 381-0888; fax: (303) 530-0475; or visit the Service Metrics Web site at servicemetrics.com.
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SOURCE: Service Metrics, Inc.
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