On Black Friday Leading Retail Web Sites Slow Way Down, Reports Keynote Systems

--Best Site Performance Overall Was Delivered By Wal-Mart, Sears and Barnes & Noble

--Of Pure Online Sites Newegg and Overstock.com Performed Well; Other Pure Online Sites Struggled

Keynote
Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote
Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN), the global leader in on-demand
mobile and Internet test & measurement solutions for
continuously improving the online
experience, today announced the top level results of its annual
study tracking the speed and reliability of the nation's most popular
retail Web sites beginning Black Friday and continuing throughout the
holiday shopping season. Online holiday shoppers experienced a mixed bag
from a performance perspective on Black Friday, as almost all of the
sites on Keynote's online retail shopping index showed slowdowns on this
very busy online shopping day. Overall, most of them weathered the storm
very well, but there were a few sites (as there seems to be every year)
that crumbled under the pressure. This continues to surprise Keynote
during this extremely critical consumer shopping period and in the
current economy in which every dollar counts.

"Overall the quality of the sites tracked on Black Friday improved this
year over last, with fewer showing major outages and issues impacting a
large number of users," said Ben Rushlo, director of competitive
Research at Keynote. "The best performing sites overall were Wal-Mart,
Sears and Barnes & Noble. Each of these sites did very well during the
Black Friday period (6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. EST). Overall, Wal-Mart was
the most stable site, showing not a single error (100% availability for
the day) and very little slowdown. Wal-Mart has struggled in the past
with Black Friday traffic, but this year they got it right, offering
their customers a consistently fast and reliable experience. Wal-Mart
and the other good quality sites prove that with proper planning, load
testing and focus it is possible to offer customers a pleasant online
experience even when customer volume is the highest."

Of the pure online sites (sites that do not have physical stores),
Newegg was very good as was Overstock.com. Other pure online sites
struggled. Interestingly, they seemed to have more issues later in the
afternoon, likely when shoppers shifted their focus from "brick and
mortar" to these 'online only' sites.

Several sites had issues very early in the morning (5:00 a.m. EST),
likely as shoppers were looking for "door buster" deals. Others
struggled more in the afternoon hours as the continued pressure on the
site began to build and cause problems.

Rushlo continued, "This year, there were a few sites that had major
issues. Keynote noted more issues in the apparel vertical than in other
verticals. This is consistent with our findings in years prior. The best
site on Keynote's apparel index was Victoria's Secret, as it did not
report a single error and virtually no slowdown during the critical
Black Friday shopping period."

Keynote's reporting is comprised of leading online shopping sites across
apparel, electronics, and books and music Web sites and establishes a
standard for retailers to measure acceptable performance against. The
Keynote Retail Transaction Performance Index benchmarks the performance
for an online shopping transaction for each leading retail site,
including product search, shopping cart and checkout process performance.

Keynote provides the industry's most realistic and reliable monitoring
capabilities. The data used to create Keynote's retail index is
collected in real-time on an hourly basis from 10 cities across the
U.S., providing an up-to-the-minute barometer of online consumer
experience throughout the 2009 holiday shopping season. The index data
is collected using Transaction
Perspective(R), Keynote's market-leading Web site performance
measurement and monitoring service that uses a real Internet Explorer
browser (unlike competitors) to capture measurements that are highly
accurate and best simulate an actual end user's experience.

Further information on the Keynote Retail Performance Indices is
available online at: http://www.keynote.com/keynote_competitive_research/performance_indices/retail/retail_index.html

Sites Included on Keynote's Retail Web Transaction Performance Index--

Electronics sites on Keynote's retail index include: Amazon, Apple
Store, Best Buy, CDW, Dell, HP, Newegg, Office Depot, Office Max,
Overstock, Sony Style, Staples, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart.

Apparel sites on Keynote's retail index include: Abercrombie & Fitch,
Eddie Bauer, Foot Locker, J Crew, JC Penney, Kohls, Macy's, Neiman
Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Victoria's Secret, Zappos.

Books and music sites on Keynote's retail index include: Abe Books,
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Blockbuster, Borders, Overstock, Scholastic,
Target, Tower Records, Wal-Mart.

About Keynote

Keynote Systems (NASDAQ:KEYN) is the global leader in on-demand test &
measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience.
For over a decade, Keynote has been providing measurement data and
testing capabilities that allow companies to understand and improve
their customers' online and mobile experience. Keynote has four test and
measurement businesses: Web performance, mobile quality, streaming &
VoIP and customer experience/UX.

Known as The Mobile and Internet Performance Authority(TM), Keynote has
a market-leading infrastructure of 3,000 measurement computers and
mobile devices in over 240 locations around the world. Keynote's 2,800
customers represent top Internet and mobile companies including American
Express, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Microsoft, SonyEricsson,
Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone and YouTube.

Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can
be reached at www.keynote.com
or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.

Keynote(R), DataPulse(R), CustomerScope(R), Keynote CE Rankings(R),
Keynote Customer Experience Rankings(R), Perspective(R), Keynote Red
Alert(R), Keynote Traffic Perspective(R), Keynote WebEffective(R), The
Internet Performance Authority(R), MyKeynote(R) , SIGOS(R), SITE(R),
Keynote(TM), The Mobile & Internet Performance Authority(TM), Screen
Sensing Technology and Keynote FlexUse(TM) are trademarks or registered
trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or other
countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective
owners. (C) 2009 Keynote Systems, Inc.

SOURCE: Keynote Systems

Keynote Systems, Inc. 
Dan Berkowitz, 415-518-7870 
dberkowitz@keynote.com

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