« Monday Reader Mail: 77 | Main | Jody Victor and Deb »
May 23, 2006
Internet Retailer Goof?
By QBlog in Quixtar
I was excited to learn from Internet Retailer that Quixtar was tops in April site performance. That's quite an accomplishment. Kudos to Quixtar.
But I did a silly thing after reading about Quixtar's dominance in April — I started thinking. I know, it's crazy but I just can't help myself. I noticed that the "Top 50 Performance Index" chart listed in the article didn't include any April dates. How is "Quixtar tops in April" if the measurement only includes data from March?
Very curious indeed. But wait, there's more!
Zappos Delivers Top Site Efficiency
A bit of searching unearthed an article dated April 5, 2006, about Zappos dominating site performance in March. The report included a graph with the same dates as the Quixtar report. Huh?
To The Source Batman
Ok, there was obviously something strange happening so I headed to the source of the Internet Retailer article — Gomez.com.
All I could find was a Retail GPI Benchmark for April which does show Quixtar at the top of the Success Rate Rating and in second place on the Response Time Rating. So Internet Retailer just got the dates on the charts mixed up, right? Well...
Notice anything odd about the Gomez chart? Look closely. See it? That's right. It doesn't exactly match any of the Internet Retailer charts. In fact, while Zappos is on both charts at Internet Retailer it's missing from the April chart at Gomez. Interesting.
Conclusion
So, now I'm supposed to tell you what conclusions to draw from this little blog post. Well, uh... isn't it obvious? Gomez is lying!
No, seriously I'm just pointing out some odd things at Internet Retailer. I've always been sort of suspicious of the publication because... well, it just seems hokey. That's just my opinion but I definitely get the feeling that something isn't quite right at Internet Retailer. Maybe it's just sloppy reporting that I'm picking up on? What do you think?
Comments
Rara: Effeciency = how fast pages loads. e.g. you are doing some research for your PHD and the webpages are loading quickly, but content on the pages are not helping you much to right your paper.
Quality. Another site may not load as fast, and lets say you have to wait like 10 seconds / page load, but content is so superb and organized such a way that you get a real quality content all in one place without much hassle.
You may have to wait a minute or so more.
Make sense?
Quixtar used to be MUCH slower. In fact it lost a lot of business on "Internet Mletdown" when it changed its name from amway to Quixtar.
I'm surprised you are so concerned to waste so much time researching these things. Or are you being paid big bucks for this?
In either case many conclusions can be drawn - I leave it to the imagination of your reader's ho have common sense.
I think you have too much time on your hands. :D
I still don't understand how Q is #1 in efficiency but below average in quality. Mevi tried to explain, but I guess my internet IQ is even lower than I thought.
What is internet retailer, anyway? Is it a well-known and respected publication? What about gomez.com? If Gomez is supposed to be the source, then it seems to me to at least be sloppy reporting. But that seems like a huge gaffe.
Maybe someone at internet retailer has a beef with Zappos. :D
Posted by: rara | May 23, 2006 4:20 PM