Keynote Puts Mega-Sites

A San Mateo, California, Web site analysis company is putting five large e-commerce sites under the microscope this month to promote its quality of service measurement programs. Among others, Keynote Systems, Inc. plans to analyze fast-growing AutoWeb.com and 1-800-Flowers.

In addition, the company announced a new quality of service measurement program to analyze complex online exchanges. The Keynote Perspective Transaction service measures how smoothly e- commerce Web sites execute online shopping and other interactive transactions that require multiple Web site pages.

How It Works

The Perspective Transaction software records the exact sequence of Web pages, form fields and links that an online shopper or other customer uses to perform one interactive transaction on a company’s Web site. Then Keynote’s measurement computers, located all over the United States, repeatedly execute that sequence at several different times of day to measure the transaction’s efficiency from various locations.

The service starts at $995.00 (US$) per month for hourly measurements of a 5-page transaction from the top 10 U.S. cities.

How Others Are Doing

Meanwhile, AutoWeb.com and 1-800-Flowers are two companies featured in this month’s continuing Keynote project called “Site-of-the-Week.” The project shows Internet users how efficient various online retailers’ businesses are. Using the Keynote Perspective program, the company measures every 15 minutes how long it takes to access and download an online company’s web pages and their components using standard browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape.

This month, the company will analyze general merchandiser Wal-Mart Stores, Internet connectivity company AboveNet Communications and heavy construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, as well as AutoWeb.com and 1-800-Flowers. Keynote will publish the results at web.keynote.com. At that site, viewers can also compare the companies’ results to other major companies in the Keynote Business 40 Index, a collection of top companies in publishing, search engines and directories, business services, financial services, high technology and communications.

Keynote Systems, founded in 1995, launched Perspective as the first of its quality of service tracking programs in 1997. The company also publishes performance data for online brokers and Internet backbone providers, including benchmarks for comparing performances. A privately held company, Keynote gets primary funding from venture capital firms including Bessemer Venture Partners.