Tesco, Argos and BBC sites perform well over Christmas

Tesco Direct, Argos and the BBC Shop were among the top performing websites during the Christmas and New Year shopping period, according to a recent study.

The study, conducted by Keynote Systems, provides an examination of online service levels - site responsiveness and reliability - of 16 leading UK retail sites between 7 December and 7 January 2008.

Firms analysed included Argos, Amazon, HMV, Tesco Direct, Woolworths, Virgin and Play.com.

The BBC Shop topped the overall reliability chart with a staggering availability average of 99.9% throughout the study period.

This was followed closely by Play.com, with an impressive average availability of 99.6%. The industry average was 97.7%.

Argos beat John Lewis to the top spot in the best overall responsiveness ranks, with an average load time of 0.74 seconds per page, with John Lewis recording a load time of 1.04 seconds per page. The industry average was 1.5 seconds, with the poorest sites averaging longer than 4 seconds.

The best overall performing site was Tesco Direct, which finished fourth in both responsiveness and reliability.

Overall reliability rankings:

Site Rank

1 BBC Shop

2 Play.com

3 Pixmania

4 Tesco Direct

5 ASDA

6 Comet

Source: Keynote Systems

Overall responsiveness

Site Rank

1 Argos

2 John Lewis

3 Next

4 Tesco Direct

5 Woolworths

Source: Keynote Systems