Customer Satisfaction Warning -- (Slow) Speed Kills

Measuring Bandwidth... Although our Gomez/PikeNet Technology Survey (May 16 Dispatch) found that almost 80% of the respondents had high-speed connectivity in the office, very few people (my guess is 10-20%) have high-speed access outside of the office (home, hotel, wireless).  And personally, it sure is frustrating to me when I have to log on using my modem!  (I have an ATT@Home cable modem in the office.)  That's the reason that I hammer away at the need for web sites to load quickly. 

So how well do commercial real estate web sites perform?  Gomez has begun to monitor the speed of a dozen large service providers -- detailed information is located at http://gpn.gomez.com/
pikenet.  This graph highlights the average response times for these companies’ home pages for the first two weeks in June, as measured by Gomez Performance Network.  If you don't see this graphic, check out the Note below.   You'll see that Staubach's site loaded the fastest (1.7 seconds) and that CB Richard Ellis' site loaded the slowest (7.7 seconds).   Obviously if you're accessing these sites using a dialup modem, your access speed will be considerably slower. And that's pretty bleak news for some sites.  FULL DISCLOSURE!  Connection speed is only one component of a user's experience.  A complete evaluation of a web site would also include elements such as navigation, content, features and security. 

In the future, we're hoping to focus Gomez on real estate e-commerce services, like listings and transaction sites because that's much more relevant to real world usage.  Most service providers' sites barely scratch the surface of e-commerce.  But even if your firm is simply providing access to your professionals or local market research, the faster your site downloads, the happier your clients will be. ... If you're curious about how your site performs, go to http://gpn.gomez.com and sign up for a free Daily Performance Report and/or conduct an 'Instant Test' of the performance of your Web site.  If you have questions about the report or Gomez's professional services, contact Nick Karris nkarris@gomez.com at Gomez.   

Peter / ppike@pikenet.com