Gomez Performance Benchmarking

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:28:00 GMT

Web performance solution Gomez launched a free benchmarking tool that lets IT, Web and marketing teams compare the performance of their website to competitors, peers, or industry leaders.

This is certainly a tool to take a look at, as there is evidence of a direct correlation between website performance and online business performance. An Aberdeen Group report found that sites taking more than five seconds to load reduce customer conversions by seven percent and customer satisfaction by 16 percent. Equally important is how an organization’s website performs versus its competition. The concern is that if your competitor’s website is faster, customers will likely spend more time and money there.

To create a custom benchmark, businesses simply enter their own URL and the URLs of up to four other sites against which they wish to be compared. Within 24 hours, and every day for seven days, they will receive a custom benchmark performance report that ranks the performance and availability of all the URLs, complete with averages, highs, lows and trending information.

“Customer loyalty on the Web is fickle, and even one second can make the difference between making and losing a sale," said Matt Poepsel, vice president, performance strategies, Gomez division. "Measuring Web performance is important, but knowing how your site performs compared to your competitors’ sites is even more valuable. The insights businesses can freely glean from our new custom benchmark tool will be a critical first step towards optimizing their site performance and ultimately, their bottom line.”

Affiliate Marketing Benchmark Roundup

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:35:00 GMT

The 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report is out and the results might surprise you. Let's look closely at topics and trends important to both affiliate marketers and merchants now.

- Split nearly down the middle, 51% of affiliates maintained an opt-in e-mail list for their site.
- 55% of respondents promoted affiliate links in PPC search engines.
- Terms and conditions of affiliate programs are important with 84% responding they sometime or always read the affiliate agreement.
- Regarding the preference towards programs on networks versus independent programs, just 12% preferred independent while 55% preferred network and 33% had no preference at all.
- The number of affiliate programs varies wildly. While only 3% promoted one program, 56% promoted between 2 and 20 programs, with 30% promoting 51 or more.
- 55% of Affiliate believe less than 30-day cookies are fair (only 1% were in the 181-365 day cookie group).
- In regards to payment policies, 55% said how often the program pays affected their decision to promote an affiliate offer.

There is quite a bit of valuable information in the rest of the report. Additional statistics include the use of adware and/or toolbars, commission rate increase negotiations, the number of domains owned by affiliates, relationships with affiliate managers, payment thresholds and EPCs. Consider it a must read for those serious about affiliate marketing.

'Net Features : benchmarks

Gomez Performance Benchmarking

Affiliate Marketing Benchmark Roundup