New Benchmarks Find that Gap between Mobile and Fixed Web Performance is Widening

Lexington, Massachusetts, May 12, 2009 — Today, Gomez, Inc., the leader* in web application experience management and web performance benchmarking, and dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi Internet domain for identifying content that works on mobile phones, published the April results of their Mobile Web Experience Benchmarks. The first-of-their kind Gomez / dotMobi benchmarks compare and rank the mobile Web experiences provided by the top businesses in airline, banking and search by measuring five critical dimensions of success for mobile Web sites — readiness, discoverability, speed, success and consistency.

The new benchmark data reveals that mobile Web sites were almost nine percent slower in April than in March. Conversely, fixed Web sites loaded three percent faster in April than in March, according to data from Gomez’s 18 Home Page Web Performance Benchmarks, revealing a widening performance gap between the mobile and fixed Web.

April data for the Mobile Web Experience Benchmarks is now available at: 

•  Airlines: http://www.gomez.com/products/viewbenchmark.php?btype=102
•  Banking: http://www.gomez.com/products/viewbenchmark.php?btype=103
•  Search: http://www.gomez.com/products/viewbenchmark.php?btype=104

Benchmarks Testing Five Critical Mobile Web Experience Metrics

The Gomez / dotMobi benchmarks combine Gomez’s industry-leading web experience measurement methodology for the traditional PC-based Web with tools from dotMobi to test mobile Web performance across major wireless networks. The benchmarks test these five core metrics: 

• Discoverability — how readily a consumer can find the mobile Web site using different URLs.
• Readiness — how well the mobile Web site renders on popular mobile devices.
• Availability — the percentage of successful transactions or the availability of a Web page.
• Response time — how long each page takes to download and the duration of an entire transaction.
• Consistency — how well the mobile Web site performs on different mobile carriers, in different geographies and time frames.

“As mobile Web usage becomes more commonplace, consumers naturally have high expectations for the mobile Web experience that brands provide. However April’s data proves that delivering quality experiences on the mobile Web continues to be a challenge for many businesses,” said Matt Poepsel, Gomez’s VP of Performance Strategies. “What’s more, bridging the performance gap between the mobile and fixed Web should also be a concern for brand managers and their technical teams. They need to be able to speedily pinpoint, diagnose and correct performance issues, whether they occur on the mobile Web, the fixed Web, or both.”

On April 21, Gomez announced new capabilities for testing, monitoring and benchmarking the performance of mobile Web sites, mobile applications and SMS services. See “Gomez Expands Web Experience Management Suite to Encompass Mobile Web Sites & Applications” at http://www.gomez.com/news_events/releaseview.php?prid=141.

About Gomez

Gomez, Inc. is the leading provider of web application experience management services, which businesses use to test their web applications while in development and to monitor their web applications after deployment. More than 2,500 customers use Gomez’s on-demand services to improve the quality of the web experience in order to increase their revenue from web applications, reduce their operating costs, and extend their brand reputations. For more information, please visit www.gomez.com.

About dotMobi

Headquartered in Dublin, dotMobi is a worldwide leader in enabling the development & discovery of quality mobile content through innovative services, helping businesses and individuals reach the world’s billions of mobile phone users. dotMobi spurs mobile industry innovation by giving content providers the tools they need to ensure the Web will work on mobile phones with speed, accuracy and relevant content.

dotMobi is backed by leading mobile operators, network & device manufacturers, and Internet content providers, including Ericsson, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Visa and Vodafone.

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*Forrester Research “Tech Horizons: Evaluating Gomez Web Experience Management Services: Management-On-Demand for Web 2.0 Applications,” August 2008.

Gomez is a registered service mark of Gomez, Inc. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.