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Ecommerce Web Site Performance Improves Slightly in
Final Rush to Christmas, Reports Keynote

As Revenue Grew by Leaps and Bounds this Season, Online
Shopping Performance Inconsistent

SAN MATEO, Calif., - December 31, 2003 - As the online gift buying season
drew to a close last week and retail research organizations report huge
increases in online retail sales for the holiday season overall, Keynote
Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN"), The Internet Performance Authority®, issued its
final press release reporting on the performance of the Keynote E-Commerce
Transaction Performance Index this online holiday shopping season.

For the week beginning Monday, December 22 and ending Sunday, December 28,
Keynote’s E-Commerce Transaction Index showed that the overall average
response time for completing a transaction was 13.86 seconds, while the
success rate for completing a transaction was 97.33 percent. These are the
best overall averages since Keynote first began issuing press releases
reporting on the Index’s performance this holiday shopping season (beginning
the day after Thanksgiving).

The best performing sites on the index the Week of December 22 had average
response times of 7.26 and 8.49 seconds, and success rates of 99.73 and
99.47 percent. The worst performing sites on the index had average response
times of 24.71 and 24.14 seconds, and success rates of 93.43 and 94.54
percent. A transaction is defined as a Web site’s ability to allow a
consumer to click through a number of pages and successfully make a
purchase.

As a means of comparison, the low point for response time this online
holiday shopping season occurred the week of December 8 when the average
response time was 15.03 seconds. The low point for success rate occurred the
week of December 1 when the average success rate for completing a
transaction was 93.68 percent. The most likely reason for the overall
performance improvement of the Index the week of December 22 is that less
people were shopping online the closer it got to Christmas. People shopping
on December 22nd and after were likely in long shopping lines in brick and
mortar stores, rather then click and mortar ones.

Growth figures make it abundantly clear that Internet use is becoming as
ubiquitous as the telephone or the television, not only for obtaining
information but also for conducting the personal business of our lives. The
National Retail Federation predicts that 2003 holiday retail sales will be
better than the previous three years and that online spending alone will
increase to $95.6 billion the full year of 2003 up from $75.7 billion in
2002, giving the category 5 to 7 percent of total retail spending.

For the period November 17 to December 25, Visa USA reported non-travel
online retail sales increased 45 percent over the same period last year to
$9 billion with year-to-date sales as of December 25 up 37 percent, ComScore
Networks reported e-commerce sales reached $11.72 billion from November 1 to
December 26, a 29 percent jump from the same period in 2002.

"This level of rapid growth, however, can be a double edged sword for
retailers if they are not prepared to handle the online onslaught," said
Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst in Keynote’s Public Services group.
"With consumers’ increasingly heading to the Web for holiday shopping and
other purchases, it is essential that retailers prepare their sites for
larger loads all year, but especially during holiday periods."

The Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Index is the retail industry’s first and
only Web transaction performance benchmark index that measures the response
time and success rate for executing a typical multi-step online retail
transaction on 11 leading retail Web sites. The Index provides an excellent
overall barometer for how successful leading online shopping sites are at
providing customers an optimal quality of experience each and every time a
customer goes to their Web site.

Index results for the top performers and the worst average for the week can
be found at
http://www.keynote.com/solutions/performance_indices/ecommerce/ecommerce.htm.
Complete results of the Index can be found on E-Commerce Times at
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/ectpi/.

How the Index Works

The Keynote Consumer E-commerce Transaction Index, introduced in May, is
composed of the most active e-commerce sites on the Web, as determined by
industry experts and analyst reports, and is the only industry benchmark
that compares and contrasts the performance of a similar six-step Web
transaction by a consumer purchasing a similar item on each site.

The 11 companies that make up the index include: Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Best
Buy (NYSE: BBY), Costco (Nasdaq: COST), Eddie Bauer (OTC: SPGLA), JCPenney
(NYSE: JCP), LL Bean , Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), Office Max (NYSE: OMX),
Sears (NYSE: S), Target (NYSE: TGT) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). These
companies receive significant revenues from online sales and a high volume
of Web site visitors flock to them every day to complete transactions
similar to the ones being measured. As such, they are the de facto benchmark
against which retailers doing business on the Web should measure themselves.
The data used to create the index is taken from actual online retail
transactions Keynote performs with remotely based "measurement computers."
Transactions are initiated and measured from 10 U.S. cities (Boston, San
Francisco, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Houston and Dallas) on an hourly basis Monday to Sunday from
5:00 AM to 9:00 PM Pacific time.

To build and maintain its growing line of Web performance indices, Keynote
uses its unparalleled global infrastructure of over 1,500 strategically and
statistically located measurement, testing and diagnostic computers
representing Internet performance from 50 metropolitan areas worldwide.
Information about all Keynote performance indices can be found at
http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_pm_performance_indices_tpl.html.

About Keynote

Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems, Inc., (Nasdaq "KEYN"), The Internet
Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in Web performance
measurement and management services that improve the quality of e-business.
Keynote’s services enable corporate enterprises to monitor, benchmark, test,
diagnose and optimize their e-business systems both inside and outside the
firewall. Approximately 2,200 corporate IT departments and 17,000 individual
subscribers rely on the company’s easy-to-use and cost-effective services to
increase revenues and reduce downtime costs, without requiring additional
complex and costly software implementations.

Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be
reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.

Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered
trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of
their respective owners. © 2003 Keynote Systems, Inc.

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