Top Web Sites Failed During Holiday Rush

Audubon, PA - Many of the top e-commerce Web sites couldn't process orders for more than 30 minutes a day the week before Christmas, according to a study by WatchDog247.com, a national Web site monitoring company.

Egghead.com (NASDAQ: EGGS) and Ticketmaster Online (NASDAQ: TMCS) were among the sites down most frequently while market leaders Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) were among the best performing sites in the study.

Our estimate is that Egghead.com lost more than $1 million of revenue during the last week of the peak holiday season because buyers couldn't access their Web site," says Markus Allen, president of WatchDog247.com. "Most Web site owners are unaware that their site is frequently down and as a result their customers can't place online orders ... costing companies a lot of money."

WatchDog247.com monitored 47 popular e-commerce Web sites during the final leg of the holiday shopping season and tabulated the average downtime per day (in minutes) for the worst three:

Company

Downtime (per day)

------------------ -------------------
1
Metricom

151 minutes per day
2
Egghead.com

90
3
CNET

42
4
Ticketmaster Online 41
5
eBay

37
6
Autobytel.com

34
7
At Home

32
8
Toys

30
9
Disney Internet
18
10
Earthlink

11
11
NetZero

10
12
Amazon.com

8
13
NMarketWatch.com
5
14
About.com

4
15
Multex

4
16
NBC Internet

3
17
Net.Bank

3
18
Drugstore.com

2
19
TheStreet.com

1
20
Yahoo

1
Source: WatchDog247.com