LEXINGTON, Mass., July 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Just as the 2008
presidential candidates' second quarter (Q2) 2007 fundraising totals varied
widely, so too did the performance of their respective campaign web sites,
according to benchmark data released today by Gomez Inc., the leader in web
application experience management.
In the run-up to the June 30 deadline for Q2 fundraising, Gomez found
that of the leading* Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton's online
donations page was more than twice as fast as Barack Obama's donations
page, though Obama's home page was, on average, about half-a-second faster
than Clinton's. Response time on John Edwards' web site lagged
considerably. His online donations page was more than five times slower
than Clinton's, and more than two times slower than Obama's; Edwards' home
page was the slowest of all the Democratic candidates. The traffic** on
Edwards' site, however, was less than that on Obama's and Clinton's sites,
which ranked #1 and #2 among the Democratic candidates, respectively.
Of the leading* Republican candidates, Gomez found that Mitt Romney's
online donations page was two times slower than John McCain's and 50
percent slower than Rudolph Giuliani's. Romney's home page performance also
lagged Giuliani's and McCain's. Of the three, Romney's web site scored the
highest traffic ranking**, followed by McCain's and Giuliani's.
"The web experience that the presidential campaigns are delivering
varies widely," said Roger Lopez, performance analyst at Gomez Inc. "While
there is more to solidifying a candidate's relationship with web-savvy
voters than just the speed of the campaign web site, it surely is one
element that affects the impression a voter receives about each candidate.
And Gomez believes it also can affect the success of a candidate's online
fundraising."
The Gomez Presidential Campaign Online Donation Benchmark tests all
declared 2008 presidential candidates' web sites to record how long it
takes to access the home page and the online donation page.(1) A summary of
the major party candidates' web site performance over the final two weeks
of Q2 2007 campaign fundraising is found in the table below:
Online donation Total $m $m raised
page speed Home page speed raised online
Candidate (seconds) (seconds) in Q2* in Q2***
Tom Tancredo 2.935 1.661 1.5 unavailable
Hillary Clinton 3.291 2.202 27.0 unavailable
Jim Gilmore 3.359 2.386 0.2 unavailable
Mike Huckabee 3.370 1.714 0.8 unavailable
John McCain 5.556 4.028 11.3 unavailable
Joe Biden 5.707 2.606 2.4 unavailable
Mike Gravel 6.238 2.663 0.1 unavailable
Dennis Kucinich 6.745 4.360 0.8 unavailable
Ron Paul 6.745 3.733 2.4 2.4
Sam Brownback 6.964 2.711 1.4 unavailable
Rudolph Giuliani 7.090 1.533 17.5 unavailable
Benchmark Average 7.318 3.486
Chris Dodd 7.595 3.624 3.3 unavailable
Barack Obama 7.747 1.657 32.9 10.3
Duncan Hunter 7.977 5.818 0.8 unavailable
Mitt Romney 10.931 6.595 14.1 unavailable
Tommy Thompson 11.024 9.115 0.5 unavailable
Bill Richardson 16.142 2.566 7.0 unavailable
John Edwards 17.426 9.097 9.0 3.5
* From FEC filings *** From media reports
Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Gomez will continue to
monitor and report on the performance of the 2008 presidential candidates'
web sites - - and the resulting impact experienced by voters.
About Gomez
Gomez is the leading provider of on-demand web application experience
management solutions, helping the world's top businesses ensure quality web
experiences for their customers. Gomez ExperienceFirst applications are
used by more than 1500 companies worldwide, including eight of the top 10
most visited sites, six of the top 10 retailers, nine of the top 10
financial services firms, five of the top 10 social networking companies,
and four of the top 10 industrial companies. Founded in 1997, Gomez
provides the industry's only complete solution for managing web application
experience from development through deployment and the entire application
life cycle, featuring active monitoring, competitive benchmarking, and more
than 14,000 data sources worldwide. Gomez is Network Computing magazine's
"Editor's Choice" for best Internet performance monitoring service. For
more information, please visit http://www.gomez.com.
Gomez, Gomez.com and Gomez ExperienceFirst are trademarks and/or
service marks of Gomez, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective owners.
(1) GOMEZ'S METHODOLOGY:
The data reported was taken from the Gomez Presidential Campaign Online
Donation Benchmark from 06/18/2007 to 07/01/2007 from the hours of 6 AM to
Midnight. The benchmark measures the performance of the presidential
candidate sites. The benchmark monitors going from the home page to the
donations page. Gomez reports the findings in seconds representing the time
it took for each page in the process to download -- the lower the number,
the speedier the online donation process. The tests were conducted using
Gomez's testing network at 10 data centers across the US using different
network providers. For the home page rankings, Gomez tested how long it
took for the home page of each candidate's web site to download, also
reported in seconds. For more information about Gomez Benchmarks across
several industries, please visit:
http://www.gomez.com/products/performance_benchmarks.php.
* Based on Q2 2007 campaign fundraising totals reported by each
campaign to the Federal Election Commission (FEC)
** Based on web site traffic rank publicly reported by Alexa
(http://www.alexa.com)
SOURCE Gomez Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.gomez.com/
CONTACT:
Technology-Internet trade reporters-analysts:
Darby Johnson of Beaupre & Co. Public Relations, Inc.,
+1-603-559-5809, djohnson@beaupre.com, for Gomez Inc., or other
reporters-analysts: David Domeshek, +1-508-873-7068,
domeshek@comcast.net, for Gomez Inc.
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