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July 14, 1999
Web posted at: 12:28 p.m. EDT (1628 GMT)

by Kim Zetter

INTERACTIVE Have you ever made a purchase on an online auction site? Yes No View Results

(IDG) -- Sometimes the crucial difference between winning and losing an online auction can be the few seconds it takes to download an auction page or submit a bid.

In a recent test by Service Metrics, which evaluates Web site performance, Yahoo Auctions came out the fastest draw in a survey of eight major auction sites. Measuring the speed at which shoppers could access the sites at various times of the day and week from around the country, Service Metrics found that Yahoo's pages took an average of 1.91 seconds to download, nearly 9 seconds faster than the slowest of the bunch. The pokiest was First Auction, which downloaded pages at 10.50 seconds. E-Bay clocked in at 3.61 seconds, and Amazon trailed in at 7.19 seconds.

"Fewer graphics, less flash, and more focus on functionality... as opposed to trying to serve up beautifully graphic pages" has made Yahoo Auctions the industry leader for handling large volumes of e-commerce swiftly, says Niel Robertson, chief technology officer and cofounder of Service Metrics. "What they've done really well is recognize that customer satisfaction is really derived from consistency, availability, and performance. Across the board they win on all of these," Robertson adds.

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Service Metrics watched auction sites for three months around the clock, using data collection agents around the country running standard Netscape or IE browsers and a T1 connection. The company measured the time it took to access home pages. Speed was influenced by the level of graphics and ads hosted on a site, as well as the general Internet traffic at different times of the day.

Unlike standard Internet performance, which slows to a crawl during business hours due to heavy traffic, auction sites download more quickly during weekday business hours and are slowest in the evening. The average time increase was 2.34 seconds for the eight sites surveyed. It would seem that auction buyers, unlike day traders, don't conduct the majority of their business on company time.

Not surprisingly, performance was at its worst on Thursdays and Fridays, when many auctions begun on Mondays draw to a close. With regard to download time, weekends proved to be the best time to bid due to reduced traffic, but fewer surfers at this time also means fewer goods on the auction block.

The survey also measured the speed of access from various cities around the country. Judging the capabilities of local access providers, the survey found that the worst place to launch a bid turned out to be Atlanta, where the average download time is 11.58 seconds. The best place from which to place a bid? Sunnyvale, California: the heart of Silicon Valley.