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Cadillac.com Seen as the Cadillac of Luxury Auto Sites By Visitors, Reports Keynote

SAN MATEO, Calif.--Feb. 7, 2006--Keynote Systems :

-- Cadillac Tops Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Luxury Auto Web Sites

-- Lexus Site Best at Driving Customers to Dealerships

-- Saab Web Site Accelerates the Automaker's Brand Appeal

-- Jaguar and Lincoln Lead Industry in Site Reliability and Responsiveness

-- Keynote Examines Online Service Levels, Competition for Luxury Auto Buyers

New competitive intelligence from Keynote Systems , The Internet Performance Authority(R), details the role and success of leading luxury auto Web sites in the luxury auto purchase process, and ranks Cadillac and Lexus as the drive away leaders in the luxury auto industry online.

The Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Luxury Auto Web Sites is based on an examination of more than 2,600 prospective car buyers as they searched and performed tasks on luxury auto Web sites. A companion study, the Keynote Service Level Rankings for Luxury Auto Web Sites, is the first in an ongoing series of annual competitive service level studies that Keynote will conduct to benchmark overall site responsiveness and reliability for the auto industry. The Acura , Audi (VOW.DE), BMW (BMW.DE), Cadillac , Infiniti , Jaguar , Lexus , Lincoln , Mercedes Benz , Saab and Volvo (Stockholm: VOLVB.ST) sites were examined for the studies.

Cadillac the Drive Away Leader in Online Customer Experience

For the customer experience study, Keynote ranked these luxury auto sites in more than a dozen categories including customer satisfaction, customer acquisition and brand affinity. Cadillac, Lexus and Saab topped the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings, an overall measure of site success across these categories and across the more than 250+ metrics measured during the study, including evaluations of the vehicle search, comparison, customization and quote/pricing functions. 

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                 Keynote Customer Experience Rankings
                        Luxury Auto Web Sites
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     1  Cadillac
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     2  Lexus
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     3  Saab
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Cadillac, which more online consumers perceive as "luxurious" than any other brand, was the top site based on its leadership position in the vehicle search and comparison processes, as well as the strong visual appeal of the site. The Cadillac site ranked in the top performance tier across all leading business success drivers evaluated in the study.

"The Cadillac Web site really is the Cadillac of luxury auto Web," said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research and public services for Keynote. "Competitors in the luxury auto industry can learn something about customer satisfaction and the online customer experience from Cadillac. They are the drive away leader."

Lexus joins Cadillac in the upper echelon of luxury auto sites, and is the industry leader in terms of driving prospective customers from the Web site into a dealership to test-drive a vehicle, or lease or buy a vehicle. More than half (58%) of all prospective customers visiting the Lexus site said they were likely to test drive a Lexus after they visited the company Web site, an increase of (11)% as compared to buyer intentions before experiencing the site. 

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                 Keynote Customer Conversion Rankings
                        Luxury Auto Web Sites
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     1  Lexus
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     2  Volvo
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     3  Saab
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Virtually every luxury auto site studied saw an increase in brand perceptions and affinity once prospective buyers experienced their Web sites. Cadillac, whose brand started in the middle of the pack in terms of auto buyer perceptions, skyrocketed after users experienced its site, finishing with the industry's highest brand perceptions. More than two-thirds (79%) of auto buyers had a positive perception of the Cadillac brand after experiencing the site.

Saab, who most auto buyers initially do not consider a strong brand to consider, had the greatest increase in brand perceptions after buyers experienced the automaker's site. The number of prospective customers who reported a positive perception of the Saab brand increased by almost a third (32%) after exposure to the site buyers described as "fun" and "friendly."

Two of the luxury auto industry's premier brands actually suffered brand damage when prospective buyers visited their sites.

"This study clearly shows a significant positive impact on brand perceptions and purchase intent for luxury auto manufacturers when they master the online experience," said Brown. "For those that don't provide a superior online experience, they are actually damaging their brand and taking the air out of their multi-million dollar advertising campaigns."

One of the primary areas of frustrations for luxury auto buyers was with the vehicle views available. About one-quarter (22%) of prospective buyers complained of not seeing all the angles/views of the vehicle they wanted, and 20% were specifically frustrated with a dearth of interior photos for the vehicle they were interested in. Further, one in ten (10%) of prospective luxury car buyers expressed frustration in being unable to locate the area on a site to request a price quote.

Jaguar Races Ahead with Industry-Best Service Levels

The Keynote Service Level Rankings for Luxury Auto Web Sites found the Jaguar, Lexus and Saab Web sites to have the industry's best reliability, indicating those sites were highly available and experienced little or no downtime. The Lincoln, Acura and Jaguar sites were the industry's best in terms of site responsiveness, an indication of how fast the sites were in down loading pages and the array of images that are typical on luxury auto sites. 

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           Keynote Service Level Rankings - Site Reliability
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     1  Jaguar
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     2  Lexus
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     3  Saab
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         Keynote Service Level Rankings - Site Responsiveness
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     1  Lincoln
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     2  Acura
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     3  Jaguar
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Keynote noted that the luxury auto industry has some of the most complex Web pages of any industry the company studies, with almost every site in the industry using rich media content and Flash. The homepages of the sites included in the study averaged about 700K in size, which is approximately 400% more weight than other vertical industries Keynote studies. Despite the complexity and weight of the pages, most of the luxury auto sites studied provided excellent performance for broadband users. However, the experience for a dial-up user was quite different, with those users facing homepage download times close to a minute and a half (80 seconds).

In terms of site reliability, Keynote found a large gap between the leading sites and the lower ranking sites in the study. The top ranked sites were available better than 99% of the time, while the bottom five sites averaged just 92% with several of the poorer sites registering over 50 hours of outage in a single month.

"Luxury Auto sites seemed to have mastered the delivery of complex Web pages with a strong visual component to broadband users," said Ben Rushlo, manager of professional services with Keynote. "However, it is quite surprising that a number of leading luxury automakers are having significant site downtime. Luxury auto buyers become easily frustrated with such poor site performance, and can quickly turn to a competitor site to continue their browsing and purchase consideration process."

Keynote recently completed a companion study of third party auto sales Web sites, in which Edmunds.com, Kelley Blue Book and Cars.com were ranked as the leading sites in terms of customer experience in that industry. For an abstract reviewing that study visit: http://www.keynote.com/downloads/cem/ThirdPartyAutofeb2006.pdf

For an abstract about Keynote's competitive intelligence studies of customer experience and service levels provided by luxury auto Web sites view: http://www.keynote.com/downloads/cem/Keynote_LuxuryAutoNew.pdf

Customer Experience Management

Keynote's customer experience management (CEM) services offer both competitive intelligence studies and custom engagement services examining consumer attitudes and behavior on the Web. To learn more about Keynote's CEM solutions, visit: http://www.keynote.com/solutions/customer_experience_management.html

Service Level Management

Keynote's service level management (SLM) solutions provide enterprises with the tools to align IT and e-business goals. To learn more about Keynote's SLM solutions, visit: http://www.keynote.com/solutions/service_level_management.html.

About Keynote

Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq "KEYN") is the worldwide leader in services that improve online business performance and communications technologies. Keynote helps approximately 2,300 corporate customers and 11,000 individual subscribers become "the best of the best" online. The business premise supporting Keynote's mission is: "Online businesses can't manage what they don't measure." As an independent and trusted third-party, Keynote provides IT and marketing executives with unbiased benchmarking data, competitive analysis and operational metrics from the customer perspective. This data measures service levels and customer experience of Web sites, broadband services and mobile communications.

Known as The Internet Performance Authority(R), Keynote manages a market-leading infrastructure of 1,600+ measurement computers and mobile devices in over 114 locations and 66+ metropolitan areas worldwide that assess service levels and a panel of over 160,000 consumers who participate in interactive Web site tests that assess user experience. These online user experience tests capture customer attitude and behavior to answer the critical "why" behind the "what." Keynote's geographically distributed measurement services, on-site monitoring appliances, competitive intelligence and custom studies ensure that its customers outpace their competitors in online service levels and overall user experience.

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. (C) 2006 Keynote Systems, Inc.