Retailers Drive Conversion Rates And Revenues With Dynamic Transaction Acceleration

Powering over two-thirds of businesses on the Internet Retailer Top 100, Akamai helps these customers convert, on average, every one million of their online shoppers into an average of 4,000 more buyers

CAMBRIDGE, MA .- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced that its retail customers on average experience significantly improved conversion rates after implementing Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator solution. Based on the comparison of conversion rates for Akamai customers and non-Akamai customers from Internet Retailer’s Top 500* list, Akamai customers averaging $100 million a year in revenues enjoy $11 million in additional revenues after adopting Akamai’s approach to accelerating the speed of dynamically-generated site transactions. Akamai provides retailers with a platform for accelerating end-to-end e-commerce transactions, including page display, search, add-to-cart, and check out processes.

Since leveraging Akamai’s solutions, Motorcycle USA, a top destination for motorcycle enthusiasts, has seen a subsequent 15-20 percent improvement in its conversion rate. “Our call center volume has significantly dropped, while the number of visits has increased by 10 percent and page views have gone up by 37 percent,” said Don Becklin, founder and president, Motorcycle USA. “Akamai accelerates all of our mission-critical e-commerce transactions, allowing us to meet today’s consumer expectations for a fast-loading and always-available site, regardless of the number of images, amount of dynamically-generated transactions or Internet conditions. With Akamai, we are able to see an increase in revenues by 30 percent while offloading infrastructure costs by over 60 percent.”

Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator service leverages Akamai’s globally-distributed application and transaction acceleration platform to deliver enhanced and consistent site performance for retailers. The Akamai solution not only enables retailers to accelerate their dynamic transactions and interactive content, but has also increased browser to buyer conversion rates and reduces infrastructure costs by offloading traffic from customers’ Web infrastructure.

“SmartBargains.com is an online-only retailer. It is crucial for us to maintain a shopping site that delivers a superior experience for our customers, enabling us to expand our customer base, generate additional repeat purchases and increase order value,” said Mark Carleo, vice president of technology, SmartBargains.com. “After applying Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator services, we have seen a significant improvement in page performance which greatly contributed to an increase in our conversion rates. We completely entrust our transaction acceleration and site performance and availability to Akamai, allowing us to focus on growing our business and exceeding our customers’ expectations without worrying about any performance related issues.”

“Akamai’s globally distributed platform and the Dynamic Site Accelerator solution were part of the most important e-commerce solutions we implemented for enabling our online retailing success,” said Justin Meats, information technology director, Your Electronic Warehouse, the flagship web retailer for 1st in Music-Video World. “With Akamai, we not only experienced an improved site performance, our conversion rate increased by 42 percent in the first month. Akamai is also accelerating the e-commerce transactions and delivery of our other dynamically-generated retail site, DiscountGolfWorld.com, which experienced a 210 percent increase in conversion rates the first month.”

“Akamai sees a direct correlation between improved site performance and increased revenues for our customers,” said Brad Rinklin, vice president, marketing, Akamai Technologies. “Studies have shown that the longest an average online shopper will wait before abandoning a retail site is four seconds and it is important for retailers to have a solution that accelerates their transactions and helps them avoid breaching this benchmark. By leveraging Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator, retailers enjoy consistently high and fast performance across their Web sites while enhancing the customer experience. Retailers can now free feel to enhance their sites with rich user interfaces leveraging technologies like AJAX and Adobe Flex™ without the worry of slowing down the browsing and buying experience.”

Akamai Net Usage Index for Retail
Akamai helps securely enable more than $50 billion in annual e-commerce revenue for its online retail customers. The Akamai Net Usage Index for Retail provides real-time and up-to-date information on the world’s online retail habits 24x7. The Index features aggregate, real-time visitors per minute for a representative set of more than 270 global retail/e-commerce sites.

For more information on the Akamai Net Usage Index for Retail, please visit: http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/nui/retail/index.html