Compuware Corporation has launched the industry's first international retail mobile website performance benchmark. The new UK Retail Mobile benchmark helps retailers compete more effectively and meet consumers' expectations for fast and reliable mobile site experiences by comparing and tracking mobile website performance against competitors and market leaders.

The UK Retail Mobile benchmark measures the average response time, availability and consistency of mobile-optimized versions of select UK retail websites. It measures the performance of a mobile site's home page on the iPhone and O2, the UK's leading provider of mobile broadband.

A recent mobile study revealed that global mobile consumers' expectations are not being met, with a majority of users experiencing slow or unreliable mobile website and application performance. The survey revealed that almost half of the UK respondents (49 percent) expect a website to load on their mobile phone in three seconds or less. Of the 19 companies measured on the UK Retail Mobile benchmark from July 1 — August 1, 2011, only four provided an average page load time of three seconds or less while 58 percent provided an average of five seconds or less.

Compuware Gomez Benchmarks are an impartial, quantitative measurement of comparative web and mobile site performance and rank the Home Page, Transactions and Mobile performance results across many industries across three key metrics:

* Response Time — measures the time elapsed while downloading a page or an entire multistep transaction process.

* Availability — measures the percentage of successfully completed tests out of total test attempts for the measurement period.

* Consistency — measures the standard deviation of the response time of successful tests completed.

Benchmarks are used by organizations to compare and track performance against competitors and market leaders; baseline and track performance over time; and as key indicators of success for business and IT site owners. Gomez publishes hundreds of global web and mobile performance benchmarks based on more than 20 million monthly tests across 3,000 companies in 13 countries and include:

* Home Page Backbone Benchmarks: measure the performance of the website's home page from the Internet Backbone.

* Home Page Last Mile Benchmarks: measure the performance of the home page from the end user's desktop taking into account the real user's connection speed.

* Transaction Benchmarks: measure the performance of a key business process such as ordering a product or making a stock trade.

* Mobile Benchmarks: measure the performance of mobile site's home page on the largest carriers and top devices.