Actual Experience XF is the first online service targeted at understanding the quality of customer experiences that involve complex, Ajax-based, rich Internet applications
LEXINGTON, Mass., Nov. 13, 2006 €” Gomez Inc., the leader in web application experience management solutions, today announced Gomez® Actual Experience XF (Experience First), the first on-demand service capable of providing an authentic measure of the online customer experience from a browser-based perspective. The unique vantage point of Actual Experience XF enables organizations to measure the performance of critical elements in a web application that are invisible to traditional behind-the-firewall-based passive monitoring solutions. Actual Experience XF complements Gomez€™s existing industry-leading active monitoring solutions, making the company the first to combine both actual-user (browser-based) and active monitoring (agent-driven tests) so that organizations can deliver superior online experiences that satisfy customers, strengthen brands and drive profits.
Managing the online customer experience is increasingly challenging as elements outside an organization€™s direct control, such as third-party content and new technologies like Ajax, play an increasingly greater role in the delivery of web applications. Through its browser-based view, Actual Experience XF measures the customer experience and how it is affected by myriad components that make up a today€™s complex web applications.
€It€™s a composite world today,€ said Steve Trimbo, director of online operations at BestBuy.com. €So much of the web experience a company provides hinges on content, applications and infrastructure delivered by third parties. As we move toward rich Internet technologies such as Ajax, even less of the customer experience is under our direct control. Yet the customer still holds the host brand accountable for the web experience and expects much richer services delivered instantaneously. Actual Experience XF will help organizations understand exactly what their users are experiencing so they can improve those experiences. No other company can provide this 360-degree view.€
Deep data on the actual user experience
Actual Experience XF measures many aspects of performance, including download times, abandonment rates and service consistency. It provides unprecedented insight into the web experience and how perceived performance is affected by geographic or machine-specific parameters such as the size of the browser window, browser type, first-time/repeat visitor status and browser cache utilization.
€Actual Experience XF will enable enterprises to leverage the power of the end-user view,€ said Peter Sevcik, president of NetForecast Inc., a Charlottesville, Va., research firm. €This new service has been the missing link to really understanding and managing the user experience. Gomez is clearly on a strategic path to be the most comprehensive web experience management authority.€
Actual Experience XF also reveals how web performance affects business results by using dashboards to track important business processes such as online sales conversion or shopping cart abandonment. Customers can drill down for in-depth data on what may be responsible for a problem, and then quickly resolve it.
New Gomez ExperienceFirst Platform for a new era
Actual Experience XF exemplifies Gomez€™s commitment to deliver comprehensive services that allow its customers to manage the entire web experience €” from application design and testing through deployment and the entire application life cycle. Actual Experience XF is the first of several new service offerings that will form the core of Gomez€™s new web application experience management platform, also announced today, called the Gomez ExperienceFirst Platform.
€Building on our expertise in performance management, our vision over the next 12 months is to build out a comprehensive platform of on-demand services that enables companies to design, develop, validate, deploy, operate, analyze and improve web application experiences,€ said Jaime Ellertson, Gomez CEO. €This life-cycle approach will ensure peak-performing web applications from the early design phase through deployment and the entire application life cycle.€
The new Gomez ExperienceFirst Platform addresses the sea change in web development: Developers increasingly rely on services provided by third parties and must aggregate disparate content, logic and data from around the Internet. This results in less direct control over their customers€™ web experience. Complicating matters is the fact that the browser processes more data than ever, often bypassing the web site host.
€Ensuring superior web experiences starts with a true measure of the user experience complemented by systematic tests from the backbone and last mile,€ said Ellertson. €It concludes with an end-to-end management scheme from an application€™s conception to its day-to-day operation.€
Actual Experience XF and the ExperienceFirst Platform are a direct result of Gomez€™s deep investment in research and development, made possible by the company€™s continued long-term success. Gomez has added more than 130 new customers in the first three quarters of this year and has sustained a nearly 50 percent year-over-year revenue growth.
Availability
The enhanced Gomez ExperienceFirst Network (formerly GPN) and Actual Experience XF are in their final launch phase with several industry leading early adopters actively participating in the beta program. Actual Experience XF will be available for general release as a separate set of services in the first Quarter of 2007.
About Gomez
Gomez is the leading provider of web application experience management solutions. Used by 500 companies worldwide, including eight of the top 10 most visited sites, six of the top 10 retailers, eight of the top 15 financial services firms, and four of the top 10 industrial companies, Gomez€™s hosted services help companies ensure superior online experiences that satisfy customers, enhance brands and drive profits. 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 real-user and active monitoring, competitive benchmarking, and more than 12,000 data sources worldwide. Gomez is Network Computing magazine€™s “Editor’s Choice” for best Internet performance monitoring service. For more information, please visit www.gomez.com.
Gomez, Gomez.com, Gomez ExperienceFirst, Gomez ExperienceFirst Network, Gomez WorldView, and Actual Experience XF are trademarks and/or service marks of Gomez, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
All statements included in this press release, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statement.
The risks and uncertainties referred to above include, but are not limited to, risks associated with our business model; our ability to develop or acquire, and gain market acceptance for new products in a cost-effective and timely manner; the timing and success of our Actual Experience XF product release, when and if available; the gain or loss of key customers; competitive pressures; our ability to expand operations; interruptions or delays in our hosting operations; breaches of our security measures; our ability to protect our intellectual property from infringement, and to avoid infringing on the intellectual property rights of third parties; and our ability to expand, retain and motivate our employees and manage our growth. While it is the intent of Gomez to release Actual Experience XF in the first half of 2007 as a separate set of service offerings to extend the platform, as mentioned above, we can make no assurances that we will be able to by then or at all. Accordingly, Gomez makes no specific commitment as a result of this announcement to deliver such future release. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
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Corporate Contact:
Cathy O€™Leary Hayes
Gomez, Inc.
781.778.2775
[email protected]
Agency Contact:
Darby Johnson
Beaupre & Co. Public Relations, Inc.
603.559.5809
