DETROIT, April 26, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Compuware Corporation (Nasdaq:CPWR), the technology performance company, today announced the results of its 2011 U.S. Tax Season study of 11 top online tax preparation and filing websites. The Compuware Gomez benchmark revealed inconsistent performance on the April 18 tax filing deadline day, impacting last minute filers' website experiences.
The 2011 tax season saw a record number of tax payers filing electronic tax with estimates as high as 101 million people e-filing returns, up nearly nine percent over last year. For a two-week period beginning on April 4 and leading up to the April 18 filing deadline, Gomez measured the websites of the top online tax preparation and filing providers.
Overall, the tax sites performed well during the two-week testing period. However, last-minute filers trying to meet the tax deadline on April 18 experienced greater performance variability in response time with a 40 percent increase (measured in standard deviation) from an average of 1.5 seconds during the two-week period to 2.1 seconds on deadline day.
ExpressTaxRefund, which was the top performer across all 11 sites, led the group with the fastest average response time of .078 seconds, followed by Free Tax USA with 1.22 seconds. The 2011 Tax Season study top five performers were:
- ExpressTaxRefund
- Free Tax USA
- Jackson Hewitt
- TaxSimple
- TaxBrain
"Based on the overall performance for the 11 sites across the two-week period, it's evident that these companies prepared to provide fast and reliable web experiences to online filers," said Jonathan Ranger, Gomez Benchmarks Practice Director at Compuware. "However, with the share volume these sites experienced on the April 18 deadline day, any fluctuations in website performance certainly impacted last-minute filers."
Gomez Benchmarks, recognized as the standard in providing a comprehensive set of global independent web and mobile performance metrics, rank the web and mobile performance of companies across three key metrics – response time, availability and consistency – and are used by organizations to compare and track performance against competitors and market leaders; baseline and track their own 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.
The Gomez platform is the industry's leading solution for optimizing the performance of web, non-web, mobile, streaming and cloud applications. Driven by end-user experience, Gomez provides a unified view across the entire application delivery chain, from a user's browser or mobile device, across the Internet or a corporate WAN, in the cloud, to inside the data center, eliminating blind spots from the First Mile to the Last Mile.
Compuware Corporation
Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company, provides software, experts and best practices to ensure technology works well and delivers value. Compuware solutions make the world's most important technologies perform at their best for leading organizations worldwide, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited U.S. web sites. Learn more at: .
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CONTACT: Press Contact Brenda Menard, Compuware Corporation, Brenda.Menard@compuware.com, 781-698-2393
