Littlewoods Shop Direct has improved its web sites after studying data from an external performance monitoring service.

The Gomez Experience First platform gives Littlewoods staff access to an online portal where they can run reports on what customers around the country will experience on the sites, including page loading times and the performance of the transaction process.

Littlewoods can also monitor its statistics compared with key competitors and run tests on changes it makes to sites before they go live.

The home shopping group first used the service last summer and is thought to have signed a one year contract.

Littlewoods explained that the results have allowed it to make both initial and ongoing improvements to the site. “Within two weeks of first gathering data, we had identified and implemented several web site performance improvements that substantially improved our customers’ experience,” it said.

“Several new developments have been planned for 2008, which will allow us to further improve the speed and stability of our web sites. The data provided by the Gomez product range is now intrinsic to helping us continually put our customers first.”