The post holiday rush caused nine of the top ten sites on the Keynote index to slow down.

The Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index has revealed that among the top ten sites, nine experienced slower than normal load times during the week that ended on January 5, as a result of heavy use by shoppers who were looking to find a great last minute deal following the official holiday season.

Shoppers continued to search for deals long after the holiday season had already come to a close.

Retailers experienced continued online sales both online and through mobile commerce as shoppers continued to return. This surge following Christmas and New Year placed considerable pressure on websites, particularly those meant for smartphones and tablets. It also added some strain to wireless carrier networks. The result was that page load times slowed down a little bit, according to Keynote’s data from that week.

This shows that online and mobile commerce holiday shopping doesn’t stop at January 1.

Instead this mobile e commerce trend showed that shoppers will continue purchasing as the sales continue in through the first month of the year. This involves a mix of different types of purchases such as through exchanges, buying at discounted sale prices, or shopping with gift cards that were received at Christmastime.

Each of these individual trends adds its own amount of pressure to the overall mobile ecommerce scene. During that week, the average smartphone friendly site homepage load time among the 29 different retailers that make up the index was 7.62 seconds. When compared to the week before, this was slower by 0.62 seconds.

During that week, Sears Holdings Corp. managed to top the index, with a load time of its mcommerce home page load time of 3.13 seconds. Its success rate was a tremendous 100 percent. This earned the company a very strong 986 score out of a possible 1,000 on Keynote’s index.

This was achieved through a light mobile commerce homepage weight of 61 kilobytes made up of only 8 elements. Typically, Keynote’s recommendation is that a site contain only a maximum of 10 to 12 elements (for example, scripts and images) and that it weigh no more than 61 kilobytes to ensure optimal performance.

NEW YORK, NY, JANUARY 23, 2014 – For the first time ever, fans will have the power to unlock exclusive content and rewards from authors by using image recognition technology to turn regular book covers into interactive media experiences. Author and TED speaker Sunni Brown has partnered with mobile tech company, BestBuzz, to leverage their proprietary technology and mobile app for her latest book release, The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently , published January 9 by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Brown is ranked one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business and one of the 10 Most Creative People on Twitter by Fast Company, and her TED Talk on doodling has drawn more than a million views. Her book was recently named an Amazon Best Business Book of the Month and CBS Sunday Morning aired her story.

“This is an exciting and connective breakthrough for readers and authors. It gives me the ability to have direct touchpoints with my revolutionary doodlers. The BestBuzz platform is innovative, and provides exciting, visually rich tools to deliver relevant and valuable content to my readers, like infodoodles, webinars, exclusive sneak-peek chapters, how-to videos, special offers, and rewards you can’t get anywhere else,” says Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution. “It’s empowering.”

To trigger the image recognition experience, smartphone users can download the free BestBuzz mobile app or text the word DOODLE to the number 63566. Upon opening the BestBuzz app, users align the target shown on their screen with the book cover of The Doodle Revolution, which will buzz when the experience is triggered. Doodle fans will unlock exclusive content and advocates are prompted to support the author by sharing with friends on social media to help spark the Doodle Revolution movement.

Image Recognition technology has received steady buzz from top media outlets and tech blogs and is one of the hottest trends for 2014. Founder and CEO of BestBuzz, Carrie Layne, says, “Image Recognition technology is the latest addition to the BestBuzz platform, which gives our partners the ability to select the mobile activation triggers that best align with their marketing strategies and overall campaign goals. Another function of the platform is that our partners can connect real-time marketing content to social media rewards, making it simple for them to deliver an exciting and valuable experience to customers through print media, in-store displays and even product packaging.”

Sunni Brown says, “My team and I are leading a global campaign for visual literacy, what we refer to as a Doodle Revolution, and BestBuzz has built a revolutionary tool that helps me communicate and amplify my movement to reach new audiences and engage more deeply with established audiences. I love watching the buzz spread around the world from my dashboard in real-time, and it’s been an extraordinary experience discovering the BestBuzz team’s impressive capabilities.”

About The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently (published by Portfolio/Penguin Books January 9, 2014)

What did Einstein, JFK, Edison, Marie Curie, and Henry Ford have in common? They were all inveterate doodlers. These powerhouse minds knew instinctively that doodling is deep thinking in disguise–a simple, accessible, and dynamite tool for innovating and solving even the stickiest problems. Sunni Brown’s mission is to bring the power of the Doodle to the rest of us. She leads the Revolution defying all those parents, teachers, and bosses who say “Stop doodling! Get serious! Grow up! “She overturns misinformation about doodling, demystifies visual thinking, and shows us the power of applying our innate visual literacy. The Doodle Revolution was named an Amazon Best Business Book for January, 2014, and was recently featured in a CBS Sunday Morning story on Sunday, January 19.

About BestBuzz

Ranked as one of the Top 10 Hottest Startup companies by Startup America and Tech Cocktail, BestBuzz is a social amplification platform that helps businesses create, manage and deliver real-time content to fans that scans mobile activation codes from product packaging, in-store displays and print media. Users can download the free BestBuzz mobile app to discover and unlock rewards from their favorite local businesses, brands, media publications, and consumer products. Start scanning QR codes, UPC barcodes, images and logos marked with the BestBuzz icon to instantly earn points and unlock exclusive offers from partners.

To learn more visit: http://sunnibrown.com/ and http://bestbuzz.bz/or follow @sunnibrown and @best_buzz.