New names enter top of table of best-performing UK retail websites
Going one better and entering the top 10 is a major achievement and is a result of them each scoring over seven out of 10, which Sitemorse deems to be the level that all retailers should aim to achieve. By Glynn Davis.
The triumvirate of Jo Alexander, Aldi and Adams Childrenswear enter the upper echelons this quarter with each of them rising 16 places. This follows their strong moves in Q2 when they all earned spots in the top 25.
Going one better and entering the top 10 is a major achievement and is a result of them each scoring over seven out of 10, which Sitemorse deems to be the level that all retailers should aim to achieve. But unfortunately only 15 out of the 500 sites tested this quarter managed to hit such a score.
The testing of the 500 sites is undertaken by Sitemorse using automated software that, page by page reads the first 125 pages of each retailer’s sites to generate a ranked table based on checks to Quality, User Experience, Accessibility, Performance and SEO capability of each of the websites.
Lawrence Shaw, chief executive of Sitemorse, says: “That these three diverse retailers have further built on their previous improvements highlights that they are taking their websites seriously and are incrementally improving their performances. It will be interesting to see how they place when we next test the Retail 500 sites later in the year.”
At the head of the table the top two retailers flip-flopped again as DFS regained the top position pushing Anoushka London into second spot with a score of 9.50 versus the latter’s 9.37. Both merchants improved on their Q2 scores to give them very impressive numbers that sets them well apart from the rest of the field as third-placed Pownall Carpets came in with 8.38 – nearly a whole point behind Anoushka London.
Also on the up was the big jumpers of Q3 including: Tissot, up 309 places; Velvet Affair, up 272; Zara UK, up 248; Divertimenti, up 231; and Early Learning Centre, up 219. This represents particularly strong progress for Zara that came to the internet late in the day and when it finally did arrive its site was criticised in some quarters.
In contrast, the UK site of its Spanish counterpart Mango had a very poor Q3 as it achieved the unwanted distinction of being the biggest faller with a drop of a massive 320 places to take it to 331st spot with a score of 2.72. This is in contrast to its very creditable 11th place of last time when it achieved a score of 7.36.
Despite its sharp fall it still delivered a stronger performance than many other retailers in the table, with the bottom 50 containing some big names including bottom-placed Conran Shop, along with Waterstones, Amazon, WH Smith, Wilkinson, Next, Boots, and Tesco Direct.
This highlights yet again that having the best performing websites is not the domain of the bigger names in the retail industry. Many undoubtedly commit serious resources to developing their online stores but at the same time the Sitemorse testing is picking up many instances where basic housekeeping is perhaps being overlooked by numerous merchants, leading to some simple errors.
The final ranked table for Q3 includes only 459 retailers because merchants were excluded from the testing if they used assistive technology such as JavaScript, which breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites, according to Sitemorse. This represents a significant fall on Q2 when the table contained 471 retailers.
About Sitemorse:
Sitemorse is now the suite of choice for organisations wishing to ensure their sites provide total, holistic web governance and a great user experience. Hundreds of clients across major corporates, local and national government, utilities, financials and the health sector rely on Sitemorse to help them improve the performance, compliance and quality of their websites, delivering control and web confidence.
Sitemorse offers three levels of SaaS-based products, from the enterprise platform ‘Governisation’, a blend of governance and optimisation, to a suite of tools to help web editors and managers, as well as free in-browser tools that can be used by any web user to quickly ensure pages are error-free.
