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January Website Rankings of 100 Retailers
Tesco's direct catalogue site direct.tesco.com retained its top spot again in the table of the 100 retail websites tested this month with an impressive score of just over eight out of 10 ahead of Vision Express that has moved up the table into joint-second spot with Clinton Cards.
The comprehensive list of 100 sites, which includes not only the largest players but also some of the smaller specialist online merchants, has been created by The Retail Bulletin and specialist website testing company SiteMorse that used its automated testing of the first 125 pages of each retailer’s site to generate a ranked table.
It is interesting to see Vision Express and Clinton Cards featuring so highly as their sites are predominantly used for providing information rather than a channel through which to shop. In contrast many retailers who rely heavily on their sites to sell goods perform poorly in the testing.
A scan at the foot of the table shows some pretty big names such as B&Q (its site is DIY.com), Currys, Amazon and ebuyer who all fail to even muster a score of two out of 10. Among the biggest fallers this month who now reside at the lower end of the table are Republic (down 21 places), Superdrug (down 23) and Blacks Leisure (down 27).
Most worrying is the performance of some of the pure plays whose livelihood clearly depends entirely on the quality of their online experience to shoppers. Net-a-porter dropped eight places to 22nd spot, Firebox fell 17 places to 44th place, Figleaves slipped 27 places to 55th spot and ASOS dropped 11 places to 67th spot.
Lawrence Shaw, founder of SiteMorse, says: “These are retailers whose website should be improving. It’s not really very good. ASOS and Amazon fail the accessibility tests on all their pages compared with a much lesser 20% across the overall market. Compared with Tesco, with its score of 8.04 out of 10, these others need to improve.”
On a more positive note there have been some major gainers this month with Toys R Us moving up 30 places to 10th spot with a score of 6.2, Waitrose also up 30 positions to 13th place with a score of 5.56 and Wickes up 29 places to 29th spot with a score of 4.62 out of 10.
However, for yet another month three sites – Gap, Boots and Pets at Home - have been excluded from the table as a result of them either being ‘down’ at the time of testing or because of their reliance on ‘assistive’ technology, which SiteMorse believes breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites.
By Glynn Davis
| Rank Overall |
Rank Change |
Site Address | Exact Overall |
meta data |
error occs |
Accessibility A % pages failing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ~ | direct.tesco.com | 8.04 | ok | 0 | 0.00% |
| 2 | + 5 | www.visionexpress.com | 7.66 | ok | 133 | 0.00% |
| 3 | - 1 | www.clintoncards.co.uk | 7.66 | ok | 4 | 9.60% |
| 4 | + 5 | www.habitat.net | 7.49 | fail | 13 | 0.00% |
| 5 | - 2 | www.next.co.uk | 7.10 | ok | 1 | 23.81% |
| 6 | - 1 | www.houseoffraser.co.uk | 6.96 | ok | 2 | 48.82% |
| 7 | + 3 | www.dfsonline.co.uk | 6.82 | ok | 174 | 35.94% |
| 8 | + 3 | www.bargainbooze.co.uk | 6.46 | ok | 1 | 38.46% |
| 9 | + 3 | www.fenwick.co.uk | 6.39 | fail | 28 | 11.54% |
| 10 | + 30 | www.toysrus.co.uk | 6.20 | ok | 5 | 4.00% |
| 11 | - 3 | www.morrisons.co.uk | 5.79 | fail | 12 | 0.00% |
| 12 | + 10 | www.nbrown.co.uk | 5.59 | fail | 7 | 99.04% |
| 13 | + 30 | www.waitrose.com | 5.56 | ok | 377 | 12.80% |
| 14 | + 16 | www.danda.co.uk | 5.48 | ok | 154 | 0.80% |
| 15 | + 3 | www.landofleather.co.uk | 5.46 | ok | 17 | 35.96% |
| 16 | + 8 | www.packardbell.co.uk | 5.32 | ok | 51 | 89.60% |
| 17 | - 12 | www.topshop.co.uk | 5.28 | ok | 3 | 99.20% |
| 18 | - 14 | www.bhs.co.uk | 5.24 | ok | 28 | 3.12% |
| 19 | + 12 | www.jjbsports.com | 5.22 | ok | 30 | 96.09% |
| 20 | - 1 | www.argos.co.uk | 5.16 | ok | 123 | 0.00% |
| 21 | + 4 | www.hsamuel.co.uk | 5.14 | ok | 306 | 0.00% |
| 22 | - 8 | www.net-a-porter.com | 5.12 | ok | 7 | 100.00% |
| 22 | + 14 | www.lauraashley.com | 5.12 | ok | 10 | 22.05% |
| 24 | - 9 | www.threshergroup.com | 5.11 | fail | 3 | 41.07% |
| 25 | - 5 | www.jessops.com | 5.06 | ok | 3 | 0.78% |
| 26 | - 3 | www.adams.co.uk | 5.02 | ok | 17 | 0.00% |
| 27 | - 1 | www.johnlewis.com | 4.84 | ok | 256 | 27.20% |
| 28 | ~ | www.o2.co.uk | 4.76 | ok | 125 | 2.40% |
| 29 | + 29 | www.wickes.co.uk | 4.62 | ok | 4 | 4.72% |
| 30 | - 9 | www.lakeland.co.uk | 4.44 | ok | 264 | 9.38% |
| 31 | + 14 | www.freemans.com | 4.39 | fail | 7 | 85.60% |
| 32 | + 1 | www.waterstones.com | 4.38 | ok | 178 | 34.40% |
| 33 | + 18 | www.qvcuk.com | 4.32 | ok | 3625 | 3.12% |
| 34 | + 12 | www.mandco.com | 4.20 | ok | 3 | 2.40% |
| 35 | - 19 | www.t-mobile.co.uk | 4.18 | ok | 14 | 2.34% |
| 36 | + 6 | www.majestic.co.uk | 4.02 | ok | 285 | 10.94% |
| 36 | - 23 | www.hollandandbarrett.com | 4.02 | ok | 3 | 0.78% |
| 38 | + 20 | www.harveynichols.com | 4.02 | ok | 89 | 22.05% |
| 39 | - 2 | www.furniturevillage.co.uk | 3.99 | fail | 17 | 100.00% |
| 40 | - 8 | http://www.apple.com/itunes/ | 3.88 | ok | 31 | 0.00% |
| 41 | - 6 | www.coop.co.uk | 3.82 | ok | 10 | 23.44% |
| 42 | + 36 | www.robertdyas.co.uk | 3.81 | fail | 80 | 0.79% |
| 43 | - 9 | www.vodafone.co.uk | 3.76 | ok | 122 | 99.21% |
| 44 | - 17 | www.firebox.com | 3.74 | ok | 192 | 34.40% |
| 45 | + 19 | www.oddbins.com | 3.65 | fail | 127 | 3.15% |
| 46 | + 4 | www.disney.co.uk | 3.62 | ok | 345 | 40.00% |
| 47 | + 30 | www.sainsburys.co.uk | 3.62 | ok | 37 | 3.12% |
| 48 | - 9 | www.jdsports.co.uk | 3.58 | ok | 404 | 33.33% |
| 49 | ~ | www.debenhams.com | 3.50 | ok | 301 | 3.20% |
| 50 | + 2 | www.asda.co.uk | 3.33 | fail | 51 | 57.69% |
| 51 | - 13 | www.ikea.com | 3.31 | fail | 49 | 58.40% |
| 52 | + 10 | www.game.co.uk | 3.29 | fail | 31 | 50.00% |
| 53 | - 9 | www.halfords.com | 3.28 | ok | 49 | 46.40% |
| 54 | ~ | www.scssofas.co.uk | 3.22 | ok | 116 | 97.60% |
| 55 | - 27 | www.figleaves.com | 3.16 | ok | 588 | 100.00% |
| 56 | - 3 | www.euro.dell.com | 3.10 | ok | 22 | 65.08% |
| 56 | + 1 | www.bordersstores.co.uk | 3.10 | ok | 46 | 28.91% |
| 58 | + 13 | www.phones4u.co.uk | 3.04 | ok | 76 | 52.71% |
| 59 | - 11 | www.comet.co.uk | 3.04 | ok | 168 | 1.60% |
| 60 | + 24 | www.virginmegastores.co.uk | 3.02 | ok | 103 | 19.84% |
| 61 | - 21 | www.specsavers.co.uk | 3.02 | ok | 5 | 15.87% |
| 62 | - 15 | www.harrods.com | 2.97 | fail | 421 | 0.78% |
| 63 | + 2 | www.matalan.co.uk | 2.83 | fail | 1138 | 78.74% |
| 64 | + 6 | www.dixons.co.uk | 2.80 | ok | 7 | 100.00% |
| 65 | + 3 | www.hamleys.com | 2.75 | fail | 3 | 97.62% |
| 66 | - 6 | www.ebay.co.uk | 2.70 | ok | 166 | 94.40% |
| 67 | - 11 | www.asos.com | 2.60 | ok | 617 | 100.00% |
| 68 | + 13 | www.hmv.co.uk | 2.58 | ok | 168 | 19.20% |
| 69 | - 14 | www.littlewoods.com | 2.48 | ok | 545 | 70.87% |
| 70 | - 3 | www.homebase.co.uk | 2.42 | ok | 1313 | 51.59% |
| 71 | + 16 | www.focusdiy.co.uk | 2.38 | ok | 52 | 47.20% |
| 72 | - 9 | www.carphonewarehouse.com | 2.34 | ok | 1962 | 98.40% |
| 73 | - 4 | www.maplin.co.uk | 2.32 | ok | 9932 | 16.80% |
| 74 | + 5 | www.orange.co.uk | 2.24 | ok | 7330 | 85.60% |
| 74 | - 57 | www.directspecs.co.uk | 2.24 | ok | 626 | 100.00% |
| 76 | + 20 | www.whsmith.co.uk | 2.22 | ok | 2480 | 100.00% |
| 77 | + 12 | www.elc.co.uk | 2.18 | ok | 504 | 79.37% |
| 78 | - 5 | www.mothercare.com | 2.18 | ok | 3284 | 64.57% |
| 79 | + 13 | www.thorntons.co.uk | 2.08 | ok | 200 | 100.00% |
| 80 | - 6 | www.marksandspencer.com | 2.06 | ok | 2855 | 10.32% |
| 81 | - 5 | www.rosebys.com | 2.05 | fail | 1310 | 100.00% |
| 82 | ~ | www.play.com | 2.04 | ok | 89 | 100.00% |
| 83 | - 4 | www.woolworths.co.uk | 1.98 | ok | 52 | 100.00% |
| 83 | + 14 | www.lasenza.co.uk | 1.98 | ok | 265 | 98.40% |
| 83 | - 12 | www.annsummers.com | 1.98 | ok | 232 | 100.00% |
| 86 | ~ | www.staples.co.uk | 1.90 | ok | 393 | 99.21% |
| 87 | - 5 | www.ebuyer.com | 1.88 | ok | 163 | 100.00% |
| 88 | - 27 | www.blacks.co.uk | 1.85 | fail | 5326 | 20.16% |
| 89 | - 23 | www.superdrug.com | 1.70 | ok | 40 | 88.37% |
| 90 | + 5 | www.pcworld.co.uk | 1.52 | ok | 105 | 100.00% |
| 90 | ~ | www.amazon.co.uk | 1.52 | ok | 520 | 100.00% |
| 92 | + 2 | www.goldsmiths.co.uk | 1.50 | ok | 18 | 100.00% |
| 93 | - 5 | www.diy.com | 1.45 | fail | 194 | 3.88% |
| 94 | - 9 | www.currys.co.uk | 1.44 | ok | 49 | 92.25% |
| 95 | - 5 | www.endless.com | 1.26 | ok | 1272 | 100.00% |
| 96 | - 21 | republic.co.uk | 1.14 | ok | 553 | 81.89% |
| 97 | - 4 | www.jonesbootmaker.com | 1.02 | ok | 129 | 100.00% |
| NA | NA | www.petsathome.com | excluded | |||
| NA | NA | www.gap.com | excluded | |||
| NA | NA | www.boots.com | excluded |
Tagged as: website testing
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