Over the years we have expanded the range of tests Sitemorse offers, highlighted important news and ranked top websites according to their Sitemorse result.
| Website Benchmark - “Sofa So Good” for DFS - and an improving picture for UK retail websites - 23 May 2013 | |
 | The very best UK retail websites are still improving, with brands such as DFS furniture ... |
 | The very best UK retail websites are still improving, with brands such as DFS furniture (#DFSsofas) way ahead of the game when it comes to sites that work well and keep their users happy, while other lesser-known brands are making great strides in website efficiency. Our second retail index of 2013 shows plenty of ‘green’ websites – those moving up the table – with perhaps-unfamiliar names such as H.I.Weldrick, Budget DIY, M&M Direct and Slater Menswear making dramatic improvements to their scores. So what makes a good website? We have been benchmarking them for years, and in our view it’s those who really care about the quality of their end product who get the laurels. But it’s “sofa, so good” at the top of our table for furniture sellers DFS, who return to the top position in our table once again having dominated our UK retail rankings for the last five years. With an overall score of 9.5 of a possible ten marks, the DFS website scores top marks in function, accessibility and performance and now has a clear lead over second-placed Anoushka London (9.3/10) and third placed Pownall Carpets (8/10). DFS, Anoushka London, the niche fashion and jewellery outlet and Lancashire-based Pownall Carpets, who have been producing traditional carpets based on British wool for more than half a century, couldn’t be further apart in terms of product, market and message, but their error-free sites are way ahead of other retailers. Just behind them in the top five-placed retailers are KD Beds, which has been selling beds and carpets from Harrogate for the last quarter century (7.4/10) and – also based in the North – Greenhalgh’s Bakers, a thriving chain of retail shops serving the North-West of England (7.3/10). Just behind them are convenience store chain Spar UK, Adams Childrenswear, the Whisky Shop, and newcomer to our Index H.I.Weldrick, a family-owned business with more than 600 employees that runs 62 pharmacies across South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. Our top 15 has no less than five retailers specialising in furniture, beds and carpets, but fashion gets a look-in too thanks to Anoushka, Vivi, Fendi, Racing Green, H&M and Jo Alexander, whose websites are all rated in our top 20. H.I.Weldrick started in 1930’s Doncaster, when the grandmother of the current company chairman set up a chemists shop. These days the retailer stocks more than 8,000 health and beauty and prescription products and has the distinction of being the biggest riser in our table, an upwards move of no less than 423 places, taking them from near enough the bottom of the table to 8th place overall. Up an amazing 310 places is the American Golf Retail Centre, which despite its name is actually Europe’s largest golf retailer with more than 100 stores in the UK and Northern Ireland. Price comparison site for the DIY trade, Budget DIY, rises 270 places. When partners Mark Ellis and Martin Churchward set up shop selling end-of-line sports products in 1987 they probably didn’t suspect their company M&M Direct would become an international discount fashion retailer with more than 3 million active customers. Their website is still only 176th in our table but has risen 226 places this time, making theirs a website to watch. According to their estimates, a staggering 34 million visitors a year do just that. The website was relaunched three years ago and has been followed by sites covering the Danish, Irish and French fashion markets. Family-run Slater Menswear may be a new name, but the company boasts the world’s largest menswear store – and it’s in Glasgow. Slater cannot be found on the high street, but their website features fun as well as sales pitches – you can watch a video that tells you how to wear a kilt, for example. The site has risen 226 places in our Index and takes 50th position. Of course, Sitemorse Index scores can go down as well as up, and the biggest fallers this time are also fashion chains, albeit better known. They are Evans (-261), Topshop (-269), Wallis (-293), Alexon (-306) and Timberland (UK) (-308). We don’t like to dwell on those who don’t score highly in our Index, but it’s also worth looking towards the bottom of our table to see how many well-known high street names have websites sorely in need of improvement. The ranked table for Q2 includes only 449 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. More than 30 sites were excluded on these grounds, including those of Austin Reed, Benetton, HMV, Jane Norman and J Sainsbury. Nine websites were classed as ‘error-free’ under Sitemorse criteria, including many mentioned so far and top grocer Fortnum & Mason. Sitemorse concluded: If 34 million visitors a year go to a website placed 176th in our retail table, how many go to the ones with household names every day, week month and year? It’s vital that users get the best quality experience when they go to your site - there are always plenty of competitors around waiting to pick up sales .Offering the lowest prices may be a big draw, but if users encounter errors and problems, they will go elsewhere in seconds. The companies named as having the best retail websites here cover a huge raft of different styles, products and locations, but what they all have in common is that they really care about the experience of their customers. Online, that translates to having an efficient website that gives customers an enjoyable experience, making them want to buy more online or visit the stores.
The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Using Sitemorse’s services such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They will help you minimise unnecessary risk, issues covering everything from compliance with web standards to helping you deal with malware, protect your brand across even a large web presence, and enhance search engine optimisation to help more potential customers find you. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management.
This survey took place on April 28th, 2013 and involved benchmarking more than two million separate URLs. Poorest code quality was recorded for the Game site, with more than 770,000 failures. Fastest overall response time from any site tested was the convenience store chain Londis.
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| Website Benchmark - Swiss Banks with long traditions and a good web presence - 21 May 2013 | |
| | You can’t open a Swiss Bank account online – the necessary identification checks would prevent ... |
| | You can’t open a Swiss Bank account online – the necessary identification checks would prevent that – but the internet is the best way to see what’s available. Not everyone wants or needs a numbered Swiss bank account, but the accessibility of the web has meant that all the main banks have an online presence. Like all other web sectors, some serve their clients better than others. Swiss banks are stringently licenced and are amongst the safest in the world. But despite their secret reputation, anyone with the necessary resources can open a Swiss Bank account. Like anyone else Swiss Banks compete, to some extent for clients. Sitemorse has been carrying out quarterly benchmarks of the banking sector in Switzerland for the last three years, and our latest Index benchmark looks at more than 200 to measure how well their websites work. With many people banking online and using the internet for research comparing accounts, it’s vital that any bank’s website work as efficiently as possible and gives the very best customer experience. This is particularly the case where clients are probably based many miles away from their banks, and an atmosphere of total trust is necessary. At the top of our quarterly Index this time is Geneva-based Banque Bénédict Hentsch & Cie SA, a private bank founded in Geneva less than a decade ago but boasting a long tradition in wealth management. This bank scored 8.02 out of a possible ten marks in our testing, with maximum function and performance scores, maintaining its score from our Q1 Index of this sector and rising one place in the Index. Our Q1 winner, Zurich-based Maerki Baumann & Co. AG, has dropped seven places this time with a score of 7.3/10. Second in the Index this time and rising five places since the Q1 survey is Sparkasse Schwyz, a 200-year-olod bank based in a Swiss canton between Lakes Zurich, Lucerne and the Alps. The bank is one of the oldest Swiss banks, but its website is one of the best performers in the Index, with a score this time of 7.92/10. Just behind them and a serious riser in our Index is Basel, Geneva and Zurich-based E. Gutzwiller & Cie. Banquiers, a private bank founded in Geneva in 1886 and boasting a long tradition in wealth management. Users can access their portfolios online via the banks website, using a secure log-in. The bank scored 7.91 out of a possible ten, with so just fractionally behind the second-placed Sparkasse Schwyz, and has risen 115 places in the Index since our last review in January. The final two top five contenders in our Index are LB (Swiss) Privatbank AG , fully owned by the Frankfurt Banking Company (Switzerland) AG whose site scored 7.6/10, a rise of six places in the Index, and Bank Julius Bäer & Co. AG, established in 1890. With a score of 7.5/10, this bank’s website has risen 119 places in the Index since January, no mean feat. Full details of this Index, which includes performance scores for more than 200 Swiss banking websites, can be seen at http://www.sitemorse.com/survey/report.html?rt=949. The term ‘private bank’ refers to a bank that offers private banking services and in its legal form is a partnership. The first private banks were created in the mid-18th century and in Geneva in the late 18th century as partnerships, and some are still in the hands of the original families. In Switzerland, such private banks are called private bankers (a protected term) to distinguish them from the other private banks which are typically shared corporations. Other big risers this time include EFG Bank European Financial Group SA (+175), Société Générale, Succursale de Zurich (+139), and Zürcher Kantonalbank (+112). Falling down the Index this time, most notably, are Spar- und Leihkasse Bucheggberg AG (down 62 places), ZLB Zürcher Landbank (-82), Goldman Sachs Bank AG (-83), Mirabaud & Cie (-92) and Caisse d'Epargne Riviera (down 98). Sitemorse conducts regular surveys of the websites of businesses and organisations and has been benchmarking and publishing the detailed results for a decade. The full results from this and other recent surveys can be seen on our website, www.sitemorse.com. Our research found that around five per cent of those tested were classed as ‘error-free’ by our methodology, a good score compared to other sectors such as retail or FTSE companies. A number of banking websites were excluded from our testing (57 this time, a fall on the 68 excluded in January) because they use non-accessible technology or have a very small number of pages, which give an unfair comparison with larger sites. Sitemorse concluded: Keeping a website working well requires methodical web governance and management will to succeed, and the banks at or near the top of our Index certainly demonstrate this. Care and attention to detail are crucial to a good customer experience when it comes to websites – so often getting the basics right makes a website a pleasure to use. Sitemorse works with a large number of clients who are dedicated to ensuring their websites work well, and they know good web governance is now a vital requirement for any organisation. About the Index It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Using Sitemorse’s services such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. Technical Data More information |
| Removing human barriers to good web governance helps the bottom line - #journey #monitoring - 13 May 2013 | |
| | Listening to the experience of your website users and making sure your web team are ... |
| | Listening to the experience of your website users and making sure your web team are more flexible in their attitude will immediately improve your online sales, as this real-life example we encountered recently proves. We were simply trying to book a meeting room online, simple enough, and something many businesses do every day. The booking, for a short meeting in an outer-London venue, came to an abrupt halt when we encountered a “page not found” error. Annoying..... Not to be discouraged, we went through the booking procedure again, only to encounter the same error once more. Whatever we did, we couldn’t get around the error and complete the booking. A conversation with the (nameless, to save their blushes) firm’s web technical manager elicited an unexpected response. “That can’t happen” he told us. “You must be doing something wrong”. After going elsewhere to book our room, we dropped a line via email to the company’s MD and were even more amazed at his dismissive attitude. “I’m assured the problem you found can’t happen on our site” he told us. OK, don’t believe us, but the error we inadvertently discovered might turn out to be quite significant – we wouldn’t be too surprised if their monthly bookings are a bit down next time. Complacency can be extremely dangerous to a company’s bottom line. Amazed to hear there are people who are totally uninterested in listening to their customers? We hear the MD’s “It can’t happen here” line quite often, nearly always from people who are well removed from the service they are selling. Thankfully, there are many organisations around who are interested in the experience of their website users. And a lot of them are using our services to discover any problems on their sites before their own customers do. Here’s one example of how our deep level monitoring benefited a client who didn’t even know they had a problem. Sitemorse’s services help our clients monitor the journey, replay the screens and look at what’s actually being delivered to visitors, rather than what your staff assure you is being provided. As the web becomes more complicated, with many organisations having fixed and mobile websites, small changes in systems linked to your web presence can have a significant effect. Our ‘#journey #monitoring’ can keep an eye on what your customers are experiencing and immediately alert you if that experience drops below par. |
| Why #web #governance needs to come from the top – not just the web team. - 09 May 2013 | |
| | An efficient, well-run web site speaks volumes about any organisation. But more and more, it ... |
| | An efficient, well-run web site speaks volumes about any organisation. But more and more, it seems that a well-governed website can be the barometer of corporate health. Most senior managers these days realise that a website is not just a shop window for any organisation, it’s an essential carrier of a brand’s reputation as well. But how many of them actually realise that their organisation’s website mirrors their success in the marketplace? The term ‘web governance’ seems to have caught on, and now lots of people are talking about it. But rather like the early days of social media, it’s seen as still very much the province of the people at the sharp end – in this case, the organisation’s web teams. Governance ‘guru’ Shane Diffily puts it well in his recent online piece about the analytics of web governance. “No-one who does not work on a Web Team generally cares much about the basics of high-quality governance. In fact, most do not even notice the effort that goes into supervising a website until something goes wrong, e.g. a poorly resourced Web Team seizes up due to overwork.” Sitemorse has been benchmarking the websites of organisations in the public and private sector for more than a decade, and our quarterly Index reports make for interesting reading in all categories. We think many organisations can’t see the wood for the trees when it comes to their websites, and are all too often hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Our results show how effectively and efficiently a website runs, and give an accurate verdict of how a user will find a site. The Index reports covering the retail sector have been particularly interesting. Our tests have pointed to companies such as DFS, Aldi and Spar having particularly successful sites, returning scores of around 9 out of 10 on customer experience. In 2009, for example, HMV's site was rated 25th in our UK Retail Index with a score of just under 6 out of ten. Argos was in 18th place (6.1/10), Jessops 13th (6.5/10). Electrical retailer Comet was in 40th place with a score of 5.3.Waterstones, in 46th place, scored 5/10. By the first quarter of this year the HMV site was scored at 1.5 out of 10 and the company had slumped to near the bottom of our table. Argos was 331st, scoring 2.6. Comet had already disappeared (but the previous Index in the last quarter of 2012 rated them 283rd with a score of 3.1). Waterstones had dropped to the very bottom of the table, with a score of just 1.1. All of these companies have reportedly struggled in the marketplace. Could their online malaise have something to do with their real-world woes? Could their management teams have taken their eyes off the web ball amid the distractions of trading difficulties? It’s interesting that media coverage of the Comet failure pointed at a lack of understanding of the online world as one of the reasons for the company’s decline. Turning to the companies who do well in our Index surveys, it’s interesting to see that the ones making the business pages for the wrong reasons tend to gravitate towards the middle or bottom of the table. Those at the top are often being praised or shown to be particularly successful in other areas of business. • Supermarket Aldi, for example : a survey of 1,200 shoppers for The Grocer found that Aldi scored highest for supplying good quality products at good prices - the key driver of customer loyalty. According to the magazine, Aldi customers are now the most loyal in the UK, overtaking Waitrose. • Furniture maker DFS have opened four new stores so far this year and announced sales up more than 7 per cent in March. CEO Ian Filby, announcing the results, said the company had also “further enhanced our successful and growing online business”. • Convenience store chain Spar , who have performed particularly well in our quarterly Index of the top 250 International retailers as well as our UK surveys, currently operate 2,600 stores and boast more than £2.6 billion retail sales a year. Spar has one of the highest spontaneous consumer brand-awareness scores in the retail industry, a position no doubt helped by having one of the highest-rated websites. Interestingly, some managers at senior level are indicating that a successful online strategy is critical to their success. John Lewis MD Andy Street spoke earlier this year about their “bricks and clicks” strategy. The company’s websites are steadily improving in both our UK and international retail Index reports. Tiling and flooring retailer Topps Tiles reported revenues grew by 1.2% to £177.7 million in the year to 29 September 2012.Head of Marketing Beth Boulton told us her aim was "to develop an inspirational website and an online presence which reflects our market leading position. The focus on the website has widened in the last twelve months as we recognise the customer journey often starts with visiting the website first. “she added. The company’s marketing team have made a number of improvements to the website over the past three months which has led to the big improvement in their rating by Sitemorse. Dr. Jeremy Howard, CEO of drinks company Slurp Group, went further and was quoted in a news item to say the company's main objective is to join the Wine Society and Oddbins in the top 50 of the Sitemorse top 500 best performing retail websites. The company’s website, he said had been redesigned and reconstructed from the bottom up – a “stupendous effort” for the web team, and a milestone towards the company’s aim of being the clear market leader in online drinks sales in the UK. |
| Malware sharks use “spear phishing” as bait to trap the unwary - 26 Apr 2013 | |
| | Online security firms say the threat to businesses from cyber-criminals using sophisticated, advanced 'malware' is ... |
| | Online security firms say the threat to businesses from cyber-criminals using sophisticated, advanced 'malware' is increasing. And that means a very real potential problem for web managers. • Security firm FireEye says 'spear phishing' - a technique that looks to dupe its victims into downloading malware by sending messages using common business terms designed to entice them to click on a malicious email file attachment or web link - remains the most common attack strategy for getting malware into an enterprise. • And security agency Europol reports that the increased success rate of cyber attacks is doubly dangerous, as organised crime groups are using them to fund other darker 'real world' activities. |
| Ensure the sales leads you are spending money on developing are protected... - 23 Apr 2013 | |
| | - emails dropping off, probably one of the worst 'hidden' issues. What if this is ... |
| | - emails dropping off, probably one of the worst 'hidden' issues. What if this is an issue for you? Right now it can be causing sales enquiries to be lost before you were aware of them - there after brand damage and lost confidence? How can WMTK help to ensure that the incoming requests you are spending money on developing are protected? The importance of keeping more than a keen eye on the detail that's sitting behind your email service.
But this month we were reminded once again how important the service can sometimes be. Monitoring a client's website, we found an issue with an email address. This kind of error can be problematical, especially for larger companies. Clearly if an email address is faulty, mail can get lost, and it can be days or weeks before the problem is spotted, potentially affecting any organisation's bottom line. Yet when we sent a test email, it got through and was received by the client. Some detective work at our end found that our original diagnosis of a fault was correct and that a small – but potentially crucial amount of email sent using the link on the client website would be lost. Over to Sitemorse Technical Director, Jon Ribbens: “Suppose they were losing 1%, or even 0.1%, of emails. This would perhaps not be detected manually - even if people occasionally failed to get emails they were expecting, they would not think it necessarily part of any pattern, and may well blame the sender's ISP or human error. “So without Sitemorse the problem would go undetected for potentially many years, and over time some of those lost emails are bound to be highly important. Lost customer goodwill from unanswered queries or complaints, or lost orders, or bigger deals lost or delayed due to missing messages... or even perhaps lawsuits prejudiced due to non-receipt of notices.” Jon added. The case served as a reminder to us how detailed our monitoring and diagnostic capabilities really are. Our services can find problems that manual testing will not necessarily find, in a fraction of the time it takes (Even an average sized website can take more than six days to check manually) We reckon we have spent around 25 man-YEARS of research to get our diagnostics to where they are today. Over that time, Sitemorse has developed a unique level of automation that views every single element of every page as a visitor would, checking infrastructure and software, assessing any third- party technology, and noting anything else that needs attention. We automatically review our findings and prioritise them to ensure anything affecting user experience, search or potential risk exposure can be swiftly corrected, right down to the line of code that needs fixing. For true 'Web Confidence' you need to be totally in control of your website, and aware of what’s needed to make it reach its potential. |
| Police Scotland website almost top of the class - 22 Apr 2013 | |
| | The website of the newly-formed Police Scotland (@ScottishPolice) force has leapfrogged its way into second ... |
| | The website of the newly-formed Police Scotland (@ScottishPolice) force has leapfrogged its way into second place in the coveted Sitemorse Police Force Index only a matter of days after the new authority was formed. After consultation, the Scottish Government confirmed in 2011 that a single police service would be created in Scotland to replace the then-current eight forces. Police Scotland was formed on 1 April 2013 through the merger of the all eight Scottish territorial forces and the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, and the organisation now has one single website. The police are never out of the news, and their websites are the most important place for them to get their messages across before the inevitable filter of journalistic coverage. Improving web technology means that the sites can be more and more interactive, encouraging the public to come forward with information or to report crime. Police websites are now a vital communication channel between the police and the public they protect and serve, so the quarterly Sitemorse Index of how efficiently those sites work is, as ever, an important marker. In this, the second Index of 2013, we spotlight the websites of Cleveland (@ClevelandPolice), Police Scotland, and the North Wales Police as being the best from a group of more than 50 UK forces in total. Full access to the survey - http://www.sitemorse.com/survey/report.html?rt=946&key=541c39e0 Of the sites we surveyed on quality, user experience, accessibility, performance and search engine optimisation, the Cleveland force’s site in North-East England was once again ahead of any other police website, with a total score of 8.7 out of a possible ten marks, a little down on last quarter’s score of 9.4 /10. Covering a 230-mile area on the fringe of the North York moors, the Cleveland force looks after more than half a million people. Their website carries news, surveys and a feature that allows users to type in their postcode to see details about their local police officers. We rated the site very highly particularly on code quality and accessibility, and it has been a consistent performer in our surveys, never moving below second place over the last three years. The now-replaced Dumfries and Galloway force had been rated highly by us on function, accessibility, code quality and performance, and was placed in first and second many times, but it’s comparatively rare for a new site, particularly covering an enormous bailiwick, so do so well so quickly. Police Scotland’s site scored 7.5/10 in their “first innings” but a 6/10 score for the accessibility component shows there is still room for some improvement. The website of the Colwyn Bay-based North Wales Police remains in third spot in the Index this time, with an overall score of 6.2/10. North Wales Police have also been consistently good performers in our Index. Making up the rest of the top-five placed sites this time are the City of London Police, up two places and the Essex force, rising seven. The Metropolitan Police website drops one spot to 6th - just three years ago the Met was almost at the bottom of our benchmark table in 51st place, so its web team have made big and consistent improvements overall in that time. Sitemorse surveys the websites of businesses and organisations in a number of sectors, and has been benchmarking and publishing the detailed results for a decade. The full results from this and other recent surveys can be seen on our website, www.sitemorse.com. Top climbers this time include South Yorkshire Police (+23), Hampshire Constabulary (+19), Hertfordshire Constabulary (+19), Thames Valley Police (+19) and Northumbria Police (+17) Big fallers in this survey include Lincolnshire Police (-13), Derbyshire Constabulary (-19), Police Service of Northern Ireland (-20), Nottinghamshire Police (-23) and Leicestershire Constabulary (down 38 places) Interesting data on accessibility The 'digital inclusion' of disabled people is important for many of the sectors we survey, as well as being backed by the force of the law. If someone with a disability, such as sight loss, can't access the information on a website then it could be seen as discrimination. The Equality Act came into force in October 2010, replacing the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in England, Scotland and Wales. Like the DDA, the Equality Act was introduced with the intention of comprehensively tackling the discrimination which many disabled people face. Highest scorer in the Police survey on accessibility, rated 9/10, was Thames Valley Police. Cleveland and North Wales each once again scored a creditable 8. Our conclusions The Police Scotland site has only been in existence for a few short weeks, so immediately getting to almost the top of our table is quite an achievement, even building on the success of previous Scottish high scorers like Dumfries and Galloway. Given that many of the major police forces don’t do so well in our benchmarks, this major new organisation that has taken over from eight regional forces has made an impact from day one. Well done to the top forces in particular for setting a great standard for others to follow. And our message to those police forces that did not do so well is – why not get an external viewpoint on how well your site performs – we are always prepared to share more detailed information on our results. About the Index The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Using Sitemorse’s services such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management.
This survey took place on January 2, 2013 and involved benchmarking more than 1,600,000 tests, checks and measures. Poorest code quality was recorded for the Greater Manchester Police site, with more than 86,000 failures. Fastest overall response time from any site tested was the Suffolk Constabulary. More information • More information about our surveys and what they test can be seen on our website at www.sitemorse.com |
| The Sitemorse Index – why its the important read for every organisation - 19 Apr 2013 | |
| | The Sitemorse Index is the longest established and independent authoritative website survey and ranking across ... |
| | The Sitemorse Index is the longest established and independent authoritative website survey and ranking across a number of sectors - looking at the online capability of the main website available for each organization in the sector. The Index covers sectors such as FTSE All Share, Global 250 and UK 500 retailers, Universities, Local and Central Government, Global Life Sciences and more. The only way to ensure that your website is offering the best possible visitor experience, be certain Google is accurately indexing your site and ensure you are on the correct side of compliance is to continually validate content, check links, review templates and test the delivery infrastructure of every page on the site. To put this in context, checking an ‘average’ site properly takes around 6.5 days manually and a large ecommerce site potentially upwards of 270 days! Until now it has not been really been practical (or possible, within most web budgets) to do this. Although many senior managers may think this is being done on their sites already, so many websites have issues that it’s clear that these checks are simply not being done. Over some 25 man-years of R&D, Sitemorse has developed a unique level of automation that views every single element of every page as a visitor would, checking infrastructure and software, assessing any third- party technology, and noting anything else that needs attention. Sitemorse automatically reviews its findings and prioritises them to ensure anything affecting user experience, search or exposing you to risk can be swiftly corrected, down to the line of code that needs fixing. For true Web Confidence you need to be in control of your website, and aware of what’s needed it to make it reach its potential. The Index gives a regularly-updated snapshot of each sector we cover, and that’s an opportunity for every organisation to firstly see their start point and then how they can improve against their peers. Recently we have had organisations like Leeds Building Society, supermarket Aldi, fashion store Anoushka London, Vale of Glamorgan Council, the Met Office and University Campus Suffolk at the top of our surveys. |
| New look, new staff and a new focus and social media - 18 Apr 2013 | |
| | Sitemorse never stands still, and we are currently working on a new look for our ... |
| | Sitemorse never stands still, and we are currently working on a new look for our website with some new faces on our team and a renewed focus on social media. Over the last twelve months we have diversified our services, from our enterprise-level Governisation offering, designed for large scale web presences, to the latest service, the Web Manager’s Toolkit [WMTK], aimed at clients that focus on delivering the best, who can demonstrate compliance and who like to be confident about what they really have online. A ‘sneak peek’ of the new website homepage can be seen online [http://sitemorse.tiltmedia.co.uk/] showing how the above services are integrated into the Sitemorse range alongside our coveted Index web benchmark, our regularly-updated blog, and our unique new web estate mapping tool, Venobia. We have strengthened our team with a new technical developer and a new team member specialising in PR, with a particular focus on social media. Over the next few months you’ll be hearing more from us on Twitter and LinkedIn, as we’re very keen to talk to clients and potential clients about the exciting new developments we have up our sleeve. |
| Website Benchmark (UK Universities) - Suffolk, Cheshire and Lincoln take top honours - 16 Apr 2013 | |
| | The rising cost of higher education plus extra competition between universities and colleges means educational ... |
| | The rising cost of higher education plus extra competition between universities and colleges means educational websites have to work harder to help attract the best candidates. Full access available this quarter http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/947/d11c1582 So it’s good news that our quarterly assessment of the websites of universities and higher education establishments once again shows improvement, with four universities in the top ten websites tested, and a general trend of university websites moving up our table covering nearly 300 university and college sites. The second Sitemorse Index of higher education sites of 2013 spotlights quality and efficiency across the websites of the higher learning sector. The Index is undertaken by Sitemorse using our specialised automated software that reads the first 125 pages of each site to generate a ranked table, looking at key areas such as function, code quality, site performance and accessibility. This is important because web users have limited time and patience, and if a website does not work as expected they are more likely to go elsewhere than take the time to complain, leaving website managers potentially unaware of problems that might be driving users away. Equally, websites that can’t be navigated by disabled users, apart from being illegal, may discriminate against students who cannot then take a full part in social, educational, and professional activities on campus. Congratulations once again to University Campus Suffolk (UCS) [@Suffolk_U] which has held on to the top spot it managed in our previous two surveys in October 2012 and February this year. Second in our league table this time is Crewe-based South Cheshire College with a score of 7.9/10, keeping the site in second position in our table. The site scored 6/10 for accessibility. Third is Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln. Named after the great teacher, scholar, reformer, scientist and theologian Robert Grosseteste who was Bishop of Lincoln in 1235, the university has been offering higher education to students since 1862. The website scored 7.2 out of a possible ten marks, rising three places up the table since the last survey in February. The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (Coleg Brenhinol Cerdd a Drama Cymru) is in fourth position and ises four places from last time, narrowly ahead of West Thames College, a Hounslow-based college with more than 6,000 current students, in fifth. Also in our top ten places this time are the Hopwood Hall, Bishop Burton, Petroc, Bridgwater and London Electronics Colleges. The remainder of our top 20 rated sites this time are The College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise, Farnborough College of Technology, Askham Bryan College, Gower College Swansea, Greenwich School of Management, The University of Edinburgh, East Riding College, Pembrokeshire College (Accredited College of University of Glamorgan), Anglo European College of Chiropractic (AECC), and the University of Wolverhampton. Top climbers rising up the table this time include South Nottingham College (+168), Loughborough College (+161), Solihull College (+152), Guildford College of Further and Higher Education (+151) and Pembrokeshire College (+145) Colleges in Norwich, Swindon, Coventry, Kensington and Newcastle were rated at the bottom of our table covering almost 300 sites. Sitemorse surveys the websites of businesses and organisations in a number of sectors, and has been benchmarking and publishing the detailed results for a decade. The full results from this and other recent surveys can be seen on our surveys website, Sitemorse.com.
The Equality Act came into force in October 2010, replacing the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in England, Scotland and Wales. Like the DDA, the Equality Act was introduced with the intention of comprehensively tackling the discrimination which many disabled people face. Highest scorers on accessibility in our latest survey, all rated eight out of ten, were the University of Birmingham, University College, Birmingham, De Montfort University, Bridgewater College, Somerset, and the Arts University College at Bournemouth. Scores of seven out of ten were recorded for UCS Suffolk, the Royal Veterinarian College, Stratford-upon Avon, Exeter and Lincoln Colleges. Our conclusion: About the Index Using Sitemorse’s services such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. Technical Data @Suffolk_U |
| Improved Q1 performance from US retailers in table of top 250 global websites but Aldi retains the top spot. - 11 Apr 2013 | |
| | A raft of US retailers have enjoyed strong performances from their online stores in the ... |
| | A raft of US retailers have enjoyed strong performances from their online stores in the first quarter of 2013, with six major merchants now close to gaining a place in the first 20 of the table of Top 250 global websites tested exclusively for the World Retail Congress 2013 by Sitemorse. The scores are indexed using automated software that reads the first 125 pages of each retailer’s site and places them in a ranked table of relative performance based on six key criteria - function, code quality, user experience, accessibility, performance and SEO capability. The six would have joined the sole US entry in this upper echelon, Kwik Trip, which retains its position with a score of 6.38 that puts it in 16th spot and among an increasingly internationally diverse batch of global retailers at the top end of the table. Just beyond the top 20 and knocking on the door from the US are: Rite Aid Corporation that moved up 12 places to 22nd spot with a score of 5.56; Stater Brothers slipped six places into 24th spot with 5.24; Roundy’s Supermarket , new to the table in 27th spot with 5.09; Albertson’s moved up 12 places to 28th spot with 4.89; and Burlington Coat Factory in 29th spot having moved up 12 places to 29th spot with 4.87. Also joining the party is upmarket US retailer Nordstrom , one of this quarter’s biggest risers having climbed 130 places to 25th spot with a score of 5.12, which compares with its score of only 2.57 in Q4 of 2012. Nordstrom sits alongside some other stars of this quarter: KF Gruppen, which moved up 102 places to 30th spot; and China Resources Enterprise, which climbed 170 places into 50th spot. Despite their upward moves they are still some way off German supermarket Aldi that retains its top spot with a score of 7.98/10 and the new second placed retailer ICA that climbed 25 positions in Q1 after the 39 places it jumped last quarter. It joins fellow Sweden-based merchant Axfood that is in 13th spot and sits just above UK and US-based Signet Jewellers. This is another newcomer into the top 20 along with H2O Retailing that moved up 11 places into 12th spot in what is a rare appearance in the top bracket by a Japanese retailer. Unfortunately the country is better represented at the bottom of the table where four Japanese merchants sit among the bottom 10. They are kept company by two new US merchants to the lower ranks of the table, with O’Reilly Automotive slipping six places into 222nd spot and high end food retailer Wegmans Food Markets that rather disappointingly dropped three places into 218th spot. Although Sitemorse tested the top 250 global retailers, the final table contains only 227 names because companies were excluded from the process if they used assistive technology such as JavaScript, which breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites, according to Sitemorse. Our conclusions About our surveys Using Sitemorse’s products such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. Technical Data More information @UKALDI |
| Website Benchmark (UK Central Gov.) - Changes on way for Govt websites mean top changes - 28 Mar 2013 | |
| | Changes are coming in the government website sector which will have a big impact on ... |
| | Changes are coming in the government website sector which will have a big impact on the Sitemorse Index of central government websites. Billed as the best place to find government services and information, the new Gov.UK web hub promises simpler, clearer and faster access to the myriad services provided by the UK government, replacing DirectGov and business link in the process. By 2014, websites of all government departments and many other public bodies will be merged into the Inside Government section of www.gov.uk. Some have already moved, and more will be joining soon – as an indication, at time of writing, 14 out of 24 ministerial departments are live on the new hub, although the numbers drop when it comes to other departments and public bodies – just 17 of more than 300 bodies in this sector are part of the new system. Of the 17, however, some are heavyweights like HMRC, comprising the tax and VAT collection services, the Traffic Commissioners, and the Planning Inspectorate. When they have finished, the boast is that you won’t need to know which bit of government does what in order to find out what government is doing on any given subject – an ambitious scheme, given the huge variation in the quality and efficiency of current government websites. Sitemorse has run its automated testing over the government sites on a quarterly basis – we are keen to see which ones work best from the all-important point of view of user experience. The Gov.Uk website itself has also been tested by Sitemorse. In the last quarter of 2012 we scored it at 5.4/10 and put it in 41st place. This time it comes in at 6.3/10 and has moved up 28 places to take 13th position overall. Our latest (Q1 2013) Index finds the Countryside Council for Wales has taken the first, second third and fourth spots in the benchmark, beating all of the main offices of state to have the most efficient site overall. The Government's statutory advisor on sustaining natural beauty, wildlife and the opportunity for outdoor enjoyment in Wales and its inshore waters had pulled off a hat-trick previously, but with scores ranging from 9.7 to 7.5 out of a possible ten, the Welsh council is comfortably ahead of its nearest rivals, the Met Office, who are placed fifth in the survey with a score of 7.1/10. It’s by any standards an amazing performance, and one we have not seen before in any of the sectors we survey. Interestingly, all four sites are likely to fade away in the near future, to be replaced by a single website, under the Natural Resources Wales banner. It’s not a direct consequence of Gov.Uk but rather cost saving and integration within the Welsh government , although the microsites Plant for Wildlife, Green Wales and The Countryside Code will probably be live for a while. Web Manager, Cameron Edwards and his team will be looking after the new NRW site, though their remarkable achievement in website efficiency will be a difficult one to beat. We talked to Cameron a few months back about his methods, and wrote about them on our blog. We’d like to salute Cameron and his team – and we’ll be delighted to continue to support their efforts at improving their sites in the future. Weather watchers the Met Office maintain their winning performance with a score of 7. 1/10 and fifth place in this survey. NI Direct continues to improve, though just outside the top five places this time, and well done to the Money Advice Service, up 13 places to ninth position. We expect some volatility in our surveys and this was the case on this occasion, with big rises for the Secret Service, MI5, who may not yet be in 007th place but who managed to rise 111 places to be just outside our top 50 government sites, the Royal Mint, up 126, and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, up 189 to take 62nd position. Biggest faller this survey is the Office for Standards in Education, OFSTED, down 147 places Also dropping are the National Archives (-120), Ministry of Justice (-119 ) and the Pensions Advisory Service (-102) Interesting data on accessibility Sitemorse provided survey data in 2012 for the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, who prepared policy briefing on ICT for disabled people for Parliament and the Lords. The briefing summarised major issues in the 'digital inclusion' of disabled people. Quoting Sitemorse research from our Q1 2012 government survey, the POST briefing noted: “Any public sector website must conform to at least AA standard under e-government guidelines2. If it does not, it risks being withdrawn from service. Despite this, a recent survey of 350 central government websites showed that none were AA compliant on every page. 16 websites did not even reach the A standard. These problems will largely be addressed after the introduction of a single government domain, due in late 2012, which will provide an accessible and consistent format for any government website with a gov.uk address. Compliance in the private sector is also low - less than 5% of all websites meet the A standard, despite the risk of possible legal action. Nevertheless, there is a strong business case for an accessible website with studies noting increases in the number of users, user satisfaction and revenue after the inclusion of accessibility features.” Whereas most government departments score very poorly in this area, a year on we found 17 sites with high scores, eight and nine out of ten and one, with winning Plant for Wildlife, with a score of ten out of ten. The Office for Disability Issues appears in 118th place in our table this time, with a score of just 4.2 out of ten overall. We rated them a 6/10 on accessibility. This is an improving picture; our previous (Q4 2012) central government survey found only 11 sites with high accessibility scores.
Congratulations again to the Countryside Council for Wales for a great achievement in having four top sites, way ahead of the Welsh Assembly main site, placed at 267th in our Index. We have been watching the new Gov.uk website and have seen notable improvement over the quarter. It’s important; the new site will be the ongoing hub for many government services.
The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Using Sitemorse’s products such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management.
This survey took place on 20th February 2013 and involved benchmarking more than half a million separate URLs. Poorest code quality was recorded for the Boundary Commission site which had more than 860,000 failures. Fastest overall response time from any site tested was the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website. Just four sites out of 307 tested was officially “error-free” according to the Sitemorse methodology. More information • Full details of his survey, and more information about our surveys and what they test can be seen in the Surveys section on the Sitemorse website, linked from our homepage. |
| Constant vigilance is needed to stamp out Digital Wildfires @davos - 27 Mar 2013 | |
| | “Digital Wildfire” – online misinformation that’s out of control – is now perceived to be ... |
| | “Digital Wildfire” – online misinformation that’s out of control – is now perceived to be one of the top global risks, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. The image highlights the risks of the rapid spread of uncontrollable and destructive information — risks that are made possible by an ever-growing worldwide web of communication channels. Watch the movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PpmCuM72cD0 The potential for pitfalls in this area is featured as one of the “risk cases” explored in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2013 report, based on expert input about which risks could manifest themselves over the next 10 years. A ‘digital wildfire’ ignited by a humorous complaint about United Airlines posted on YouTube by musician Dave Carroll saw the company’s stock drop by 10%. A false Internet rumour that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had been killed caused oil prices to rise. In September 2012, protests over an anti-Islamic film uploaded onto YouTube killed dozens of people. Many organisations are now linking social media channels of all kinds to their own web presence, with the risks that digital wildfires can spread into more ‘official’ channels. It’s vital, if “digital wildfires” are not to spread, that companies and organisations know and control their own content and keep a watchful eye across their own web presence for links that may have crept in through social media to inflammatory material elsewhere. Tools such as the Governisation product from Sitemorse can help monitor for any problems right across the web presence of even a very large organisation. Governisation is a strategic service for clients wanting to manage key priorities, core brand values, web compliance and risk across a medium to large web estate. It’s a World-Class enterprise-level service which delivers digital governance across a large organisational web presence covering multiple sites and locations, allowing clients to manage risk and compliance as well as helping deliver core priorities and key brand values. Governisation – a blend of governance and optimisation – handles multiple rules governing corporate, regulatory, and web issues with automated issue prioritisation and distribution at the point of production as well as live site monitoring. Governisation reduces manual time, improves processes and protects the organisation’s online investment around the clock. |
| A Chief Exec with a key priority – a website that is the very best @SlurpWine - 26 Mar 2013 | |
| | Sitemorse is all about helping make websites as good as they can be, so we ... |
| | Sitemorse is all about helping make websites as good as they can be, so we were very pleased to read some recent comments from Dr. Jeremy Howard, CEO of drinks company Slurp Group. In a news story published on his company's website, Dr. Howard says the company's main objective is to join the Wine Society and Oddbins in the top 50 of the Sitemorse top 500 best performing retail websites. ""Clearly this is a major achievement, and rewards our IT team, in particular, for the stupendous effort they made in 2012 totally redesigning and reconstructing Slurp.co.uk from the bottom up. It is great to break into the Top 250 for the first time, but there is still a long way to go before we achieve our objective of being the clear market leader in online drinks sales in the UK". he added. It's great to see that the most senior person in a company understands how important their online presence is to bottom line and reputation. And while using the latest social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest in its marketing, Slurp Group is clearly making its website the active hub of its sales and marketing presence. Slurp.co.uk was recently named Direct Merchant of the Year 2012 by International Wine Challenge. Accepting the award, Dr. Howard said: “We have worked hard to create a website that appeals to everyday consumers as well as wine enthusiasts. It's great to have confirmation that our hard work has paid off.” |
| Know exactly what you have in your web presence? #mobile, #web, #social - 25 Mar 2013 | |
| | Many organisations underestimate their web presence (across mobile, social and web) they control by an ... |
| | Many organisations underestimate their web presence (across mobile, social and web) they control by an amazing 41 per cent, according to our research. But Sitemorse has a unique service coming that will accurately map the entire content of a web domain and present it graphically. Venobia will allow its users to map out their web assets, including social and mobile applications, allowing for accurate strategic management of web domains along with cost savings. There’s an online demo of Venobia representing an example web presence. Hovering over individual websites with the mouse will provide information - green dots are operational and red ones are not working correctly, so it gives an immediate impression of how functional the whole web presence is. The service can tell how many sites are linked to each other and the web presence can be represented in a variety of ways. |
| Website Benchmark (Global Life Sciences) – website channels have never been more important - 22 Mar 2013 | |
| | Following years of growth and favourable market trends, the global life sciences industry now finds ... |
| | Following years of growth and favourable market trends, the global life sciences industry now finds itself facing a challenging "new normal." And that means online channels for getting company messages across have never been more important. According to consultants Deloitte, a raft of new conditions, including changing health care landscape, expiring patents and generic competition, pricing pressures, heightened regulatory scrutiny, expansion into emerging markets, increasing alliances and acquisitions, and a persistent economic slowdown are prompting global life sciences companies to adopt new business models designed to counter slowing sales growth and declining profitability, deliver better patient outcomes at lower cost, and position them for success in 2013 and beyond. Sitemorse has been benchmarking the websites of around 200 companies in the global life science sector on a quarterly basis for some years, and our results find the companies with the most efficient websites are not the multinational giants but usually the smaller, more focused businesses targeting one sector of the market. According to Deloitte’s latest Global Life Sciences Outlook report, “A dramatic shift is taking place in the type of products coming out of life sciences company research labs — the reality of fewer billion-dollar blockbusters is being replaced by a focus on developing targeted treatments, which requires that companies invent and bring to market more products to fill the pipeline and generate comparable revenue levels.” The top five companies whose websites take the honours in our latest Index will most likely not be known to you by name. Siegfried AG’s site scores highest with a very creditable score of 8.5 out of a possible ten marks in our automated testing. Siegfried, headquartered in Zofingen, Switzerland, has been a consistent performer in Sitemorse tests. The company operates worldwide and has around 800 employees manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients. The company was second in our Autumn 2012 survey and so moves up one place. Second place goes to Novimmune, a Geneva-based drug discovery and development company focused on the creation of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of inflammatory diseases and immune-related disorders. The website’s score of 8.1 means it moves from last survey’s top spot to second place this time. In third place this time with a score of 8.1 in our automated testing is Vifor Pharma, a Swiss-based company that can date its history back to 1872 and which has expertise in the fields of iron deficiency, infectious diseases and consumer healthcare. Vifor has risen 15 places since the last Index. Sitemorse benchmarks the websites of the top companies in this sector four times a year, and we are pleased to once again see some of the better-known Pharma names such as Sandoz Pharmaceuticals AG and Eli Lilley Schweiz in the top thirty performers. The main Sandoz website, at 19th place with a score of 6.3/10 in our testing, is the best performer for a well-known pharmaceutical major. Our Q1 2013 benchmark maintains the trend we first pointed out in 2010, with smaller, more focused players scoring much more highly on quality, user experience, accessibility, performance and search engine optimisation (SEO) capability than the larger best-known multinationals. There have been big improvements to the scoring of Astrazeneca’s main site and also that of Novartis this time. Sitemorse surveys the websites of businesses and organisations in a number of sectors, and has been benchmarking and publishing the detailed results for a decade. The full results from this and other recent surveys can be seen on our website. Testing is undertaken using automated software that reads the first 125 pages of each site to generate a ranked table. Other life science company websites we rated among the best include those of Piramal Healthcare (scoring 8.1/10), Newron Suisse SA, (7.9/10), GenKyoTex SA (7.62) 4-Antibody AG (7.5), Eisai (company) (same), Kuros Biosurgery AG (7.2) and LEO Pharmaceutical Products Sarath Ltd (7.1). Top climbers include Perrigo (+82), AmVac AG (+74), Fresenius Medical Care (+69), AstraZeneca AG (+39) and Maintaining its place at the very bottom of the list, with a score of 0.7 out of ten, is Beijing’s Sinopharm Group, and the main websites of Pfizer and Bristol- Myers Squibb remain among the bottom ten performers. Many of the big names also feature in our list of ‘click and wait’ offenders. We think a response time above 0.75 seconds can have a negative effect on user experience, but our tests showed the Johnson & Johnson main site, for example, to take on average up to 11 seconds to load the homepage. Accessibility is an important criteria for websites and we would have expected companies focusing on healthcare to score highly on ensuring their sites are navigable by the disabled. This is not the case here, and the highest score recorded for the 199 sites tested this time is 8/10 for Canada’s Apotex Inc. Other sectors such as local government have improved scores on accessibility, which of course is now backed up by law. Sitemorse concluded: If smaller is better in the “new normal” of the global life sciences industry, our research bears out the fact that the best websites from a user experience perspective (and there is no other way of looking at a website) belong to the smaller, more focused companies. This is only partly because they are physically smaller than their big brothers among the multinationals. It’s perfectly possible to run large websites making sure they are error-free, scoring well on accessibility and in other areas that impact user experience, and we’ll be happy to share our expertise on how this can be achieved. About our surveys The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Using Sitemorse’s products such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. Technical Data This survey took place on February 14th 2013 and involved benchmarking more than 198,000 URLs. Poorest code quality was recorded for the Beximco Pharmaceuticals site which had more than 435,000 failures in our automated tests. Only nine sites were classed as error-free according to Sitemorse criteria, and 22 had accessibility failures on every page tested. More information • More information about our surveys and what they test can be found on our website www.sitemorse.com • For further Information: Geoff Paddock, Head of Communications on +44 1525 375057, gpaddock@Sitemorse.com |
| Extra help for our clients to help build Web Governance - 21 Mar 2013 | |
| | If you are a Sitemorse client with sites across your web presence currently not monitored ... |
| | If you are a Sitemorse client with sites across your web presence currently not monitored by our service you might want to hear about a special offer to add extra ones at low cost. Website managers using our Web Manager's Toolkit service have all the requirements to reduce risks around compliance or failure, as well as ensuring a great experience for site visitors. But we often find that not all sites in an organisation’s web presence are covered. We are currently offering a special deal to add additional sites, with no limit on site size or the service received. If you’re an existing client you can add an extra site to your service for just £500 a year, and for every two sites added in this way, you will receive a third site at no charge. The offer includes all modules (PDF, email, performance, inventory and priority fixes) and can be easily set up by sending a confirmation email with the web addresses of the sites that should be added. Caroline Crosby, Sitemorse Head of Client Services said: "Digital governance is no longer a “nice to have” but an absolute requirement, and all websites need to be compliant with relevant legislation and error-free if they are to provide a great experience for their users. We want to make it easy for our clients to cover their whole web estate in this way, and at time of tight budget controls we'd like to offer a little help to enable them to do so". |
| Web teams need not just to do a good job - but be seen to do so - 19 Mar 2013 | |
| | The role of web managers has greatly increased over the last few years, and there's ... |
| | The role of web managers has greatly increased over the last few years, and there's no doubt that running an organisation's website is now a very testing role. Once a low-key part of the organisation's marketing or communications team, the web manager now controls something that's very much in the spotlight, often with areas “owned" and focused on by in-house legal, finance and human resources teams. That extra visibility, combined with tighter control on budgets, means that web teams not only need to do a good job, they also need to demonstrate how well they do against their peers. That's where the independent testing done by Sitemorse comes in - we have been benchmarking various key sectors for times a year for the last decade. The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. The Index benchmarks are published and can be viewed by all. Web managers who really want to get to the heart of improving their site's performance may wish to go one step further and look at the Sitemorse products which will help them build governance and control into their web presence. Using Sitemorse’s products such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in any organisation's web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. |
| Fancy a free Ipad - help us find a great designer... - 16 Mar 2013 | |
| | Sitemorse is Hiring – a Digital Designer |
| | Sitemorse is Hiring – a Digital Designer We are looking for a talented and creative professional to be involved with all aspects of design and creativity at Sitemorse. The successful candidate will have: This role will integrate and work alongside our in-house team of developers and may extend to technical documentation and handling support for our clients. An excellent level of written and spoken English is necessary, as is an organised approach to note taking and design. The job has the option of home base although you may be required to attend occasional meetings in Central London. - if you know someone please let us know and if we take them on we will give you an Ipad. |
| Property company websites dominate our Q1 FTSE All Share Index - 14 Mar 2013 | |
| | With three major property and land management companies in the top six and one developer ... |
| | With three major property and land management companies in the top six and one developer jumping up our table by a massive 290 places, it’s a fair bet that property companies are the big news in our first survey of the FTSE All Share company websites of 2013. The FTSE All share index features some of the best-known companies traded on the London Stock Exchange, and many of the 500 or so compared in our new Index are household names. As we so often find, however, the best-known names don’t always have the best-working websites, despite usually having more staff and budget. Birmingham-based St. Modwen Properties, the UK’s leading regeneration specialist, scored 9.14 out of a possible 10 in our automated testing and moved up two places to the top of our index this time. St. Modwen , who focus on developing commercial property and residential land, are no strangers to the lofty pinnacle of our index despite not being a household name, but have not been winners for twelve months. The UK’s largest commercial property company, Land Securities is our second rated site this time, with a score of 8.9/10 and a move of three places up the table. Land Securities, established in 1944, owns and manages 29m square foot of property in its large portfolio. Water and sewage company United Utilities takes third place, with a score of 8.3/10 and a rise of 42 places since Q4 2012. The Warrington-based company supplies water to seven million people in the North West of England and uses more than 42,000 kilometres of water pipes from Cumbria to Cheshire. Other well-performing top-ten sites include Artemis Alphas Trust PLC, up 85 places to fourth place with a score of 8.1,Premier Oil PLC, up 63 places to 7th position with a score of 7.6, and tenth-placed Novae PLC, up 18 with a score of 7.5/10. Artemis is a leading UK-based active investment management house, Premier Oil is a growing oil and gas exploration and production company, and Novae a wholesale insurance underwriter. High performers in the top twenty sites tested include Bilfinger Berger Global Infrastructure, up 51 places to 13th, funeral directors Dignity PLC rising 29 to 15th, respiratory disease specialists Vectura Group up 83 places to 18th position, and specialist investment and asset management firm Intermediate Capital Group PLC up 20 places to 19th spot. The testing of just over 500 sites – the all-share index has more but a number were excluded from the survey - is undertaken by Sitemorse using automated software that, page-by-page, reads the first 125 pages of each site to generate a ranked table based on checks to Quality, User Experience, Accessibility, Performance and SEO capability of each of the websites. We don’t judge a site on the way it looks, or content, but purely on how well its users will find it works. The full results of the benchmark can be seen in the surveys section of our website. Its’s interesting how comparatively few FTSE All Share websites score well on accessibility, even though it’s an area backed up by UK law. Other sectors such as local government seem to have tackled accessibility more seriously - only a handful of websites in this survey score towards the top, but congratulations to brewer and restaurateur Marston’s for having the only website tested to score 10/10 for accessibility. Land Securities scored 9/10 – for scores for other companies see the full survey. The success of the companies with the most efficient sites once again counterpoints the comparatively mediocre performance of some of the FTSE top names. More than 300 companies scored less than five out of ten on our criteria this time. Although the very best sites in this survey scored between eight and ten, only ten websites out of more than 500 tested could be classed as error-free, a small rise on the ten we recorded last time. Major names such as Rolls Royce, Aggreko, Mothercare and Debenhams are near the bottom of the table, all with scores of less than three out of a possible ten. There’s good news, however, for pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, rising 64 places in the middle of the table, Next PLC, up 136, and BT Group PLC, up 132 to 221st position. The really big climbers in this survey are headed by leading property company Development Securities PLC, who specialise in commercial real estate. Responsible for the iconic Paddington Central development, one of London’s largest urban renewal projects, Development Securities PLC rose 290 places in our survey to end up in 111th place. Other big risers included Capita Group PLC (up 287) and Hochschild Mining PLC (up 285). Spectacular fallers this time include packaging firm D S Smith PLC (down 221) AMEC PLC (down 249) and Inmarsat PLC (down 282). Inmarsat and Amec also have the dubious privilege of being among the three slowest sites we tested. Sitemorse concluded: Congratulations to St.Modwen, Land Securities and United Utilities for outstanding website performance – to beat competition from the cream of the UK’s companies is not easy, and shows that smaller-focused web teams dedicated to making their sites work as efficiently as possible can win the day. About our surveys, and how they work The quarterly Index Website Review, powered by the Sitemorse software platform, is an important independent benchmark that clearly shows how websites are performing, meeting compliance levels and satisfying their users. It’s also a key indicator for website managers who, while always wanting to be at the top of their game, could be hampered by poor-performing suppliers, non-compliant legacy content or content management systems that often fail to spot errors affecting user experience. Using Sitemorse’s products such as Governisation and the Web Manager’s Toolkit, which immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, will help demonstrate real improvement and ensure control, and ultimately confidence, in your web presence. They can help spotlight content that may need updating, issues with staff training and support, and focus supplier management. Technical Data This survey took place on 16 February 2013 and involved benchmarking more than three-quarter of a million separate URLs. Poorest code quality was recorded for the Debenhams plc site, with almost 200,000 failures. Fastest overall response time from any site tested was the Filtrona PLC site. Ten sites were classed as error-free, and 47 sites were excluded from the index, either because they were unavailable or because they use assistive technology such as JavaScript, which breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites, according to Sitemorse.
• More information about our surveys and what they test can be seen on our website at www.sitemorse.com |
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