Shop Direct Group is certainly keeping itself busy at the moment. It has just launched the new Woolworths website and on Sunday (July 5) will unveil its overhauled Littlewoods Direct site that will be rebranded as 'Very' and have a focus on younger customers. It will also start selling to other countries from next month.

By Glynn Davis, City editor

The Woolworths site is understood to have required minimal investment and so would not be anything more than an embarrassment to the company if it fails to live up to the hopes of Shop Direct Group chief executive Mark Newton-Jones who is predicting profitability within the site's first year of operation.

The rebranding exercise of Littlewoods Direct strikes me as being a different matter altogether as it not only marks a switch in the look and branding of the site to become the more fashionable Very but also shifts the focus more strongly onto the younger shopper - in the 25 to 45 age bracket.

This sounds a sensible move as Littlewoods Direct was already attracting many of these people but the removal of the Littlewoods name and a concerted effort to convince new younger shoppers to try the site will undoubtedly have it risks. It could lose some of its existing shoppers who feel comfortable with its link to the established Littlewoods brand.

What is more worrying however, is that Shop Direct Group is taking on board so much change when it might not have nailed some of the fundamentals of online retailing within its existing operations.

Littlewoods Direct performed particularly poorly in the recent testing of the top 50 UK retail sites, undertaken for The Retail Bulletin by Sitemorse, with it committing schoolboy errors like broken links and missing titles on many of its web pages. It is hoped that these issues will have been addressed as part of the rebranding, provided management has not spread itself too thinly to focus on small but important details.

glynnd@theretailbulletin.com

To better reflect the largest and more pro-active names in multi-channel and online retail a new list of the top 50 UK websites has been created, tested each month.

The new list of retail sites has been compiled by specialist website testing company Sitemorse with the aim of having a more focused selection of names compared with the former list of 150 disparate and varied sites.

Sitemorse uses its automated testing of the first 125 pages of each retailer’s site to generate a ranked table based on their relative performances according to various criteria (described below) and for this inaugural month the leader of the pack by a significant margin is DFS

It scored an impressive 9.54 out of 10, almost two whole points ahead of second-placed Net-a-Porter with 6.74. Lawrence Shaw, founder of Sitemorse, says: “DFS is known for good advertising and marketing and they clearly regard their online presence in just the same light. They achieve good scores across the board.’

As for Net-a-porter, Shaw says its high ranking is exactly where a pure play should be positioned as their whole business is clearly reliant on their performance online. Some other pure plays do not perform quite so well, with Play.com in 41st spot, Amazon in 46th place and eBay just behind in 47th spot.

In third place is John Lewis Direct with 6.48 out of 10, which is a score that suggests it is replicating online the level of service it provides in its high street department stores. Taking a look at the performance of other similar operators shows Debenhams with a credible 5.36 out of 10 in 12th place.

This places it well within the top 20 that Shaw says represents the cut-off point below which signifies a generally poor performance. Department stores below this level include House of Fraser in 21st spot and Harrods in 37th place with a score of 3.66.

“Scoring only a third of the possible marks is not a message that you’d expect Harrods to deliver. It is cutting-edge with its in-store digital signage so it’s not like it has an aversion to technology,’ suggests Shaw.

Bottom of the department store pile is Marks & Spencer in a lowly 45th place and just one place above it is online-only department store Littlewoods Direct that Shaw says suffers badly from having 95 per cent of its pages without a title and 38 per cent not having a description.

These are essential requirements for all websites as they are picked up by the search engines. This represents a worry to Shaw who says: “This is a basic requirement and I continue to question the many web agencies that work for retailers and who dismiss such errors. I wonder who is telling Littlewoods that everything is okay with its site because clearly it is not.’

This is a surprising fault to find with the Littlewoods website because in only October 2007 it moved its reported £7 million search spend to agency Unique Digital and Mike Wheeler, search manager at Littlewoods’ parent company Shop Direct, has stated that “paid search growth is key towards achieving’ its aim of growing its online business.

In contrast to Littlewoods’ failure to add titles and descriptions to its pages, Asos has them on every page, which contributed to it occupying eighth spot in the table with a score of 5.56.

To see the rankings please visit http://www.sitemorse.com/survey/report.html?rt=572

We are keen to hear your thoughts on the new top 50 table and whether you agree with the constituents. If you think there are any companies that should be included at the expense of others then please get in touch at glynnd@theretailbulletin.com and we’ll see what we can do.

About Sitemorse

Sitemorse checks compliance, measures performance and tests function of your websites, by reading content, checking code and reviewing infrastructure to reduce risk caused by on-line failure. From single page monitoring to a complete site review, Sitemorse provides both management summaries and detailed technical reports (down to the line in the code).

Sitemorse auditing forms element of the website judging, along with double page feature in show guide.

Global Top 250 Retailers Audited and Ranked.

Leading European retailers’ websites performed significantly better than their US counterparts’, based on the testing of the 250 companies in the ‘Deloitte Global Powers of Retailing 2009’ list exclusively for the World Retail Congress.

Despite the reputation of the US as a leading online player it is represented by only company Ross Stores in the top 15 places in the table, which is in contrast to Europe that has store groups from Germany, the UK and Spain filling the bulk of the top positions.

Specialist website testing company Sitemorse used its automated testing of the first 125 pages of each retailer’s sites to generate a ranked table based on checks to compliance, measurement of performance, and the testing of the function of each of the websites

Lawrence Shaw, founder of Sitemorse, says: “Which country claims it is leading the way in e-commerce – the US. But they certainly don’t seem to be at the moment with most of the top names down at the bottom end of the table. Amazon, Toys R US, Sears, JC Penney and Albertson’s are all in the bottom 10.’

This is surprising because he says Sitemorse is only checking for the basics of websites: “There is nothing complicated about what we are looking for. We just make sure the site works with no broken links to images and email addresses. There is nothing whizzy about it.’

This is the first time the top 250 retailers have been tested and overall Shaw believes the quality is good with 20 per cent of retailers scoring a credible six or more out of 10. But there is a “massive disparity’ between the worst scores, with the bottom 10 sites scoring a paltry 0.75 to 1.5, and the other end of the scale where some large European retailers are doing rather well.

The top performing site Spain-based supermarket Mercadona achieved 8.62 and is followed close behind by US exception, value fashion chain Ross Stores, with 8.61. The remainder of the retailers who also score seven or more, which Shaw says indicates particularly good sites, are all European with Germany having six top-performing entrants, the UK four, and Spain three.

The top of the table also has its fair share of food retailers, with 10 of the first 17 places taken up by supermarket operators, which is an over-representation of the category. They include UK-based Morrisons, NorgesGruppen from Norway, Spar Ősterreich from Austria, a group of German-based players Makro, Rewe-Zentral, Tengelmann Group and Aldi, along with the Spanish pair Mercadona and Grupo Eroski.

“The supermarkets are relying more on their websites nowadays with many millions being spent online. But even if the sites are not transactional then they are still an essential part of these companies communications, even if it is just for providing a store locator function,’ explain Shaw, who adds that the Sitemorse testing does not differentiate between transactional and purely informational websites.

This group of food companied perform much better than some of the world’s largest supermarkets, with the world’s largest online grocer UK-based Tesco managing only 4.62 out of 10, which places it in 91st spot in the table. Shaw says: “Its functionality is not good, the basics are not working well, and the website’s code is poor.’

Wal-Mart also performs weakly in 178th place with a score of only 2.5, as does the world’s second largest food retailer Carrefour in 136th spot with 3.53 out of 10. In contrast, German giant Metro performs well with 6.76, which puts it in 22nd place.

Shaw points to the company’s impressive multi-lingual site and the audio alternative for its web pages. Although the issue of accessibility for visually impaired people is rapidly moving up the agenda many sites still perform badly.

Among the 31 retailers that fail the Sitemore accessibility tests for all of their pages are some very big names including global fashion retailer LVMH, Asia giant AS Watson & Company, C&A Europe, and a host of US-based names such as Best Buy, Foot Locker, Neiman Marcus and Sears.

This level of failure is surprising given that US chain Target recently agreed to pay $6 million and make its site more accessible after losing a high profile two-year court battle. But having made some progress from all its pages previously failing, the group still has some way to go as Sitemorse found 44 per cent of Target’s web pages still do not include the basic ‘Alt text’ to describe images.

A batch of retailers were excluded from the testing because they use ‘assistive’ technology such as JavaScript, which breaks the general “rules of accessibility’ of internet sites, according to Sitemorse. They were joined by another group of merchants in the list of 250 that have either gone out of business, have insufficient web pages to test or more worryingly do not have a website.

Glynn Davis

See the full publication at http://www.headley.co.uk/headturner/RWCday1

May's top website scoring 9.53 is Thurrock. Birmingham came bottom scoring just 1.00. Lewisham was the greatest faller, dropping 213 places scoring 3.15. 4 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 2.53% tests found functional failure and 56.23% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was West Sussex
* The poorest code quality was at Guildford 56,472 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Newry and Mourne

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/567

The survey was completed on the 22nd May, in all we carried out 79,089,426 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

Local government performs better than private sector on awareness of accessibility policy and its implementation

Source: Socitm

Published: 18 May 2009

* Survey shows 174 councils (41% of total) did as well as or better than the best in the private sector

Local government has outperformed a sample of private sector organisations in the finance, retail and travel sectors (including Northern Rock, EasyJet and Tesco) on awareness of accessibility policy and its implementation.

This is the key finding of research by Socitm Insight on website accessibility statements which, according to the latest guidance from the Central Office of Information (COI) and the British Standards Institute (BSi) play a central role ensuring that an organisation’s website is actually accessible to all users.

The research is published in A world denied: a supplement for Better connected 2009 on accessibility statements. This looks at one of the key
elements of accessibility practice, and follows last year’s more general guidance on making websites accessible. If accessibility good practice is not followed, and websites are not designed to accommodate their needs, disabled people and others can find difficult or even impossible to use.

The findings published in the supplement come from a short survey of 12 questions testing organisations’ conformance with the BSi PAS 78 guidance about accessibility statements. This was supported by two mystery shopping e-mail tests, the first of which requested help for a blind person, and the second which asked about the organisation’s plans for improving web accessibility.

The supplement lists councils exhibiting good practice and highlights examples. It also provides tables showing the test results of all councils and private sector organisations covered (among private sector organisations tested are Lloyds TSB, Northern Rock, Tesco, Boots, IKEA, WH Smith, EasyJet, Lastminute.com and the AA.)

The research found that:

* Having a good accessibility statement is linked to better accessibility performance overall: organisations that passed the accessibility standard in Better connected 2009 performed 23% better than the rest on this new piece of research
* A much higher percentage of local authority websites (79%) have a link on their home page to an accessibility statement than private sector websites (44%). Links via the navigation were stronger in council websites
* Council accessibility statements met specific PAS 78 criteria marginally better than private sector ones and 47% of council accessibility statements were excellent or satisfactory compared with 16% in the private sector
* 53% of councils gave a satisfactory reply to our e-mail about help for a blind person with using the website, compared with 23% in the private sector
* 50% of councils gave a very good or satisfactory reply to our e-mail enquiring about plans for improving accessibility (we did not test the private sector on this).

According to Martin Greenwood, Programme Director for Socitm Insight and author of the supplement, all organisations should create an accessibility statement based on the criteria in the COI and BSi documents, or if they already have a statement, review it against these criteria: ‘The accessibility statement plays a key part in any campaign for raising awareness internally, and possibly externally, of the importance that the council attaches to this issue. It goes without saying that none of this is any use if the intentions in the accessibility statement are not properly implemented, but nor should we overlook the fact that the statement itself is the first step in the right direction’

A world denied: a supplement for Better connected 2009 on accessibility statements is available free of charge to Socitm Insight subscribers and can be downloaded now from the Socitm website. Non-subscribers can buy a printed version of the briefing at a cost of £50 (£40 for Socitm members whose organisations do not subscribe). It can be ordered from www.socitm.gov.uk.

April's top website scoring 9.59 is Hillingdon. East Staffordshire came bottom scoring just 1.41. North Norfolk was the greatest faller, dropping 247 places scoring 3.08. 5 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 2.61% tests found functional failure and 54.82% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was West Sussex
* The poorest code quality was at Guildford 56,124 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Newry and Mourne

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/563

The survey was completed on the 21st April, in all we carried out 78,623,337 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

Banned words for your website... but not on ours.

Following the recent announcement from the Local Government Association (LGA), regarding the numerous 'banned' words for Local Government websites - Sitemorse read the content of the LGA's own, public facing website and found that the banned list doesn't seem to be relevant for their own web presence.

A number of the banned words were found when looking at some of their website pages, worse offender being worklessness, which occurred nearly 100 times, other culprits included; spatial, framework, initiative.

As part of our content review module, we are able to quickly read the content of many thousands of web pages, looking for spelling errors, out of date product, organisation or service names, email or web address that are no longer in use, or as in this case read through the content and find words or terms that have been banned from use.

An example, on page http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=1247933 the term ‘worklessness’, appears as a page and report title, its included in the page metadata, the page headline and the page content!

Sitemorse identified many instances of the banned words, its reporting details each occurrence down to the line in the code, allowing the website manager to quickly and efficiently find the word and make the relevant corrective action.

At no charge, Sitemorse Local Government clients who have the content review / spelling module, can have the banned words list from the LGA included in the regular audit. As part of this months Local Government Website Index, we will summarise the instances of the banned words.

About Sitemorse

Sitemorse (www.Sitemorse.com) provides unique software that guarantees to improve the quality, compliance and Search Engine Optimization of your website. We improve online experience, reduce reputational and legal risk, ensure brand standards are upheld and Intellectual Property is protected.

We provide website Audits, Benchmarking and Monitoring, Sitemorse reads page content, reviews your templates and delivery infrastructure – it's provided online, requiring no installation, configuration, technical skills or maintenance.

It allows management to see key vulnerabilities that impact online experience and regulatory / brand compliance, and provides technical staff with the exact detail of issues (down to the line in the code). We also offer industry-leading auditing tools to significantly improve Search Engine Optimization.

For further information please contact Gareth Evans, 020 7183 2508 gevans@Sitemorse.com www.Sitemorse.com

April's top website scoring 10.00 is Directgov Jobs and Skills. Home Grown Cereals Authority came bottom scoring just 2.01. MI5 was the greatest faller, dropping 315 places scoring 3.64. 26 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 3.84% tests found functional failure and 62.12% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was Food and Environment Research Agency
* The poorest code quality was at Sir John Soane's Museum 28,472 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Serious Organised Crime Agency

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/559

The survey was completed on the 9th April, in all we carried out 65,719,329 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

The chair of a British Standards Institution committee responsible for drafting a standard on web accessibility, Julie Howell of web design agency Fortune Cookie, has stepped down from the voluntary position. The new acting chair of the committee in charge of developing BS 8878, 'Web Accessibility - Building Accessible Experiences for Disabled People', is BBC head of audience experience and usability Jonathan Hassell.

Publication of the standard is now expected to be delayed beyond its original planned date of summer 2009:
Latest Documents .

March's top website scoring 9.80 is Slough. Fermanagh came bottom scoring just 2.12. Forest Heath was the greatest faller, dropping 196 places scoring 5.29. 7 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 2.69% tests found functional failure and 53.15% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was West Sussex
* The poorest code quality was at Guildford 43,263 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was South Norfolk

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/556

The survey was completed on the 20th March, in all we carried out 84,162,416 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

The 2009 Annual Client Survey kicks off today and will run until April 17th (again for those that took the time to complete last years survey thank you, we had over 66% response rate). This is YOUR opportunity to give us your feedback on all things Sitemorse. It was your feedback that helped us with the design of the new Sitemorse interface and the new features we've added (and will add over the coming months)

The annual survey really important to us, we greatly value all feedback. Where there are problems we will look to address them, where you ask for improvements we look to make them – where you feel our people have done a good job, we like to reward them.

Please let us know if;

- If there is something you're not happy with,
- If there's something you feel we do well,
- If you have opinions on the new interface,
- If there's a new feature or new service that would help you,
- If there is something you feel we could do better,

The survey will take around 5-10 minutes depending on how much feedback you offer.

As an additional incentive we have our usual prize draw with a headline prize of an 50’ TV and additional prizes of Play Stations, Netbook PC, Champagne and Experience Days.

Please take the time to participate at www.sitemorse.com/2009survey

US-owned retailers websites have performed significantly worse than their British counterparts and delivered some of the weakest scores in the table of 100-plus websites tested this month for The Retail Websites Index.

By Glynn Davis

In the table for March all the US-owned sites were placed in the lower half of the table and four were to be found languishing among the bottom 10 sites. The four culprits comprised eBay, Amazon, Endless.com and Dell with the latter two positioned right at the foot of the table. All four failed to score more than a paltry two out of 10.

The comprehensive list of 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.

Lawrence Shaw, founder of Sitemorse, says: “Everybody thinks the US leads the market in terms of technology and the internet but for website quality, compliance and performance the bottom 10 comprises predominantly US-owned retailers. This compares with the top 10 that are quintessentially British merchants.’

Indicative of the poor US-owned sites is Toys R US, which is placed at number 78 in the table with a score of 3.93. According to Shaw it has the most functional failings of all the sites tested, which means problems with links not working. Even the links to its sister sites in the UK, Canada and Japan do not even work. Maybe they are too embarrassed to link customers to the company’s other poor performing sites?

Toys R Us also claims that its site meets the ‘priority 1’ accessibility guidelines, which makes it usable by visually impaired people. However, Shaw says this is not the case and there are many pictures on the site that do not have text descriptions, which are required by the guidelines.

“The question is, ‘who has told them that their site passes such a test?’ Somebody must have misled them on this issue,’ he suggests.

Another poor performer this month is Figleaves that is the biggest faller having dropped 54 places to 97th spot with a score of 2.18, which compares with 5.46 in February. “It fails on everything: all accessibility tests and basic code quality. One of its main failings is the ‘press section’ archive where none of the links work,’ explains Shaw.

On a more positive note the biggest riser is the Littlewoods Shop Direct-owned Empire Stores that climbed an impressive 70 places to sixth spot with a score of 6.92, which compares with only 3.8 last month. What is strange is that Littlewoods’ other sites perform with such mixed results – Marshall Ward is in a credible 26th place while the Littlewoods site is in lowly 94th spot.

After criticising the websites of DSG over the past few months it is worth giving them some praise this time as most of its sites have moved up the table on the back of widespread improvements. Dixons has moved up 19 places, PC World up six and Pixmania up five. The only weak performer was its Currys site that dropped two places.

About Sitemorse

Sitemorse checks compliance, measures performance and tests function of your websites, by reading content, checking code and reviewing infrastructure to reduce risk caused by on-line failure. From single page monitoring to a complete site review, Sitemorse provides both management summaries and detailed technical reports (down to the line in the code).

glynnd@theretailbulletin.com

March's top website scoring 6.16 is North Dakota State. New Mexico State came bottom scoring just 0.75. New Mexico State was the greatest faller, dropping 26 places scoring 0.75. 1 site failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 3.87% tests found functional failure and 83.04% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was Minnesota State
* The poorest code quality was at Pennsylvania State 41,950 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was New York State

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/549

The survey was completed on the 10th March, in all we carried out 23,959,780 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

March's top website scoring 9.80 is Intelligent Finance. Investec Bank came bottom scoring just 0.87. AIB - Ireland was the greatest faller, dropping 32 places scoring 5.07. 4 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 6.67% tests found functional failure and 65.40% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was Egg
* The poorest code quality was at Derbyshire Building Society 22,701 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Islamic Bank of Britain

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/548

The survey was completed on the 9th March, in all we carried out 8,799,934 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

February's top website scoring 6.12 is Channel 4 News. Daily News came bottom scoring just 0.00. Anandabazar Patrika was the greatest faller, dropping 52 places scoring 2.07. 20 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 1.85% tests found functional failure and 93.91% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was The Wall Street Journal
* The poorest code quality was at The Sun 228,212 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Daily Sport

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/542

The survey was completed on the 26th February, in all we carried out 51,793,781 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

February's top website scoring 9.77 is North Down. East Staffordshire came bottom scoring just 1.97. Pendle was the greatest faller, dropping 238 places scoring 3.99. 7 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 2.81% tests found functional failure and 53.97% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was West Sussex
* The poorest code quality was at Guildford 43,324 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was London Mayor

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/541

The survey was completed on the 24th February, in all we carried out 83,885,945 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

February's top website scoring 9.44 is Smiths Group. Carnival came bottom scoring just 1.93. Next was the greatest faller, dropping 58 places scoring 3.04. 4 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 3.19% tests found functional failure and 67.91% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was Next
* The poorest code quality was at Shire 49,457 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Alliance Trust

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/540

The survey was completed on the 17th February, in all we carried out 16,128,437 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

February's top website scoring 9.90 is Intelligent Finance. Investec Bank came bottom scoring just 0.87. Leeds Building Society was the greatest faller, dropping 22 places scoring 6.60. 4 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 6.92% tests found functional failure and 64.49% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was Egg
* The poorest code quality was at Derbyshire Building Society 22,969 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Islamic Bank of Britain

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/536

The survey was completed on the 10th February, in all we carried out 8,906,456 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.

After a two-year legal battle, Target has agreed to pay $6 million and make its Web site more accessible to the blind in a class action settlement with the National Federation of the Blind.

Quite a few retailers have been involved in site changes to make the Web more accessible to those with vision difficulties, but Target has been the most aggressive in fighting such efforts. As such, Target’s settlement has an especially strong chance of pressuring retailers to aggressively embrace such changes.

The settlement, which was reached on Aug. 27, resolved what began on Feb. 6, 2006, when the NFB sued Target. The NFB said Target’s site violated the American with Disabilities Act because it’s not easily accessible to blind users. The case was certified a year later as a class action suit for legally blind individuals who couldn’t easily access Target.com.

Extract from StorefrontBack
http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/e-commerce/target-pays-6-million-to-settle-accessibility-lawsuit/

February's top website scoring 7.86 is Delaware. Alabama came bottom scoring just 1.73. Washington was the greatest faller, dropping 21 places scoring 4.25. 7 sites failed accessibility A and AA on every page. 1.87% tests found functional failure and 77.99% pages failed code standards.

* Website with the most functional failings was New Jersey
* The poorest code quality was at Pennsylvania 35,718 failures
* Overall the site with the fastest response time was Rhode Island

The survey is available in the new format at: http://www.sitemorse.com/rt/534

The survey was completed on the 6th February, in all we carried out 11,335,883 tests - testing function, checking compliance and measuring performance - reviewing the page content, code and delivery infrastructure.

Do you want to know more about the surveys, the tests and how we rank websites? If so please consult our Surveys Guide.