Three new names earned a top ten placing in the table of the best performing UK retail websites to join long-standing high-scorer furniture retailer DFS, according to latest results from Sitemorse’s quarterly testing of the UK Retail 500.

The websites of Jo Alexander, Aldi and Adams Childrenswear entered the upper echelons this quarter with each of them moving 16 places up the table. This follows strong moves in the previous survey earlier this year, when they all earned spots in the top 25.

Going one better and entering the top 10 is a major achievement and is a result of them each scoring more than seven out of 10, which Sitemorse deems to be the level that all retailers should aim to achieve.

The testing of the 500 sites is undertaken by Sitemorse using automated software that, page by page reads the first 125 pages of each retailer’s sites to generate a ranked table based on checks to Quality, User Experience, Accessibility, Performance and SEO capability of each of the websites.

Lawrence Shaw, chief executive of Sitemorse, said: “That these three diverse retailers have further built on their previous improvements highlights the fact they are taking their websites seriously and are incrementally improving their performances. It will be interesting to see how they place when we next test the Retail 500 sites later in the year.”

At the head of the table the top two retailers flip-flopped again as DFS regained the top position pushing Anoushka London into second spot with a score of 9.50 versus the latter’s 9.37. Both merchants improved on their Q2 scores to give them very impressive numbers that sets them well apart from the rest of the field as third-placed Pownall Carpets came in with 8.38 – nearly a whole point behind Anoushka London.

Big jumpers of the Q3 survey included: Tissot, up 309 places; Velvet Affair, up 272; Zara UK, up 248; Divertimenti, up 231; and Early Learning Centre, up 219. This represents particularly strong progress for Zara.

The final ranked table for Q3 includes only 459 retailers because merchants were excluded from the testing if they used assistive technology such as JavaScript, which breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites, according to Sitemorse. This represents a significant fall on Q2 when the table contained 471 retailers.

About our surveys, and how they work

For more than a decade, Sitemorse has been the world's only single solution for web content governance, monitoring, recording and benchmarking.

Our unique Index publications, published several times a year, provide an up to the minute snapshot of the best and brightest business websites, with insight into which are passing – and failing - vital tests in performance, compliance, and accessibility.

Our software is used to test the sites of major organisations in a variety of sectors, (for example, FTSE All Share companies, and the UK Top 500 retail companies) to compile an index of who ‘does the web’ best.

Sitemorse is now the suite of choice for organisations wishing to ensure their sites provide total, holistic web governance and a great user experience. Our hundreds of clients across major corporates, local and national government, utilities, financials and the health sector rely on us to help them improve the performance, compliance and quality of their websites, delivering control and web confidence.

Web content management systems alone cannot hope to cover major issues such as performance, compliance, brand, accessibility and quality without help. Our products integrate (including pre-live checking - within your CMS) to ensure these vital areas are constantly under control.

We offer three levels of products, from our enterprise platform 'Governisation', a blend of governance and optimisation, to a suite of tools to help web editors and managers, as well as free in-browser tools that can be used by any web user to quickly ensure pages are error-free (our web managers toolkit). All our services are SaaS based, with no set-up or management and are designed to ensure that our hundreds of clients in major corporations, the financial sector, and central and local government have total confidence in their websites.

Sitemorse is now the suite of choice for organisations wishing to ensure their sites provide total, holistic web governance and a great user experience. Our hundreds of clients across major corporates, local and national government, utilities, financials and the health sector rely on us to help them improve the performance, compliance and quality of their websites, delivering control and web confidence.

Web content management systems alone cannot hope to cover major issues such as performance, compliance, brand, accessibility and quality without help. Our products integrate (including pre-live checking - within your CMS) to ensure these vital areas are constantly under control.

We offer three levels of products, from our enterprise platform 'Governisation', a blend of governance and optimisation, to a suite of tools to help web editors and managers, as well as free in-browser tools that can be used by any web user to quickly ensure pages are error-free (our web managers toolkit). All our services are SaaS based, with no set-up or management and are designed to ensure that our hundreds of clients in major corporations, the financial sector, and central and local government have total confidence in their websites.

Technical Data

This survey took place on July 10, 2012 and involved benchmarking more than two million separate URLs. Poorest code quality was recorded for the Jewellery Catalogue site, with more than 411,000 failures. Fastest overall response time from any site tested was convenience store Londis.

• For further Information: Geoff Paddock, Head of Communications on +44 1525 375057, gpaddock@Sitemorse.com

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