A good online performance is more than ever the hallmark of a well-run business, and retailers are increasingly finding that digital governance is as important as a well-run high street presence.

A good “bricks and clicks” strategy is essential, whether or not retailers are selling online or just using their digital presence to help persuade potential customers to enter their stores.

The Sitemorse Global Top 250 retail website INDEX is a unique benchmark of the websites of the world’s top retailers, produced exclusively for the World Retail Congress.

To be held over a three day period this year in Paris during early October, the World Retail Congress will provide the critical context, new ideas and challenging thinking for senior retailers to understand the "new retailing" that is about to emerge from the global recession.

All the biggest climbers in our Q4 rankings are from the USA and Canada, following an earlier trend that saw US-based retailers account for an impressive eight of the top 20 places in the table of the Top 250 global websites in Q3.

However, the top three performing websites this time are firmly European-based. Nordic grocer ICA retain its top spot with an improved score of 8 out of a possible 10 marks, well ahead of Dutch merchant C&A Europe, retaining second spot with a score of 6.7/10. In third place is the no-frills Polish supermarket Biedronka, owned by Portuguese corporate group Jerónimo Martins SGPS, with a score of 6.3/10.

The UK is represented in the top ten performers by Associated British Foods/Primark and Spar’s UK website, but it’s the Canadians and Americans who are the real story this time, with stationers Staples up 83 places to 117th.

Rona Inc. a Canadian hardware, home improvement and gardening products specialist, rockets from 111th to 23rd place, US-based Liberty Media Corporation, which owns interests in a broad range of media, communications and entertainment businesses, is up from 154th to 28th, and Metro Inc, a food retailer operating in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario rises to 17th from 159th in Q3.

Germany’s Otto Group, traditionally the world's largest mail order retailer and currently one of the biggest e-commerce companies operating in more than 20 countries, is the highest climber of this INDEX, moving from near the bottom to the top of our table in just one quarter. The Otto group website has moved up from 223rd to 11th place in our overall ranking.

The most accessible website in our Retail 250 testing – important as many disabled or partly-disabled people use assistive technology to navigate websites – is that of the Spanish-based supermarket group Mercadona SA, which scores 8/10. Behind them is the Blockbuster video website with 7/10.

Although Sitemorse tested the top 250 global retailers, the final table contains only 220 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.

Sitemorse CEO Lawrence Shaw has been a member of the expert judging panel for the 2013 World Retail Awards, the retail industry's most prestigious accolade, for the last four years.

Now in its eighth year, the World Retail Awards will bring together a top-ranking group of board-level specialists to analyse entries. An extensive range of Sitemorse tests will once again be used as part of the review process for entrant company websites to ensure they meet high standards.

About the INDEX

The scores for the Global Top 250 retailers table are created by Sitemorse (www.sitemorse.com) using its automated software that reads and reviews the first 125 pages of each site and places them in a ranked table based on User Experience (UX), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Search Capability (SEO).

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.

Sitemorse services such as Governisation and the Web Management Toolkit immediately find the issues that affect web users the most on any website, help demonstrate real improvement and ensure you have control and 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. We offer a confidential internal 'company wide' website testing and benchmarking service - allowing you to review the position of all the sites in your organisation. Contact us to request further details and / or an example.

More information

• More information about our surveys and what they test can be found on our website http://www.sitemorse.com/INDEX/