Dobbies topped the table of the best performing websites in the garden centre category that places it in a healthy position as it hits the peak period of the year, according to the latest quarterly testing undertaken by specialist Sitemorse.

By Glynn Davis

When testing the UK’s top 500 retail websites in Q1 Dobbies performed best in its sector with a score of 6.57 out of 10 that places it well ahead of major rival Wyevale Garden Centres that managed to score a lesser 4.46.

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.

Among the 11 garden centre websites tested Haskins delivered the second best score, with a creditable 5.48, and was followed by DJ Squire & Co and then Klondyke Garden Centres with 4.91. These scores sit well with those achieved by retailers in other sectors.

It is interesting to note that three of the top five sites are transactional, which is impressive when considering that this is a category that does not typically have a high level of online sales versus store revenues.

Regardless of whether they are transactional or not all these top five garden centre retailers clearly recognise the benefit of keeping a well maintained online presence that reflects well on their brands – across all channels.

This will be especially vital over the Easter period when they are all seeking to capitalise on the surge in demand for garden-related goods – which could make or break their whole year.

About Sitemorse:

Sitemorse has been advising its clients about how to improve their web presence for more than a dozen years now, and its clever technical team have fine-tuned the powerful Sitemorse software engine so that it is capable of doing far more than just help find problems.

Hundreds of clients across major corporates, local and national government, utilities, financials and the health sector rely on Sitemorse to help them improve the performance, compliance and quality of their online assets, web, mobile and social.

The company offers true digital insight to many large and small organisations in public and private sectors, as well as publishing regular unique INDEX benchmarks spotlighting the true online leaders in a number of sectors, from London-listed blue chips to universities, central government to consumer finance providers.

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