The top 20 best performing retail websites in Q2 included seven from the clothing and accessories category compared with five in Q1, according to the latest review of the UK's top 500 retail websites by Digital Governance specialist Sitemorse. By Glynn Davis

Not only was the combined category strongly represented in terms of the number of retailers in the top 20, but six of these seven had moved up in the table this quarter, which maybe suggests an increased focus on online by the fashion sector.

Certainly there has been plenty of activity in the category recently with Yoox and Net-A-Porter agreeing to merge and Farfetch completing a fundraising round to grow its global operation.

The assessment and review of the 500 sites is undertaken by Sitemorse using automated Digital Governance 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.

Aquascutum delivered the greatest improvement this quarter as it moved up 128 places into 11th spot, with a score of 6.66 compared with 4.02 in Q1. It was followed by Courtesy Shoes that climbed 45 places to ninth spot, Racing Green up 14 places to fifth spot, and Miu Miu that ascended nine places to 15th spot. The other clothing and accessories retailers in the upper grouping were Jane Shelton in eighth spot and Diesel (London) in 16th spot.

The combined category had a number of big jumpers this quarter alongside Aquascutum as Samuel Windsor moved up 158 places into 37th spot, Hawes & Curtis, was up 147 places to 42nd spot, and Thomas Pink, up 101 places to 124th spot.

On a less positive note there were also some serious fallers in Q2, with MyVintage dropping a massive 393 places to hit bottom spot in the table, Officers Club fell 194 places to 384th spot, slater Menswear slid 313 places to 370th spot, and Shoes.co.uk drifted 160 places to 125th spot.

The final ranked table for Q2 includes only 428 retailers because merchants were excluded for example; if they used assistive technology such as JavaScript, which breaks the general “rules of accessibility” of internet sites, according to Sitemorse. This represents an improvement on Q1 when a lesser 424 were included.