October/November Website Rankings of 100 Retailers

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To: <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:08:46 -0400

The Retail Bulletin (UK)
Monday, October 29, 2007

By Glynn Davis

Quote "In the US Target.com now faces a class action lawsuit because of its
inaccessibility to blind people. More such actions are inevitable on both sides
of the pond."

After a brief spell at the top of the table of the 100 retail websites tested
this month Tesco's direct catalogue site direct.tesco.com fell swiftly from
grace to be replaced by rival supermarket Morrisons.

This was a dramatic drop for Tesco of a hefty 17 places with a score of only
5.5 out of 10 compared with 8.3 last month. It suffered from a variety of
failures including broken links and missing images that impacted significantly
on the customer experience on its site.

The comprehensive list of 100 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.

One of the big surprises of the month was the move by Habitat into second place
with a score of 7.85 having been previously excluded from the list because of
its reliance on 'assistive' technology, which SiteMorse believes breaks the
general "rules of accessibility" of internet sites.

Lawrence Shaw, founder of SiteMorse, says its dramatic inclusion in the list
highlights how Java Script-type code at the front-end of a website can hide the
fact that the underlying site is very good. "It can be frustrating that a good
website can be underneath but this shows why retailers need to constantly check
and test their sites," he says.

Shaw suggests that the appearance of Habitat, following that of Halfords two
months ago, is a sign that retailers are now taking notice of how simple
changes to their websites can make a big difference to how they operate.

The only website now excluded from the table is Gap following the replacement
this month of Screwfix with Republic because of the former's repeat offending
and the decision by SiteMorse that it was less of a major retail name than its
fashion chain replacement.

Another example of a retailer that has clearly made changes to its website is
Argos that has previously been criticised in this column for its poor
performance but this month it moved up an impressive 44 places to 27th spot
with a score of 4.7 compared with 2.22 last month. "The code quality has
improved significantly and this has helped its performance. And the
accessibility of the site is also up too," says Shaw.

Only 0.79 per cent of its pages now fail the accessibility test for visually
impaired people compared with 66.93 per cent last month. This is an issue that
all retailers should address because a failure to make their sites available to
all people not only loses potential sales but could lead to legal action. In
the US Target.com now faces a class action lawsuit because of its
inaccessibility to blind people. More such actions are inevitable on both sides
of the pond.

Among the retailers in the table failing the accessibility test are Mothercare
(with 56.69 per cent of its pages failing) and Mothercare-owned Early Learning
Centre (with 70.87 per cent pages failing). These contribute to their overall
poor showing with the former in the 79th spot and the latter plumb last in 99th
place.

What is surprising about these dire showings is that Mothercare has recently
been hyping its social networking site gurgle.com. Shaw suggests that retailers
are prone to put their time and money into such initiatives rather than
focusing their resources on addressing the fundamental flaws in their basic
websites. "Retailers are known for spending cash on fancy stuff when the
fundamental building blocks need to be put right first," he says.

(Full top 100 chart on source page)

http://www.theretailbulletin.com/news/octobernovember_website_rankings_of_100_retailers_29-10-07/
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October/November Website Rankings of 100 Retailers

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