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| Marston’s fizzes back to the top of the Sitemorse IndexThe best FTSE website bar none is run by Wolverhampton-based brewer and pub chain Marston’s in a powerful return to the top of our second survey of the FTSE All Share company websites in 2013.
By: Sitemorse Ltd The FTSE All share index features some of the best-known companies traded on the London Stock Exchange, and many of the 500 or so compared in our new Index are household names. Winner Marston’s has a history stretching back to the 1890s and currently runs 2000 UK pubs, as well as being the largest brewer of cask beer in Britain, and an award winning real ale producer. First listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1947, it also runs five major regional breweries in the Midlands, Lake District and the South of England. The new Chairman of Marston’s, Roger Devlin – due to take over later this summer – will no doubt be interested to hear news of the company’s latest success. First quarter top performer, Birmingham-based St. Modwen Properties, the UK’s leading regeneration specialist, scored 8.9 out of a possible 10 in our automated testing dropping a place this time. St. Modwen focuses on developing commercial property and residential land. In third position this time there is a new site - Personal Assets Trust - a self-managed investment trust run by its board. This site scored 8.1 of a possible 10 marks. The testing of just over 500 sites – the all-share index has more but a number were excluded from the survey - is undertaken by Sitemorse using automated software that, page-by-page, reads the first 125 pages of each site to generate a ranked table based on checks to Quality, User Experience, Accessibility, Performance and SEO capability of each of the websites. Other well-performing top-ten sites include high street newsagent WH Smith PLC, up 24 places with a score of 8/10, Artemis Alpha Trust PLC, a leading UK-based active investment management house, down one place to fifth position , Land Securities Group plc , the UK’s largest commercial property company, down four places with 7.9/10. Also doing well were Oxford instruments PLC, a leading provider of high-technology tools and systems for industry and research, up one place with 7.9/10, Sheffield-based property and construction company Henry Boot, down 2 places with 7.9/10, Premier Oil PLC, a growing oil and gas exploration and production company, also down two with 7.8/10 and Admiral Group PLC, based in South Wales and one of the UK’s largest car insurers, up one place on a score of 7.6/10. Other high performers in the top twenty sites tested include Carpetright PLC, up 37 with 7.5/10, UK Mail Group PLC, up 11 places on 7.5/10, Drax Group PLC, top ad agency Wpp PLC, Dignity PLC, Aberforth Smaller Companies Tst PLC, United Utilities Group PLC and Phoenix IT Group PLC. Sitemorse testing criteria are not concerned with design or layout, but purely on how well a website’s users will find it works. The full results of the benchmark can be seen in the surveys section of our website. Only seven of the FTSE All Share websites tested scored well on accessibility, even though it’s an area now backed up by UK law. The Marston’s site was the only website to score 10/10 for accessibility, but scoring 8 or 9/10 were British American Tobacco, WPP plc, Land Securities Group plc, Baring Emerging Europe plc, Imperial Tobacco Group plc and Berkeley Group Holdings. The success of the companies with the most efficient sites once again counterpoints the comparatively mediocre performance of some of the FTSE top names. No less than 334 companies scored less than five out of ten on our criteria this time. Although the very best sites in this survey scored between eight and ten, only 13 websites out of more than 500 tested could be classed as error-free, a small rise on the ten we recorded last time. Major names such as Halfords, Lonmin, Mothercare and Debenhams are near the bottom of the table, all with scores of less than three out of a possible ten. There’s good news, however, for pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, who have risen more than 100 places in the last two surveys, although still placed below the top 100, and BT Group PLC, up 63 to 158th position. BP’s new website failed to impress, and we rated them 472nd in the survey, with a score of just 2.4/10. Likewise a new website from Aviva was rated 257th with 4.4/10. The really big climbers in this survey are headed by ITV – those moving upwards included 3I Group PLC (+233) Centaur Media PLC (+181), Sportech PLC (+157), Hammerson PLC (+156) and ITV PLC (+148). Big fallers included Development Securities PLC (-280), Clarkson (-303), and Unite Group PLC (-375). Filtrona PLC was the fastest site we tested in terms of server performance, while Inmarsat, Amec, Clarkson, Prudential and Diageo share the dubious honour of being among the slowest sites tested. Debenhams PLC, with more than 260,000 failures, had the poorest code quality measured in the survey. Sitemorse concluded: As ever, success in managing a website can be measured by independent outside testing, but it’s also very much a product of dedication from the inside, with-often painstaking work from the web team on a day to day basis to keep everything ticking over nicely. We would recommend that all companies regularly review their sites for out-of-date legacy content, poor code, and missing images. The difference between being the best and worst performers in our tables comes down to taking reasonable care over minor details that can cause users major problems. More information More information about our surveys and what they test can be seen on our website at www.sitemorse.com For further Information: End
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