Aldi Tops Drinks Retail Websites Table

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Discount retailer Aldi is the new name at the head of the table of the Top 25 UK’s leading drinks retailing websites for July, which was a month of great change including a serious climb up the table by Naked Wines.

Aldi pushed aside last month’s leader The Whisky Shop following a jump up the table of five places with a very impressive score of 8.34 out of 10, according to the monthly table of UK websites for drinks retailers, produced exclusively for Retailinsider.com by website testing specialist Sitemorse.

To produce the rankings Sitemorse runs automated software that page-by-page reads the first 125 pages of each website and analyses on the basis of six key criteria - function, code quality, user experience, accessibility, performance and SEO capability. 


The sites tested within the Top 25 include a broad mix of supermarkets alongside leading specialist drinks sellers and a selection of pure online operators of various sizes that encompass the beers, wines and spirits sector. 

The move to the top of the table by Aldi highlights how it is not just the more upmarket operators that are delivering a strong performance from their websites as the top 10 places now includes four value retailers – Aldi, Lidl, Bargain Booze, and Iceland – alongside some less price-conscious merchants - The Whisky Shop, Fortnum & Mason and Budgens.

It has also been a good month for some of the specialist online-only retailers, with Naked Wines jumping a mighty 14 places into eighth spot with a score of 4.90 compared with only 2.40 last month.

It was joined in its upward move by Slurp.co.uk that had been languishing for some months but in June it moved up five places into 17^th spot. Laithwaite also had a better time as it eased itself off the bottom slot and into 23^rd place.

In contrast, some of the biggest names in the retailing game dropped down the table and now sit in the bottom half-dozen places, with Tesco having slipped three places to 18^th spot, Asda down two to 19^th, and Waitrose down one to 20^th.

Disappointingly this month two retailers were excluded from the Sitemorse testing. Both Londis and Sainsbury’s have not been included in the Top 25 table because of their reliance, to varying extents, upon JavaScript.

Top 25 Drinks Retail Websites – July 2012

Company Name                      +/-       Score out of 10

1.      Aldi                              +5        8.34    

2.      Spar (UK)                   same   7.44

3.      The Whisky Shop         -2         6.74

4.      Fortnum & Mason       -1         6.24

5.      Budgens                      -1         6.22

6.      Bargain Booze            +1        6.12

7.      Lidl                             +2        5.19

8.      Naked Wines              +14      4.90

9.      Iceland                        -1         4.74

10.  EH Booth & Co           -5         4.64

11.  The Wine Society        -2         4.10

12.  BeerMerchants.com    -1         3.96                

13.  The Drink Shop            +1        3.77

14.  Majestic Wine              -2         3.58

15.  Marks & Spencer        +3        3.30

16.  Selfridges                    same   3.10

17.  Slurp.co.uk                  +5        3.04

18.  Tesco                           -3         2.90

19.  Asda                            -2         2.90

20.  Waitrose                     -1         2.58

21.  Laithwaites                  +2        2.30

22.  Virgin Wines                -2         2.04

23.  Sun Times Wine Club  +1        1.79

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