Morrisons Cellar performs poorly among drinks retail sites

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Having launched with a great fanfare, the innovative website Morrisons Cellar has performed disappointingly during December, in the ranked table of the UK’s leading drinks retailing websites, which follows declines in previous months.

When the dedicated Morrisons site for wine launched in June it placed in 15th spot in the table but it has since dropped to 21st spot, helped by its fall of four places this month, according to the rankings of the top UK drinks retailers’ websites produced exclusively for Retailinsider.com by website testing specialist Sitemorse.

It has also been a poor month for Lidl that is the biggest faller in December, with a decline of nine places to 13th spot. Last month it was riding high in fourth place and very close to securing a place in the coveted top three.

In contrast its rival Aldi has moved up four places into fourth spot with a score of 5.04 out of 10 just behind another value operator Bargain Booze that moves up two places to 3rd spot. However, these two are some way off the top pair The Whisky Shop and Fortnum & Mason that scored 6.84 and 6.80 respectively.

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 Whisky Shop retains the top spot this month whereas its rival for many months Spar (UK) has had a weak December, with its fall of three places to fifth spot. This is the first time it has not been in the top two positions since the table has been produced in 2012.

Another major mover this month was The Drink Shop that climbed nine places to 11th spot with a score of 3.87 versus 2.53 in November. This places it well above many big names in the industry that continue to hog far too many of the lower slots in the table.

Both Londis and Sainsbury’s were again excluded from the Sitemorse testing this month because of their reliance on JavaScript.

 

Top UK Drinks Retail Websites – December 2013

 Company Name                      +/-       Score out of 10

The Whisky Shop         same   6.84

Fortnum & Mason       +1        6.80

Bargain Booze             +2        5.60

Aldi                              +4        5.04

Spar (UK)                     -3         4.97

Budgens                      +1        4.82

Iceland                            -1         4.76

BeerMerchants.com   +3        4.06

EH Booth & Co                +1        4.02

The Wine Society        -1         4.02

The Drink Shop            +9        3.87

Asda                            same   3.76

Lidl                              -9         3.61

Tesco                           -1         3.38

Laithwaites                  +3        3.22

Waitrose                     same   3.12

Slurp.co.uk                  -3         2.88

Majestic Wine             -3         2.86

Sun Times Wine Club  +2        2.71

Selfridges                    +2        2.40

Morrisons Cellar         -4         2.14

Marks & Spencer        -3         1.96

Naked Wines               same   1.88

Virgin Wines               same   1.62

 

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