Bargain Booze and Fortnum & Mason websites weak among online drinks retailers in June

Bargain Booze’s and Fortnum & Mason’s websites performances deteriorate to give the top spot to The Whisky Shop yet again, according to tests conducted on the sites of the top 25 UK drinks retailers for June.

The Whisky Shop scored 6.64 out of 10 – matching its score from May – whereas Bargain Booze could only manage 4.86 compared with its 8.28 last month and F&M only achieved 5.72 versus 6.80 in May.

This decline pushed Bargain Booze down five places to sixth spot while F&M held its place in second spot in the ranked table of the top UK drinks retailers’ websites – produced exclusively for Retail Insider 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.

However, Bargain Booze was not this month’s biggest mover as Morrisons climbed eight places as the site tested this month is now the supermarket’s main online store rather than its specialist Morrisons Cellar site that has recently been rolled into the core website.

The other site change in June involved Waitrose that has been tested for the first time as its specialist Waitrose Cellar online store rather than the main site. It placed in 19^th spot whereas its main site last month was positioned more strongly in 14^th spot.

Among the other big movers in June was the Sunday Times Wine Club that declined seven places into 23^rd spot, with a score of 2.25 compared with 2.97. Such a sharp fall on the back of only a modest drop in its score suggests things are very tight in the middle of the top 25 table.

Laithwaites also disappointed with a fall of five places to 22^nd spot, which follows its decline of three places in May. This weakness mirrored the poor performance across the overall beers, wines and spirits category that in May was down 5% compared with April, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. And although the category was up 10% year-on-year, this compared with a gain of 20% for the overall online market.

For possibly the first time since testing began on the drinks websites for Retail Insider Londis has appeared in the table, placing in 11^th spot, with a score of 4.10. It had previously been excluded from the Sitemorse testing because of its reliance on JavaScript.

Top UK Drinks Retail Websites – June 2014

Company Name                      +/-       Score out of 10

The Whisky Shop         +2        6.64

Fortnum & Mason       same   5.72

Spar (UK)                     +1        5.23

Lidl                                    +1        5.13

EH Booth & Co           +3        4.92

Bargain Booze             -5         4.86

Budgens                           -1         4.82

BeerMerchants.com   +1        4.32

Iceland                              -2         4.22

The Wine Society        same   4.20

Londis                               new     4.10

Marks & Spencer         +3        3.40

Aldi                                    -2         3.34

Morrisons                       +8        3.22

Tesco                                -3         3.20

Slurp.co.uk                  +3        3.14

Majestic Wine             -4         3.04

The Drink Shop            same   2.89

Waitrose Cellar           new     2.88

Asda                            same   2.86

Sainsbury’s                  same   2.72

Laithwaites                  -5         2.50

Sun Times Wine Club  -7         2.25

Selfridges                    -1         2.14

Naked Wines               -1         1.88

Virgin Wines               -1         1.62

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