Majestic Wine storms up table of top performing drinks websites in October
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For the third consecutive month Majestic Wine climbs further up the table of best performing drinks retailers’ websites to move into the top 10, according to tests conducted on the online stores of the top 25 UK drinks sellers in October.
The site moved up three places into 10th spot this month following its climb of five places in September and one in August – that is a result of its score gradually increasing from 3.04 to 4.32 out of 10.
Despite its strong performance over the past quarter of a year it still has some work to do before it is competing for the top spot that was again retained by Bargain Booze with a score of 7.92, which was an improvement on its 7.56 in September.
This puts daylight between it and second-placed The Whisky Shop that again scored 6.64 – this is despite the re-launch of the site and its award-winning ways as it recently picked up the Harpers award for Best Specialist Retailer of the Year 2014.
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.
It was a month of change as Sainsbury’s moved up four places to 16th spot, which marks a continuous gradual climb for the supermarket since April when it was very much down at the bottom end of the table.
Another major mover was Virgin Wines that moved up six places to 19th spot to take it off the very bottom position. It has been replaced by Laithwaites that fell four places and is rock bottom with a score of only 1.88 out of 10.
This came against a backdrop of online sales growing year-on-year at 7%, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, which also highlighted that this was the second lowest ever growth in the index history. However, beer, wines and spirits outpaced the overall 13% online growth recorded for the third quarter by achieving an uplift of 16%.
Londis was yet again excluded from the Sitemorse testing this month because of its reliance on JavaScript.
Top UK Drinks Retail Websites – October 2014
Company Name +/- Score out of 10
Bargain Booze same 7.92
The Whisky Shop same 6.64
Budgens same 5.72
Fortnum & Mason +1 5.72
Lidl -1 5.13
EH Booth Buy Generic tadalafil Online & Co +1 4.92
Spar (UK) -1 4.85
The Wine Society same 4.56
BeerMerchants.com same 4.32
Majestic Wine +3 4.32
Iceland -1 3.86
The Drink Shop -1 3.61
Aldi -1 3.60
Morrisons same 3.38
Tesco same 3.20
Sainsbury’s +4 3.20
Marks & Spencer -1 3.20
Slurp.co.uk -1 3.14
Virgin Wines +6 2.94
Waitrose Cellar -2 2.88
Asda -2 2.76
Naked Wines +2 2.70
Selfridges -1 2.34
Sun Times Wine Club -1 1.89
Laithwaites -4 1.88
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