The results are in for the latest Sitemorse survey of the top 500 retail websites in Q2, and following its bottom ranking last quarter, Screwfix will be pleased to see its position raised to 414.


Rated on accessibility, broken links, quality, performance and SEA capability, DIY retail giant B&Q saw its website plummet from 378 in Q1 to 440, while Homebase fared even worse at 449.

DFS Furniture Company held on to its website's stellar reputation shown it is number one ranking last quarter, dropping just one place to second. The retailer was one of the few websites reported by Sitemorse to be completely error free.

Fired Earth, who topped last quarter's DIY sector in 9th place, dropped 20 points. Another faller was Wyevale Garden Centres (Garden Centre Group), which kept its ranking in the top 25 but fell a far cry from its previous 7th place position.

Sitemorse also ranked the websites in terms of 'click and wait' times, naming and shaming those with the slowest response times. Once again Conran Shop Holdings ranked slowest, with its longest wait time of 89.05 seconds almost four seconds slower than last quarter's result. Other slow offenders included Furniture Village with its slowest time at 34.10 seconds and Wickes at 8.12 seconds. Sitemorse pointed out that a wait time of more than 0.75 seconds can "have a negative effect on user experience."

Accessibility was also tested, with a huge number of retailers showing 100% failure, meaning every page had an issue. Among these culprits was Budget DIY, Garden and Leisure, Amazon UK and Screwfix.

When DIY Week visited Screwfix's website this morning, we found an error message saying it was temporarily unavailable. This has since been rectified and the website is now working as normal.

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