Every quarter, Sitemorse runs an assessment of websites within a particular sector. For example 'Local Government', 'Central Government and Public Bodies', or 'London listed PLCs'. Sitemorse assesses each site on a number of categories including accessibility, broken links, performance, code quality, etc and creates an overall score from zero (the worst) to ten (the best). Sitemorse publishes these scores ordered by overall score. This is the Sitemorse INDEX.

The INDEX information can be seen at Sitemorse.com/index. It is a great way to see how your website compares to your peers and how it is improving (or not) over time.

To view changes in INDEX scores over time for a particular site, first select an INDEX from Sitemorse.com/index, such as the most recent quarter and the INDEX containing the site in question. Select the 'Full results' tab to see the first 50 websites. The rest of the websites can be viewed by selecting the link at the end of the page.

The long bar after the score uses the traffic light system to show how the quality of the site has changed over time and if moused over, shows the individual scores.

Select the website name link to see a chart showing more detail. Select the different categories, such as the accessibility button, or function/links button to see how the category score has changed over time. Viewing category scores over time can help locate the areas which, for example, have caused a drop in score, or to provide evidence for where areas have improved.

To investigate further, click on the free priorities link. This will show the pages with the most priority issues. Click on the manager tab to show priorities across the entire test, and click the developer tab to show information about issues of interest to developers.

If your organisation has a Sitemorse subscription, and you want to investigate further and see the full detail, there is no need to purchase the report, as your organisation already has access to this report and many more. If you need access to the detail, then let Sitemorse know. We will inform the master user of your Sitemorse service about you, and they can authorise your access to the Sitemorse reports.

If your organisation does not have a Sitemorse subscription, and you would like to view the report detail, click the purchase button and you can just pay for this report.

For more information on how the Sitemorse score is calculated, please see Sitemorse.com/benchmarks. Further information about the Sitemorse INDEX can also be found at Sitemorse.com/support.

Please see the following video, which explains with examples, about the Sitemorse INDEX and how to determine why a Sitemorse INDEX score has changed:
Video - determining why your Sitemorse INDEX score has changed