21 Oct 2003
Top of the league and best site overall was Bunzl plc [index score of 8.5], in second place BG Group [index score of 7.8].
Examples of problems found this month show how sites are frustrating both investors and the media with very basic errors.
20 of the sites tested were completely inaccessible due to severe violations of Priority 1 accessibility guidelines on their front pages, this is provided for information only, and is not currently taken into account in the rankings.
2 sites had no errors Bradford & Bingley and HSBC, with 37 having less than 10 – much improved from last time when it was just 21.
Only one site had over 1,000 errors in this test.
Of the sites tested 58 failed basic meta data test for their front page – same as last time.
26 of the sites tested passed all basic speed tests, looking at first page download, simulated as being viewed by a home [56k], ADSL [512k] and user with corporate access [1mb] a slight improvement from our last report.
Site with the lowest number of warnings [poor html] was Carnival Corporation plc.
Site with the fastest overall server response was Centrica plc, where average page response was 0.031 seconds. The site with the slowest response time was Granada plc where average page response was over 15 seconds per page. Overall, server response time was much improved from our last report.
Site with highest download speed was Amersham plc, and BT plc had the slowest download speed of sites tested.
The findings take into account the site size; e.g. a website with 10 pages and 1 error would score the same as a website with 100 pages and 10 errors – both having page/error ratio of 10:1
The MorseMark™ Ratings are based on over 10,000 tests of commercial, institutional and other websites conducted over the last year.
Tests were completed during the first week of October ’03, and a free copy of your own site summary is available on request. Our next report will be produced around the 15th December 2003.