Top of the league and best site overall was Daily Mail and General Trust Plc, in second place was Next. At the bottom of the table representing the poorest site overall was Reuters.

Website Function
- 2 sites were error free this month, Next and Wolseley. 37% of sites had 10 errors or less. The site with the highest number of errors was United Utilities with over 10,000.

Website Compliance
HTML - The site with the lowest number of warnings [HTML standards compliance with the requirements laid down by W3C and IETF] was Daily Mail and General Trust Plc with 1 error. Diageo had the poorest HTML, with over 101,000 failures.

Accessibility – 8 of the of sites scored 100%, 40% of sites scored 90%+ on the automated tests looking at the requirements of Priority 1 (A) accessibility, 11 sites had less than 1% compliance when tested against the mandatory requirements for Priority 1 accessibility.

Only 1 site, DMGT passed the tests for AA, priority 2 compliance.

The range of tests [Web Accessibility Initiative WAI] that can be completed automatically are limited, 100% compliance with the automated tests does not mean 100% compliance to the requirements.

 

Website Performance
- 28 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].

- The site with the highest download speed (site delivery capability) was Severn Trent, United Utilities; had the slowest download speed of sites tested, to put it into context the site was 290 times slower than United Utilities.

- The site with the fastest response time (testing web infrastructure, systems and software) was The BOC Group; United Utilities had the poorest time, the site was 518 times slower than The BOC Group.