Banks Websites Report and Ranking – January 2006 : E-consultancy.com

Banks Websites Report and Ranking – January 2006Release Date: 26 January 2006
Overview of findings
Top of the league and best site overall was Skipton Building Society (www.skipton.co.uk). At the bottom of the table, representing the poorest site overall was Investec Bank (UK) Limited (www.investec.com/unitedkingdom).

For a copy of the full report, at no charge please email banks_0106@sitemorse.com

Website Function
8 sites were error free this month.

• http://www.britannia.co.uk

• http://www.firstdirect.com
•
http://www.islamic-bank.com

• http://www.laiki.com/web [The Cyprus Popular Bank Public Company]

• http://www.leedsbuildingsociety.co.uk

• http://www.lloydstsb.com

• http://www.mmbs.co.uk

• http://www.tesco.com/finance

Website Compliance
Accessibility Compliance – results of automated testing against the mandatory requirements of Priority 1 (A) Accessibility (sites are also tested for AA compliance):
12 sites had 0% of pages failing accessibility A, 31 sites scored less than 10% of pages with failures but 9 sites had more than 99% of pages failing accessibility A.

Following sites failed the mandatory A tests on every page;
• http://www.bankofcyprus.co.uk
• http://www.bankofengland.co.uk
• http://www.egg.com
• http://www.islamic-bank.com
• http://www.laiki.com/web [The Cyprus Popular Bank Public Company]
• http://www.theuniversal.co.uk
• http://www.triodos.co.uk

HTML – The site with the lowest number of warnings [HTML standards compliance within the requirements laid down by W3C and IETF] was HFC Bank (www.hfcbank.co.uk) with 5.

The Co-operative Bank PLC (www.co-operativebank.co.uk) had the poorest HTML with nearly 38,500 failures.

Website Performance
26 sites passed all basic speed tests, looking at first page download and simulated as being viewed by users with modem [56k] and ADSL [512k] access.

The site with the fastest response time was Bank of Ireland (www.bank-of-ireland.co.uk); Investec Bank (UK) Limited (www.investec.com/unitedkingdom) had the slowest response time and was 39 times slower than Bank of Ireland.
The site with the fastest download speed was Bank of England (www.bankofengland.co.uk); Furness Building Society (www.furnessbs.co.uk) had the slowest download speed and was 34 times slower than Bank of England.

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 with the requirements.

For further information, please contact Nicholas Le Seelleur
press@sitemorse.com +44 (0)207 193-0422