Marks & Sparks not pants shock

Troubled UK retail giant Marks & Spencer has come up trumps in a website performance survey.

Segue Software carried out a survey of major e-tail sites to measure reliability and uptime and M&S came top with a 'health rating' of 94 per cent. Its homepage never took more than 10 seconds to download.

Segue tested download times every hour between 19 and 25 October. Tests were based on availability and the number of HTTP errors.

Marks & Spencer recently introduced new developments to its site in time for Christmas to address security and navigation. But significantly it also looked to increase the integration of the site into its core business. For instance, customers can now check the availability of more than 4,500 in-store products in real time.

The top 10 performing sites were:

1. www.marksandspencer.com
2. www.amazon.co.uk
3=. www.selfridges.co.uk
3=. www.harrods.com
3=. www.jungle.co.uk
6=. www.hmv.co.uk
6=. www.sainsburys.co.uk
8. www.argos.co.uk
9=. www.tesco.co.uk
9=. www.boots.co.uk