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Waterstone's, WH Smith's, Play and Amazon.co.uk have all scored poorly in a survey measuring online performance, with Waterstone's coming second from bottom overall.
The survey, conducted by website testing company Sitemorse, scored the sites according to criteria including accessibility, website performance, emails and metadata.
Of 474 sites surveyed, Waterstone's came in at 472, WH Smith at 423, Play.com at 415, Amazon.co.uk at 393, British Bookshops at 386, The Works at 298, Blackwells at 232 Hammicks at 178, John Smith at 156 and The Book People at 120. Furniture company DFS ranked the highest.
Lawrence Shaw, chief executive of Sitemorse, said: "Giving the customer a superior online experience is not just the domain of the big guns and those able to commit large resources to their online channel. The numerous small retailers scoring well suggest that money is not the answer to doing well online but that it is more about being agile and constantly monitoring the sites and continuously making adjustments to them."