Food and drink businesses are, on average, underperforming most compared with other industries when it comes to the speed, accessibility and the overall performance of their websites, according to new analysis of all FTSE 100 and 250 homepages by Contensis.

The findings have been published as part of new research: Big Players, Slow Web Pages: Which FTSE 100 and 250 Businesses Value their Online Presence the Most.

Media and publishing companies have the best performing websites. Meanwhile travel, hospitality and leisure and retail and grocery—industries which existentially rely on their online presence—failed to make it into the top half of the table.

Overall, the study also found that FTSE 250 companies are doing better than their FTSE 100 counterparts, loading a whole second faster and getting better scores for accessibility too. 

The full league table highlights the great disparity online, where on average, the homepages of chemicals, mining, oil and gas businesses take six seconds longer than media and publishing to load.

Diageo PLC achieved the best results of all the food and drinks businesses listed on either the FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 indices. With an industry average of just under 10 seconds for homepages to load and accessibility scores hovering around 80, there’s clear room for improvement, according to the study. 

Across the board, construction and engineering firm John Laing had the best Google Lighthouse performance with a score of 100 for overall performance, 97 for accessibility and a homepage load speed of less than half a second. 

The best performing FTSE 100 business, Kingfisher, which owns B&Q, among other home improvement brands, had an accessibility score into the mid-nineties and a homepage load speed of just over two seconds.

Richard Chivers, co-founder of content management system, Contensis, and chief executive officer of Zengenti, the software company which makes Contensis, says “This research shows us just how much the big players value their online presence. Industries that you’d expect to be doing really well, like retail, are not performing as you might think. Other industries, like food and drink, could be doing much better—especially when customer confidence is at an all time low.

“I think the biggest eye-opener is that, consistently, we all need to up our game when it comes to accessibility. Food and drink businesses, for example, should be mindful that  22 percent of the UK population have a long-term illness, impairment or disability according to latest figures. More can be done to support these users online which would be win-win for businesses operating in this space and their customers.”

To see the top five FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 performers in each sector listed above, visit: https://www.contensis.com/community/blog/ftse-website-performance.