New index scores UK retail websites on commercial experience, not looks, finds reputation a poor

MANCHESTER, U.K. - Rezul -- The Barking Cat Commercial Experience Index, published today, ranks ten UK retail websites on whether the online experience actually helps a customer buy. Two of the least famous names in the group scored highest; several household brands sat mid-table and below.**

NANTWICH, England, 3 August 2026. Barking Cat, a commerce advisory practice, today published the first edition of the Commercial Experience Index, a recurring scored review of UK retail websites judged on a single axis: whether the observable online experience creates or removes the conditions a business needs to convert a visitor into a customer.

The Index scores each site out of 100 across seven measures, including proposition clarity, merchandising, the checkout, mobile performance drawn from real-world field data, and search readiness. Every score is taken from the live website and traces to something an observer can check or re-run.

Edition One covers ten brands. The two highest scores went to Finisterre and Passenger, neither a household name, each of which built an experience where the separate parts of the site reinforce the sale. Several of the most recognised brands in the group scored in the fifties, held there by specific and fixable weaknesses in the experience beneath the brand.

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The finding that frames the edition is that reputation was a poor guide to commercial execution. The rankings that typically crown retail websites measure how a site looks, how innovative a brand feels, or how it performs in a usability test. None measures whether the experience helps a customer complete a purchase, which is the question the Index is built to answer.

"The brands with the biggest reputations were, more often than not, not the brands delivering the best experience," said Steve Webster, founder of Barking Cat. "The gaps were quiet and specific, a page that moves as it loads, a checkout that hides its payment options, a homepage that leads with a discount instead of a reason to buy. None of it shows up in a ranking built on how a site looks. All of it shows up when a real customer tries to buy something on a phone."

The Index does not measure commercial performance directly, which no external observer can see, and does not claim to. It measures the observable experience through which commercial performance has to happen. It excludes commercial diagnosis, paid media, and the physical store estate, which require data beyond the public website.

Edition One is available to read in full, with the complete ten-brand table and a downloadable report, at https://www.barkingcat.ai. The Index will run again on a recurring basis, by theme and by season