The IMRG/Hitwise Hot Shops List celebrates its fourth anniversary, looking at how e-tail market leaders are doing, in terms of attracting visitors to their sites, while DIY retailers move up in the rankings.
Amazon's dominance of the Hot Shops list has remained unchallenged every quarter since the list was first published in Amy 2006. The UK website, which won a silver award in the Best Retail Website category at the 2008 Britain's Best Retailer Awards, organised by DIY Week, retained the top spot on the list, while its worldwide address, Amazon.com also appeared in the top 10, in sixth place.

Argos kept its spot in second place, after moving up from third last year. In fact, seven of the original top 10 from 2006 retained membership of the elite group this year, including Argos, Amazon UK, Amazon.com, Tesco.com,Your M&S and Next.com.

Six of the top 10 have physical stores, as well as leading websites, while 33 of the 50 Hot Shops also have a high street presence.

IMRG's ceo James Roper commented: "With multichannel retailers now accounting for two-thirds of the top 50 merchants, it is clear that these with both physical stores and an online presence are leading the growth in e-retail. This is also evidenced in the IMRG Capgemini E-retail Sales Index, where multichannel retailers are consistently outperforming their pureplay counterparts in terms of sales growth."

Department store chain John Lewis just missed out on the top 10, coming in at 11, while Debenhams was ranked at 19. The fastest climbers in the past four years include Asda, up to 28 from 49, and Screwfix, which jumped to 27 from 46 in May 2006.

The list also revealed improved positions for the major DIY and garden retailers since 2006, with B&Q and Screwfix moving up the ranks and Homebase, a new entry since 2006, in at 25. Another newcomer since the original list in May 2006 was TescoDirect, which was ranked in ninth place in the latest Hot Shops, while Ikea came in at 49.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson and Focus DIY were ranked lower at the end of the top 100 - in at 75 and 94 respectively.

Hitwise director of research Robin Goad said: "With summer just round the corner, DIY retailers are experiencing a season spike in traffic, with B&Q, Homebase and Screwfix all moving up the rankings. All three have also improved their position compared with last year, something that was expected, given that house and garden is currently the fastest growing online retail sector."