silicon.com e-tail survey: Seasonal cheer for pure play dot-coms

Working with Mercury Interactive, silicon.com assessed ten leading UK e-tailers, and although the current resurgence of household names - recast as clicks and mortar players - is undeniable, we found them trailing pureplay dot-coms in several areas.

Start-ups such as Amazon, BOL and Streets Online fared well when it came to site performance and order fulfilment, while offshoots of real world stores such as HMV, WHSmith and Virgin Megastore propped up our league table.

Perhaps it's unsurprising that companies devoted to the web came out slightly ahead, given their greater familiarity with the medium. Whether they can maintain an advantage in future years is less certain.

Although a stalwart such as Woolworth - in the UK part of the Kingfisher group - trailed Streets Online, it's significant that towards the end of last year the dot-com was snapped up relatively cheaply, joining the very same Kingfisher stable in a deal worth £15.7m for an 85 per cent stake. It seems that when clicks and mortar firms can't beat them, they get out their cheque books. Only Amazon may be immune to this kind of shopping.

Now, almost exactly 12 months after upstart AOL announced its landmark deal with old Time Warner, the tide has turned and we should expect more old economy companies buying their new economy peers this year. And in many ways, for smaller dot-coms, their backers and their customers this may prove good news too.