A new Which? survey has asked British people to pick their best and worst experiences of safe shopping online over the past year, enabling the consumer organisation to rank most of the major sites in order of quality, according to Yahoo News.

In joint first place were AO.com, an electronics outlet, and LizEarle.com, a site offering beauty products to its customers.

At the other end of the scale in 100th place was mobile network provider, EE, just ahead of Evans Cycles and Vodafone.

There were a number of high profile retailers in the bottom 10 sites in terms of e-commerce experience, with PC World, H&M and Homebase all succumbing to criticism at the hands of their customers.

With over 10,000 participating in this study, it is safe to say that this is a representative sample of the UK as a whole. And the popularity of safe shopping online means that people have increasingly high expectations.

Amazon managed to find its way into the top 10, sharing eighth place with Ebuyer.com, FragranceDirect.co.uk and MACCosmetics.co.uk.

This shows that while some retailers may have significant resources at their disposal, the reality is that smaller sites still have an opportunity to outshine them and impress customers, as long as they are well designed and easy to use.

A spokesperson for EE said that the firm was disappointed in its bottom place ranking and was taking steps to ameliorate its online services in order to boost customer satisfaction.

It is also worth noting that even the top ranking sites achieved satisfaction ratings of 87 per cent, meaning that there is still room for improvement. And with the e-commerce market now worth billions annually, retailers cannot afford to allow customers to suffer from subpar experiences when they shop online with them.