The Web Marketing Association announced the findings of a decade-long study of web development trends in more than 80 industries and issued the resulting website-development benchmarks, based on nearly 10,000 website evaluations, in its "Internet Standards Assessment Report" (ISAR). The association, which sponsors the annual international WebAward competition, evaluates benchmarks in seven categories: design, ease of use, innovation, content, technology, interactivity and copywriting.

Gaming websites dominate the top scores in every category, followed by music, which placed second overall, and automobile and sports sites, which tied for third place. The industries with the lowest average scores included radio, public relations and search engines.

"According to our professional judges, design, ease of use and innovation are the most important contributors to a website's success or failure," said William Rice, president of the Web Marketing Association in a statement.

"However, our results found that industries overall excelled in content and copywriting over design and ease of use…. Innovation, while critical to a website's success, actually received the lowest average scores across all industries…what is groundbreaking in one industry may be commonplace in another."

Other industries scoring well were retail, healthcare and travel. Retail-oriented sites, including shopping, auctions and catalogs, ranked highest for interactivity. In the healthcare and travel industries, content, copywriting and ease of use dominated the scores.

The industries with the lowest average site scores included radio, public relations and search engines, all of which tend to concentrate on content rather than delivery platform, often placing too much information into too little space and hindering design and ease of use.