Good prices and great site features pushed drugstore.com to the top of the Health category in the first ever Forrester PowerRankings announced today by Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR). Forrester PowerRankings combine survey data from online consumers, rigorous shopping-experience tests, and unbiased expert analysis to provide objective rankings of the leading eCommerce sites. Trailing drugstore.com in the Health category was MotherNature.com, PlanetRx, HealthShop.com, and NetGrocer.

Drugstore.com has created an eCommerce site that scores well with health and beauty shoppers in every area measured. In addition to the best scores for customer service, site usability, and features, drugstore.com also ranked second for cost and delivery & returns. Reasonable prices, one-click shopping, and free shipping for returns contribute to an online shopping experience that enables drugstore.com to dominate the Health category.

MotherNature.com and PlanetRx finished second and third in Health by capturing one scoring area each and making a respectable showing with online shoppers. With $20 off first orders, MotherNature.com was the category leader for cost, enabling it to edge out PlanetRx. Meanwhile, PlanetRx keeps things close with the best delivery in the category, a friendly return policy, and good customer service.

“This was an interesting category to score because it has a clear leader and two contenders that are working hard to get everything right,” said David M. Cooperstein, Consumer eCommerce research director at Forrester. “But both MotherNature.com and PlanetRx have some distance to go to catch drugstore.com. And the laggards — HealthShop.com and NetGrocer — are barely in the game at this point.”

Trailing the other sites by a wide margin, HealthShop.com and NetGrocer had broken links, missing information, and the highest costs in Health. With the lowest scores in five out of six areas, NetGrocer came in dead last. HealthShop.com redeemed itself by having the category’s easiest transactions and good customer service. But in the remaining areas, HealthShop.com fared little better.

Forrester PowerRankings use consumer survey data from Greenfield Online’s 400,000-person online panel to identify the most popular eCommerce sites. The online shopping experience for each site is then evaluated by a team of Forrester shoppers who perform a series of rigorous tests in eight areas. The Forrester shoppers’ experience and the consumer data are then synthesized to generate an overall PowerRanking.

Forrester PowerRankings are currently available for online brokerages and seven major retail categories: Apparel; Books, Music, & Video; Computing; General Merchandise; Health; Flowers; and Toys & Games. Forrester plans to add more categories to PowerRankings in the weeks ahead. Additional information about each of the categories, including a complete set of rankings and scores, can be found at the PowerRankings Web site — http://powerrankings.forrester.com.