The Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK airport parking has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK airport parking companies perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK airport parking has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national airport parking providers, including Airport Parking & Hotels, Purple Parking, Sky Park, BCP, NCP, Parking4Less, Airparks, Holiday Extras, Park Hero, Jet Parks, Fly Park, and Maple Parking.

The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other airport parking brands to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate bookings. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.  

Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels

Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing.  Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.

Technical Website Compliance

Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. For airport parking brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for drivers needing to enquire about parking options and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as locations and prices.

In our last report, we noted that Purple Parking was seeing the worst level of 4xx errors, returning 293 in our crawls. In Q3, Purple Parking has made no improvements on 4xx error performance, now flagging with 300. Purple Parking must ensure that no key pages are blocked by broken link dead ends.

Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance

When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. Airport parking providers especially need to ensure their mobile site is perfect, as customers may need to access their information from the airport on their mobile devices.

In Q1, mobile page speed scores ranged from 50 to 89. These scores now sit between 26 and 77. We have seen universal falls in mobile page speed scores in all the sectors we specialise in, so these falls in performance shouldn't cause too much concern. However, it's important to note that Maple Parking, the lowest-scorer of Q1, now have a score of 31, placing them 10th for Q3.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Airport parking companies should be continually pushing to improve their DA by sharing great-quality content about their locations and parking options.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however, it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. DAs in Q3 are very similar to Q1, with scores sitting between 20 and 76. Maple Parking, which sits at the lowest end of this range, has dropped two points since our last report.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. With the increase in electric vehicles over the past few years, now would be a great time to push the ‘out with the old, in with the new’ narrative, and advertise any EV-specific parking spots they may have available.

In Q1, all twelve airport parking companies had seen a year-on-year increase in organic traffic. In Q3, two companies saw a drop in traffic, while a third maintained their 2022 levels. Jet Parks maintained its position as the biggest gainer, securing a 238% increase in organic traffic year on year. 

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Airport parking providers should be utilising all universal search features as potential customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs', and 'people also ask'.

While FAQ was the most-appeared-for Universal Search result in Q1, 'reviews' and 'people also ask' results were most common in Q3. Holiday Extras secured the most appearances for Universal Search overall, primarily made up of 22,300 'people also ask' results.

The Longtail Keyword Opportunity

Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options airport parking companies could be using such as ‘parking near Heathrow’ and ‘best airport parking options’.

Holiday Extras are appearing for the most longtail keywords overall, though many of these can be attributed to additional services they offer, such as airport hotels and insurance. Though Fly Park is ranking for 9,823 longtail keywords overall, they are appearing in the top three for only 15 of these. Fly Park must evaluate which pieces of content on its site hold the most potential for improving these appearances.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019.

Holiday Extras are the only airport parking provider to be using Facebook ads. They have used a range of static images, square format videos, and vertical videos, to appeal to users on a variety of devices.

Top Social Shares & Content

When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social Media could be especially useful for sharing information about their different locations and any offers they are running.

Holiday Extras are the only airport parking provider with a significant social media following, with 260,600 Facebook likes. Though airport parking itself may not seem social media-worthy, providers can use social platforms to share aspirational holiday content that builds brand awareness with customers, for when they need their services.

Website Readability & Accessibility

20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, retailers lose customer interest and they turn elsewhere. All airport parking brands need to ensure their website is accessible for all potential customers.

In Q1, we noted that Purple Parking was seeing the largest amount of accessibility challenges, flagging 334 alerts. In Q3, Purple Parking made no improvements to accessibility. The airport parking providers seeing issues should be reviewing and optimising their accessibility, and investigating to see if a simple change can make their site more simple to access.

Q3 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 airport parking providers on, check out our quick-look table below;

GET THE FULL 79-PAGE Q3 2023 REPORT

To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi.

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