The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK airport parking has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK airport parking companies perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK airport parking has just been published. It covers the largest 11 national airport parking providers, including Airport Parking & Hotels, Purple Parking, Sky Park, BCP, NCP, Parking4Less, Airparks, Holiday Extras, 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.

Q3 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 airport parking providers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK airport parking brands or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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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.

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.

The mobile site speed ranged between 63 and 27, with Fly Park reporting the lowest mobile site speed for this quarter. This UK airport parking can increase its mobile site speed by ensuring that all images are optimised.

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. For Q2 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 63 and 27, with Fly Park reporting the lowest mobile site speed for this quarter. This UK airport parking can increase its mobile site speed by ensuring that all images are optimised.

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. 

In our previous audit, 8 of the 11 airport parking brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on both mobile and desktop. In this quarter, 9 of the 11 brands saw a decrease in organic traffic on mobile, and 8 saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop.

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'.

Holiday Extras continues to see the most Universal Search results (a total of 59,669). The majority of these results were from ‘images’, and Jet Parks received the fewest appearances for ‘images’. This airport parking can make improvements by optimising images with keywords to help increase their chances of appearing in search engines.

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’.

Once again, Holiday Extras saw the most longtail keyword appearances in position 3 (7,754) and positions 4–10 (23,407). On the other hand, Fly Park reported the fewest longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (12) and positions 4–10 (681). This airport parking should asses the longtail keywords it’s using to ensure its incorporating phrases that its target audience enter in search engines.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, 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. For UK airport parking, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see parking availability, prices, and location options.

We’ve included 3 examples of Holiday Extra’s sponsored Facebook posts. This airport parking used the same text and imagery for each post, and it should add some diversity to track which media or written content helps to increase conversions and/or traffic.

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 continues to have the largest Facebook page (263,700 Likes) and Instagram followers (14,700). It’s important that all brands post content to their social media regularly to ensure that their followers get the opportunity to engage with their content and not forget about their brand.

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 our previous audit, Purple Parking flagged 332 accessibility alerts. In this quarter, this airport parking has increased this figure to 341 — making it at the top of the leaderboard for the most alerts. Purple Parking should address redundant title text to help reduce this figure.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q3 2024 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.