The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK beauty and cosmetics retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 9 UK beauty and cosmetics retailers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK beauty and cosmetics retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 9 UK beauty and cosmetics retailers, including Cult Beauty, BEAUTY BAY, LOOKFANTASTIC.COM, Illamasqua, Charlotte Tilbury Beauty, Mallows Beauty, Barry M Cosmetics, P LOUISE MAKEUP ACADEMY LTD, and Clomaná.
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 beauty and cosmetics retailers to win brand exposure, drive online enquiries, and generate holiday bookings. The report highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons across 20+ online performance metrics and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for beauty and cosmetics retailers to win brand exposure, online growth and sales.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 9 UK beauty and cosmetics retailers, check out our quick-look table below:
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK beauty and cosmetics retailers or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each site 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.
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.
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q1 2025, the average budget wastage across these UK beauty and cosmetic retailers was £7,398 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £4 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively. In this quarter, BEAUTY BAY has the highest budget wastage at £23,700, and both Mallows Beauty and P LOUISE MAKEUP ACADEMY LTD have the lowest budget wastage at £4.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Cult Beauty and BEAUTY BAY both have the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £1, and Mallows Beauty has the highest at £27.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Clomaná has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £158,000, and both LOOKFANTASTIC.COM and Illamasqua have the lowest at £27.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
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. Beauty and cosmetics retailers will want to ensure that key information for products is stated clearly and that its linking structure is accurate and works accordingly.
Illamasqua flagged the most 4xx errors (36). Beauty and cosmetic retailers can reduce their 4xx errors by fixing broken internal links, auditing external links, and using website crawlers and spot these errors in the first place.
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. To create a positive website experience, all brands should optimise their website so that each page takes no longer than 3 seconds to load. A fast-loading website is ideal for consumers existing in a fast-paced market where they can resort to competitors in a second.
The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 74 and 24, with Barry M Cosmetics reporting the lowest mobile speed. Websites that take less than three seconds to load can reduce bounce rates and increase visitor retention.
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. The key for beauty and cosmetics retailers to improve their DA rating, is to ensure they’re nailing the basics: delivering quality content that other websites will want to link to. Content should be unique, relevant, and current for other websites with a similar target audience to watch to backlink to.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA score for this quarter ranged between 78 and 6, with Clomaná flagging the lowest DA score. Retailers can improve their DA score by focusing on natural keyword placement and aiming for high-quality backlinks by building relationships with authority websites in the same niche.
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. As consumers are cutting back on treats and expendable items due to the cost of living crisis, it's to be expected that we’ll see a decline in organic traffic year on year. However, not everyone is cutting back on luxuries like beauty and cosmetic products, so brands should adhere to a keyword strategy, where they track its performance regularly.
Three of the brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, while Clomaná saw the biggest increase (+169%). On the other hand, 4 brands reported a decrease on mobile, while Clomaná saw the biggest increase on this device, too (+161%).
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. 'Reviews' and 'images' results are all ways for holiday parks to gain trust, and share eye-catching content about their locations, directly from the SERP.
LOOKFANTASTIC.COM secured the most Universal Search appearances (124,021), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’ and ‘images’. On the other hand, Clomaná reported the fewest overall appearances (23) and should ensure they’re optimising images to increase this figure.
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 brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Beauty and cosmetics retailers should focus on longtail keywords, such as ‘body oils and shimmers’, to help outperform competitors. Most importantly, retailers should track the performance of its keyword strategy and make adjustments accordingly.
Charlotte Tilbury Beauty secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,504), while LOOKFANTASTIC.COM secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (24,801). Reporting appearances in positions 4–10 isn’t a missed opportunity, as it’s one of the quickest and most effective ways for brands to increase their rankings in search engines.
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. Facebook ads are a great way for blinds and shutters brands to reach people who are specifically looking to make improvements to their homes.
We’ve included examples of Charlotte Tilbury Beauty’s sponsored posts. There’s certainly a sense of branding within the text on these posts, and using the same videos across two posts with different texts suggests that this retailer is testing engagement.
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. Beauty and cosmetics retailers should upload social media content that benefits its audience and isn’t just related to its products.
BEAUTY BAY has the most Facebook Likes (1.5 million), while Charlotte Tilbury Beauty has the most Instagram followers (7.1 million). Brands should also monitor their engagement rates, and Charlotte Tilbury Beauty also reported the most total engagement (158,953). This metric informs brands whether their social media followers are interacting with their posts so they can assess what post types work and where they should make improvements.
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 as they turn elsewhere. Beauty and cosmetics retailers should focus on delivering a website that’s accessible for all, taking into account devices their target audience uses as well as any personal deficiencies its consumers may have.
P LOUISE MAKEUP ACADEMY LTD reported the most accessibility alerts (461), while Mallows Beauty flagged the most contrast errors (56). It’s important that brands reduce these alerts and errors to ensure they’re including audiences with all vision disabilities and those using a screen reader.
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.