The Q2 2023 benchmarking report for UK bespoke kitchen retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK bespoke kitchen retailers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q2 2023 benchmarking report for UK bespoke kitchen retailers has just been published.  It covers the largest 12 national bespoke kitchen retailers, including Harvey Jones Kitchens, Tom Howley, Point 5 Kitchens, The White Kitchen Company, Atlantis Kitchens, Mereway Kitchens, deVOL Kitchens, Martin Moore & Co, Naked Kitchens, Neptune, Poliform, and Kesseler.

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 bespoke kitchen retailers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate enquiries. 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 Q2 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. Bespoke kitchen retailers will want to ensure their site is up to date with current styles, with redirects put in place to direct users to alternative content when lines are no longer available. 

In Q1, we noted that deVOL Kitchens and Neptune were returning the highest levels of 4xx error codes. While deVOL have made some improvements, reducing 4xx codes by 100, Neptune have now more than doubled their figure, returning 661. Neptune must ensure that site visitors are not being blocked from key conversion pages by 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. As with ensuring users are able to easily navigate your site, serving a quick website gives a good impression to visitors, assuring them they can expect a high level of service at any touchpoint.

In our last report, we noted that mobile page speed scores ranged from 23 to 83. In Q2, these scores now sit between 12 and 55. However, with falls in mobile page speed scores being seen across all sectors we specialise in, this shouldn't be too concerning for our bespoke kitchen brands. That said, Harvey Jones Kitchens have improved from being our lowest-performing brand in Q1, to now leading the way! This is a commendable improvement from Harvey Jones and shows a concerted effort has been made to improve user experience.

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. By engaging with a digital PR specialist, bespoke kitchen retailers can identify content opportunities that will gain press coverage, and improve both their backlink profile and referral traffic.

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. As with Q1, DAs range from 16 to 66, with Neptune achieving the highest score.

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. We'd expect the cost of living crisis and post-lockdown dip in home renovations to lead to a sector-wide fall in interest in the sector, meaning bespoke kitchen brands will be competing for a much smaller pool of customers.

As expected, all bespoke kitchen retailers have now lost organic traffic year on year. Poliform are seeing the smallest loss, with their overall organic traffic falling by 15%. Other bespoke kitchen retailers must ensure that they are adapting their organic strategy and optimisations to account for changing consumer habits and needs.

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. 'Image pack' is a great Universal Search feature for bespoke kitchen retailers, who can show their ranges and catch viewers' attention directly from the SERP.

Though 'image pack' was the widest-used universal search result in Q1, this is now an underused opportunity among bespoke kitchen retailers. 'People also ask' results are now making the most appearances, with Harvey Jones securing the largest amount of results, with 175. A strong appearance in 'people also ask' results generally also points to great performance for longtail keywords too.

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. Bespoke kitchen retailers will want to optimise for high conversion-intent terms and phrases, including phrases relating to installation, time frames, and price ranges.

deVOL are ranking for the most longtail keywords overall, with a total of 8,230. However, deVOL are appearing in the top three for only 73 of these terms. deVOL must look to their existing rankings as a first port of call to improving performance and appearances for high-purchase intent phrases.

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.

We have included examples of Kesseler's Facebook ads below. Kesseler have used the same copy across three different creatives, enabling them to evaluate the impact of different visual styles across multiple audiences.

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. Kitchen retailers can look to the work they're doing to improve their DA and longtail keyword results to identify engaging topics that will be likely to be shared through social media.

Pinterest is a widely-used platform for bespoke kitchen retailers, a smart choice due to the visual nature of the platform and the high presence of an affluent audience directly looking for inspiration on their home improvement projects. With this in mind, Instagram is a similarly strong platform for kitchen retailers to focus efforts on, where Neptune have the highest volume of followers, with 429,700.

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 as they turn elsewhere. By maintaining high levels of accessibility on their site, bespoke kitchen retailers are also sending a message to potential customers that their kitchens too will be built with their needs in mind.

In Q1, we noted that deVOL Kitchens were struggling to maintain accessibility, delivering 515 alerts in our audit. For Q2, we're pleased to see that deVOL have reduced this figure to just 20, one of the lowest figures among all our kitchen brands. Martin Moore & Co are now showing the largest volume of accessibility alerts, returning a total of 70.

Q2 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

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

GET THE FULL 79-PAGE Q2 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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