The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK chocolate suppliers has just been published. Learn how the top 6 UK chocolate suppliers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK chocolate suppliers has just been published. It covers the largest 6 UK chocolate suppliers, including Hotel Chocolat, Montezuma's Chocolates, Love Cocoa, Chococo, Prestat, and GNAW Chocolate.

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 UK chocolate suppliers to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and increase both orders and the acquisition of new stock. 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 6 UK chocolate suppliers brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK diamond dealers 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 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.  

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. UK chocolate suppliers will want to ensure customers can find information on products, including details about flavours and packages available, plus details needed for postage and order tracking.

Chococo flagged 96 4xx errors. This UK chocolate supplier can reduce these errors by updating any broken links and redirecting users to other links if products are no longer available.

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. In a saturated market, UK chocolate suppliers must ensure that customers receive a positive user experience from every touchpoint.

The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 34 and 12, with Hotel Chocolat reporting the slowest speed. Upon closer inspection, this UK chocolate supplier should ensure that all images are optimised and compressed to improve download speeds. It’s also important that it uses a mobile-friendly theme to help increase its mobile site speed.

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 is not gained through sponsored ads. UK chocolate suppliers should focus on creating shareable content that other websites will want to direct their audience to, which means focusing on topics that aren’t just specific to its brand.

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 for this quarter ranged between 72 and 32, with GNAW Chocolate flagging the lowest DA. This UK chocolate supplier also saw the fewest backlinks, and it should adopt a PR strategy to help improve this category, which will make a difference to its DA 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. UK chocolate suppliers have an opportunity to gain organic traffic by using an effective keyword strategy and assessing its success regularly. Customers are likely to purchase from a brand they trust and one that appear to offer what they’re looking for.

Only 1 supplier saw a decrease in organic mobile traffic, while 2 reported a reduction in organic desktop traffic. Alternatively, Love Cocoa saw the biggest increase in both desktop and mobile organic traffic, with the majority coming from mobile.  

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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. UK chocolate suppliers will want to ensure they have a strong performance for 'reviews' and ‘images’ so that potential customers feel they can trust the brand and are confident in what they’re purchasing.

Hotel Chocolat secured the most Universal Search appearances (237,97), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’ (11,100). Alternatively, Prestat reported the fewest Universal Search appearances (435) and should focus on optimising images to make improvements to this result.

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 brand-new search terms as they enter Google’s index. UK chocolate suppliers can optimise towards high purchase-intent phrases, such as ‘hot chocolate', 'chocolate gift set’, or even specific brands.

Hotel Chocolat secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (2,747) and positions 4–10 (3,895), while the runner up reported 210 appearances for position 3 and 358 for positions 4–10.

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.

We’ve included examples of Hotel Chocolate’s sponsored Facebook posts. This chocolate supplier included 2 vertical videos and 1 vertical image across all posts to cater to mobile users, and it included the same text across 2 posts with different media choices, suggesting that it’s testing the success of media.

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 brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. UK chocolate suppliers can create shareable social content that isn’t just focused on the brand to build a relationship with its online community.

Hotel Chocolat has the largest Facebook page (260,600 Likes) and the largest Instagram account (333,800 followers). However, GNAW Chocolate reported the highest total engagement rate (2,370) — which is an important sector for brands to assess to check their followers are interacting with their content.

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. Sites which have large volumes of products, with different models that may only differ slightly in their specifications, must ensure that information is presented as clearly as possible, to improve accessibility.

Hotel Chocolat flagged 148 accessibility alerts, which, upon closer inspection, is due to redundant title text and redundant links. It’s important that brands limit accessibility alerts to assist with readability for those using a screen reader.

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.

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