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

The latest Q2 2023 benchmarking report for UK energy providers has just been published.  It covers the largest 12 national Energy providers, including British Gas, EDF, E.ON, SSE, ScottishPower, OVO Energy, Octopus Energy, Utility Warehouse, Shell Energy, npower Business Solutions, SSE Renewables, and Utilita Energy.

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 energy providers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate new customer 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. Energy providers will want to ensure key information, such as rates and quote generators, are clearly signposted and not blocked off by broken links.

In our last report, we noted that Octopus Energy were seeing the highest level of 4xx error codes, with a total of 410. Octopus have reduced this figure to 86 in Q2 - a significant improvement, though they should still take care that users are not being led down dead ends. SSE Renewables are now returning the highest volume of 4xx errors, with 293.

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 technical site compliance, energy providers will want to ensure their site is quick to use and frustration-free for any visitors, to indicate a high level of service.

Mobile page speed scores in Q2 range from 25 to 55, compared to 1 to 93 in Q1. We have seen universal falls in mobile page speed across all the sectors we specialise in. With this in mind, the top performing energy provider falling from 93 in Q1 to 55 in Q2 is not as concerning as it may seem! That said, ScottishPower's improvement from a score of 1 to a score of 25 is commendable, as this score is till a useful gauge of how your site experience compares to competitors.

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. Energy providers would benefit from engaging with a digital PR specialist, who can identify opportunities to reclaim backlinks, and create engaging content that national press will want to share.

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. In Q1, DAs ranged from 54 to 78. npower Business Solutions, who sit at the bottom of this range, have fallen slightly in Q2, now showing a score of 52. As mentioned, a quick way to improve your backlink profile and DA is by claiming links from sites already mentioning your brand. npower should consider this as a first port of call for gaining back ground.

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. Fluctuating energy prices will have consumers shopping around to try and identify the best price. Therefore, energy providers must have a strong organic strategy to capitalise on this restless consumer base.

Compared to Q1, when only three energy providers had seen an increase in traffic year on year, in Q2 there was an even split between winners and losers, when it came to organic mobile traffic. As with Q1, OVO Energy are still seeing the largest gain in traffic, with a rise of 145%. The biggest loss is now being seen by SSE Renewables, who have seen 62% fewer organic mobile visitors than in 2022.

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. Optimising for 'people also ask' results is a great way to build brand awareness and confidence directly from the SERP, as energy providers can provide much-needed answers before users have set virtual foot on their site

'People also ask' remained the highest-used Universal Search feature of Q2, with British Gas remaining in top position with 18,400 appearances. A large number of appearances for 'people also ask' queries generally also points to a strong performance for longtail keywords. 

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. Energy suppliers will want to optimise for high-conversion potential keywords and phrases, including terms like 'switch energy provider' and 'new energy customer offers'.

SSE Renewables, npower Business Solutions and SSE are still ranking for a significantly low number of longtail keywords compared to their competitors. Though all three brands are seeing similar levels of keywords in the top 3, ten, and twenty positions, npower Business Solutions are appearing for slightly more keywords overall. All three brands will want to both improve on existing rankings, as well as identify further phrases to optimise for, in order to improve on performance here. 

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.

Below, we've included examples of e.on's Facebook ads. e.on have used creative that speaks directly to consumer concerns about energy costs and prices, while promoting green, renewable energy sources which will generate power more cost-effectively once installed.

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. Content such as energy-saving tips and advice will be engaging, topical, and most likely to be shared by social media users.

Meta is the preferred platform for all energy providers, with the largest audiences being seen by e.on (with 786,000 Facebook likes) and Utilita (27,900 Instagram followers). These represent audiences more like to see and engage with organic content, reducing the need to rely on paid social posts to generate social performance.

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. As energy is an essential need for any customer, energy providers must ensure their sites are universally accessible.

As in our previous two reports, npower Business Solutions are recording the highest levels of accessibility faults in our audits. npower's 109 alerts primarily consist of redundant links and lengthy alt text - issues that can cause particular challenges to site visitors using screen readers.

Q2 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 energy providers 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.

Photo by Fré Sonneveld on Unsplash