The Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK flooring suppliers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK flooring suppliers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK flooring suppliers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national flooring suppliers, including Tile Giant, Total Tiles, Carpet Right, Flooring Superstore, Tapi Carpets, United Carpets, Walls and Floors, Tile Choice, UK Flooring Direct, Topps Tiles, TradeChoice Carpet & Flooring, and Tile Mountain.
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest marketing share online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for flooring suppliers to win brand exposure, drive online orders, and even secure in-store footfall. The report highlights quick wins that will improve the performance of 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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 flooring suppliers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing flooring suppliers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand 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.
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 sites in e-commerce sectors, such as flooring, they'll need to keep on top of large numbers of changing stock pages, which could lead to customers being driven down dead ends if pages are removed without effective redirects put in 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. We often see brands within the home improvement space struggle with this, as the temptation generally lies in showing products at their best through high-definition images, over reducing quality in favour of page speed.
For Q2 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 47 and 9, with none of the flooring suppliers scoring above the recommended 50%. However, the company to watch is Tile Choice, which scored the lowest. It should limit banners at the top of its homepage and optimise images to prevent its server from becoming overwhelmed with downloading content.
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. Flooring suppliers can look to collaborating with online publications and bloggers within their niche to build out their backlink profile and gain visibility in areas they can gain relevant referral traffic.
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 67 and 25, with Tile Choice reporting the lowest score. This flooring supplier also saw the fewest number of backlinks and should make connections with brands that have a similar target audience to help increase its DA score.
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. At a time when fewer people are taking on home improvement projects, in order to save money in the cost-of-living crisis, flooring suppliers are competing for a smaller pool of organic users.
Three of the flooring suppliers reported a loss in organic traffic on both mobile and desktop. Topps Tiles saw the more significant loss for desktop (-27%), while Trade Choice saw the biggest loss for mobile (-70%). Trade Choice only saw an 11% decrease on desktop, suggesting that it should ensure its website is mobile-friendly.
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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Image pack' results could be of particular use to flooring suppliers, who can use the opportunity to show their products directly from the SERP.
Topps Tiles continues to stay at the top of the leaderboard for the most Universal Search results (24,458), with the majority of these appearances coming from ‘images’. Trade Choice saw the fewest Universal Search results, with a total of 481.
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. For flooring suppliers, they may want to look at long tail phrases that indicate a customer ready to order, such as 'white kitchen floor tiles next day delivery' or 'laminate floor samples delivered tomorrow'.
Topps Tiles saw the most longtail keyword appearances for desktop, while Tile Choice saw the most appearances for mobile.
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 provide an opportunity for UK flooring suppliers to quickly reach audiences with offers, new lines, and key products they’re looking to push.
We’ve included 3 examples of Tapi Carpet’s sponsored Facebook posts. This flooring supplier included vertical images to tailor to those using a mobile. It also incorporated the same text across each sponsored post, suggesting that it’s assessing which media option helps to increase engagement/conversions.
IMAGE – Facebook Ads
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. Flooring suppliers can look to sites such as Pinterest and Instagram as a great place to share content, due to their highly visible approach and comparatively more affluent audiences.
Seven of the suppliers favoured Pinterest — which is a wise choice to help brands increase organic traffic. Tapi Carpets has the largest Facebook page (42,200 Likes), while Topps Tiles has the largest Instagram account (90,000 followers).
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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. When handling big sites with large volumes of content and products, flooring suppliers will want to ensure their sites are easy to navigate for any visitor, of any ability.
In our last audit, United Carpets reported 395 alerts, which it’s increased to 399 in this quarter. It’s important that brands assess issues causing accessibility alerts — which in this case, are due to redundant title text — to avoid affecting readability for 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.
Photo by Keith Misner on Unsplash