The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK food delivery services has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK food delivery services perform across the digital space.

The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK food delivery services has just been published.  It covers the largest 11 national food delivery services, including The FoodHak, Abel & Cole, Riverford Organic Farmers, Gousto, Detox Kitchen, SimplyCook, HelloFresh, Mindful Chef, Pasta Evangelists, Fresh Fitness Food, and Oddbox.

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 food delivery services to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate subscription sign-ups. 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 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.

Q1 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 food delivery services on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK food delivery services 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 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. Food delivery services will want to take particular care to ensure that key conversion pages such as plan pricing information and menu examples are clearly sign posted, and not blocked by dead ends and 404s.

In our last report, Pasta Evangelists flagged 385 4xx errors, which it’s reduced to 137 in this quarter. Abel & Cole is the brand to match, as it reported 285 4xx errors in Q1 2024. It should assess any broken links to ensure customers aren’t being sent down 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. In a competitive market, food delivery services will want to ensure their site visitors have a positive experience with their brand from the very first click, and a speedy website is an ideal way to keep users on-site and funnelled towards converting.

For Q1 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 66 and 7, with only 2 brands scoring above the recommended 50%. However, Fresh Fitness Food flagged the lowest mobile site. Under closer inspection, it should reduce image size and adopt lazy loading to increase its loading speeds for consumers.

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. Food delivery services can look to work with a digital PR specialist, who can identify opportunities within the food, lifestyle, and national press to gain brand coverage and backlinks.

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 27, The FoodHak reporting the lowest score. This food delivery service should include a blog page and regularly upload content to help increase its DA score. Websites with a low DA will struggle to rank in organic search results and attract linking websites.

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 general interest to be falling across the food delivery services sector, as consumers are cutting back on treats and non-essentials due to the cost of living crisis.

Only 3 services saw an increase in both organic mobile and organic desktop traffic. Brands saw the biggest loss for mobile users, so all should optimise their website for mobile usage. The biggest loss was Detox Kitchen, with a 63% reduction for mobile traffic.

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. 'Reviews' are a strong option for food delivery services to consider, as they can help them stand out from their competitors directly on the SERP.

Gousto remains at the top for the most overall Universal Search results (67,493). It found the most appearances in the ‘reviews’ sector (41,700). Seven of the 11 food delivery services reported zero for ‘reviews’, which they should look to increase to help them rank in SERPs.

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. For food delivery services, they might include recipe terms in their longtail keyword strategy, identifying recipes and food types that most typically bring converting customers to their site.

Riverford Organic Farmers ranks the highest for longtail keyword appearances in positions 3 (5,437) and 4–10. The FoodHak ranks the lowest for positions 3 (with only 1 appearance), and it should assess its keyword strategy to help increase this result.

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. For UK food delivery services, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product options and deals.

We’ve included three examples of Gousto’s sponsored Facebook posts. This food delivery service included 3 vertical media (2 images and 1 video) to cater for mobile users.

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. Recipe content and nutrition facts are a simple way that food delivery services can create shareable, engaging content.

HelloFresh continues to have the largest Facebook page (2.5 million followers) and Instagram account (258,000). Having a high social media following involves brands creating a trusted brand through advertisements, regularly content, etc.

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. Though food delivery services may be more tempted to put emphasis on the visual elements of their brands, making food and recipes look as appealing as possible, they must not neglect to set their pages up well for those with vision deficiencies. 

In our last audit, The Food Hak reported 39 accessibility alerts, which it’s increased to 53 in this quarter. However, Pasta Evangelists reported the most alerts (69), with most of these alerts due to a nearby image containing the same alternative text, which it should address.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 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.

Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash