The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK garden and horticulture retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK garden and horticulture retailers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK garden and horticulture retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 11 UK garden and horticulture retailers, including Crocus.co.uk, Thompson & Morgan, J.Parker's, Suttons Consumer Products Ltd., Marshalls Garden, YouGarden, Hayloft Plants, Primrose, Gardening Express, Dobbies Garden Centres, and Harrod Horticultural.
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 garden and horticulture retailers to win brand exposure locally, drive organic visibility, and generate online 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 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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 UK garden and horticulture retailers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing garden retailers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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.
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.
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q1 2025, the average budget wastage across these UK garden and horticulture retailers was £2,801 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £19.09 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively. In this quarter, Harrod Horticultural has the highest budget wastage at £8,190, and Crocus.co.uk has the lowest budget wastage at £86.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Crocus.co.uk has the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £3, and Harrod Horticultural has the highest at £82.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Harrod Horticultural has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £54,600, and Crocus.co.uk has the lowest at £574.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
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. Garden and horticulture retailers will need to create a website that their audience can trust, which means creating a positive site experience while consumers are looking for products. Ensuring that all links are active and working is one approach to build a trusted relationship with their target audience.
Dobbies Garden Centres flagged the highest 4xx errors (97) — the highest of all UK garden and horticulture retailers. 4xx errors can create a poor web experience for users, as errors such as ‘404’ or 4’03’ can lead to frustration, resulting in lost engagement or sales. Additionally, search engines like Google can penalise websites with multiple 4xx errors, as these signal poor maintenance or broken links.
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. All garden and horticulture retailers should aim for a download speed of a maximum of 3 seconds to prevent consumers growing impatient and leaving the website. Incorporating a mobile-friendly website theme with a minimal design is an effective way to increase site speed.
In our previous audit, J.Parker reported the lowest mobile site speed (7). This quarter, the mobile site speed ranged between 61 and 7, with J.Parker still at the bottom of the list. Using mobile-friendly content, such as large fonts and responsive videos, can make websites quicker to load and more enjoyable to access on mobile.
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. Brands should aim for backlinks from high-authoritative websites and from a variety of them. The best way to achieve this is by delivering high-quality content that other websites will want to share to their audience.
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 score for this quarter ranged between 71 and 35, with Hayloft Plants reporting the lowest DA. At the core, this retailer should focus on uploading quality content, such as posting well-researched, engaging content regularly with a mixture of blogs, case studies, videos, etc. Optimising and following a keyword strategy and including these phrases across the website will also have a positive impact on a brand’s 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. It’s expected to see a fluctuation in organic traffic on both mobile and desktop, though retailers can increase their organic traffic by incorporating a successful keyword strategy to help them rank in search engines.
Six of the sleep brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop (an increase from our last report) and 9 saw a decrease on mobile (an improvement from our last report). Retailers should check their website is easily accessible across all devices and that they’re following a keyword strategy to increase organic traffic results.
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. For garden and horticulture retailers, they'll want to capitalise on the opportunity to share ‘images’ and ‘reviews’ for an authentic approach as well as the opportunity to showcase their product range.
Thompson and Morgan continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (67,595) — a very slight decrease from the previous quarter. On the other hand, Harrod Horticultural saw the fewest overall Universal Search appearances (8,952) and should consider reaching out to past customers to encourage them to leave an online review. Universal Search appearances are important as they tell search engines that a website is trustworthy.
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. Longtail keywords for garden and horticulture retailers could show high-conversion intent, with specific phrases that relate to their product range.
Thompson & Morgan continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,964) and positions 4–10 (9,147). All retailers should regularly assess the longtail keywords their using across their website and ensure they’re using terms that are popular to increase their online rankings in search engines.
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 are a great way for blinds and shutters brands to reach people who are specifically looking to make improvements to their homes.
We’ve included examples of Suttons Consumer Products Ltd’s sponsored posts. This retailer should reduce the number of lines of text they use in future sponsored posts, as more then 3 lines can prevent social media scrollers from stopping and reading the 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. For brands in a service-based sector, such as care home providers, content is an opportunity to create long-term touchpoints with prospective residents and their families, by creating pieces that help support them through managing at home, before guiding them to care home residency when the time comes.
Dobbies Garden Centres has the most Facebook Likes (166,000), while Crocus.co.uk has the most Instagram followers (79,800). Social media followers can increase the reach of content for brands and build trust and credibility, signalling to the target audience that their brand is popular and trustworthy.
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. All websites should limit accessibility alerts, errors, and contrast errors to adhere to those using a screen reader and those with a colour vision deficiency. This will require brands to regularly assess these areas on their website to retain a high standard.
Last quarter, Crocus.co.uk reported 681 accessibility alerts, which they’ve slightly reduced to 669 this quarter. Currently the retailer to watch is Primrose, which flagged 725 accessibility alerts. Websites should ensure all content is accessible to those using a screen reader and those with a colour vision deficiency. Accessibility alerts can impact the usability of a website and cause visitors to leave the website early.
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.