The Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK gym equipment suppliers has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK gym equipment suppliers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK gym equipment suppliers has just been published. It covers the largest 11 UK gym equipment suppliers, including Sweatband.com, Fitness Superstore, Fitshop UK Ltd, GymEquipment.co.uk, Fitness Options, Technogym, JTX Fitness, Rogue Fitness, Gym Gear, Life Fitness, and Mirafit.
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 gym equipment suppliers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and win orders. 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 Q4 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call. 
Q4 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 gym equipment suppliers on, check out our quick-look table below; 
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK gym equipment suppliers or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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. Gym equipment suppliers should take great care to provide replacement links for any products that are no longer available to avoid directing users to broken links.
Fitness Superstore reported the most 4xx errors of all brands (63). This brand should aim to resolve these errors by removing the broken links or redirecting users to an alternative page. Otherwise, these errors could negatively impact they’re ranking in search engines and harm their overall SEO performance.
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 this competitive industry, all gym equipment suppliers should ensure their website is responsive and takes no longer than 3 seconds for a page to download. A fast-loading website will help to improve the user’s experience and potentially increase conversions.
The mobile site speed ranged between 83 and 10, with JTX Fitness reporting the lowest score. Ensuring they’re using a mobile-friendly theme will help to improve the user’s experience and increase download speeds, helping to keep users on the website for longer.
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. Gym equipment suppliers should be continually taking steps to improve their DA by uploading articles to a blog page to encourage other website swith a similar target audience to link back to them.
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 rating for this quarter ranged between 78 and 18, with Fitness Options reporting the lowest DA score. This gym equipment supplier didn’t receive the least number of backlinks, but it should look for ways to increase the diversity of websites that are linking back to them. Adopting a PR strategy is a great starting point to build contacts with other authority 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. With the current cost of living, we can expect to see a fluctuation in organic traffic on both desktop and mobile each quarter. Though, there are still steps suppliers can take to increase their organic traffic, such as following a keyword strategy.
Two of the suppliers saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, whereas 5 saw a decrease on mobile. The brand to watch is Life Fitness, which saw a 100% decline on both desktop and 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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 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. Gym equipment suppliers should be utilising all universal search features as their customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs', and 'people also ask'.
Mirafit saw the highest Universal Search appearances (16,218), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’ and ‘images’. Four of the suppliers didn’t receive any appearances for ‘reviews’. Offering incentives to past customers when they leave an online review is a great opportunity to make improvements to this category.
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. Gym equipment suppliers should regularly assess their longtail keyword strategy to ensure they’re including phrases across their website that their target audience type into search engines.
Mirafit secured the highest keyword appearance in position 3 (1,559) and positions 4–10 (2,828). It’s important that brands aim for as many appearances as possible, as this helps to improve their online discovery. Using a keyword tool and regularly assessing their performance will help brands to see grey areas in their strategy and also what’s working.
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 gym equipment suppliers, Facebook ads are an opportunity to spread awareness of their latest launches, recent discounts, and more.
We’ve included examples of Fitness Superstore’s sponsored post. This supplier included a variation on each image along with the same ad text — probably with the intentions of testing which image received the highest interaction. This is a wise way for brands to assess which visual works best.
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. For UK gym equipment suppliers, Facebook ads are an opportunity to spread awareness of their latest launches, recent discounts, and more.
We’ve included examples of Fitness Superstore’s sponsored post. This supplier included a variation on each image along with the same ad text — probably with the intentions of testing which image received the highest interaction. This is a wise way for brands to assess which visual works best.
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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Gym equipment suppliers should regularly monitor their website to limit their accessibility alerts and contrast errors by choosing a colour scheme that’s soft on the eyes and optimising all text, links, and images across their website.
Sweatband.com flagged the highest number of accessibility alerts (173), and it should check that all anchor text is applicable to the associated link, all images include alt information and meta descriptions, etc.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q4 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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