The Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK health insurance providers has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK health insurance providers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK health insurance providers has just been published. It covers the largest 11 national health insurance providers, including Bupa, Circle Health Group, Spire Healthcare, Nuffield Health, AXA UK, WPA Healthcare, Benenden Health, BHSF, Sovereign Healthcare, Vitality, and Westfield Health.

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 health insurance providers to win brand exposure, increase online enquiries, and generate more policy sign-ups. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and will identify the barriers that may be reducing your 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 health insurance providers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing health insurance providers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.

Request the report

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. Health insurance providers will want to ensure prospective customers can easily access key pages, such as pricing information, policy coverage details, and plan comparisons.

Bupa flagged 103 4xx errors — the highest of all health insurance providers. This error code indicates to a user that the website can’t deliver their request, affecting the user’s experience and relationship with the brand. Rectifying these 4xx errors will allow Bupa to offer a trustworthy web experience.

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. For health insurance providers, they'll want to provide an excellent customer experience at every touchpoint, giving the impression of quick service from the moment a user steps virtual foot on their site.

The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 67 and 26, with AXA UK flagging the lowest score. This health insurance provider should reduce page weight across each page to increase its overall download speeds.

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. Health insurance companies should consider what topics they can cover that are most likely to be picked up by external sites and gain backlinks - something engaging with a digital PR specialist will help with.

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 81 and 39, with Sovereign Healthcare reporting the lowest DA score. This UK health insurance provider also received the fewest backlinks and should adopt a PR strategy to build relationships with other high-authoritative websites to help increase backlinks, which will benefit the DA score.

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 growing concerns over NHS waiting times, and a need to access additional services, we'd expect to see some uplift within the private health insurance sector.

Westfield Health was the only provider to reported a loss in organic traffic for mobile (-30%), while 6 providers saw a loss in organic traffic on desktop — Westfield Health also saw the biggest decline here (-39%).

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. Results such as 'people also ask' give health insurance providers the opportunity to answer queries from potential policyholders directly from the SERP, even if they aren't appearing in position one.

Bupa continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances overall (45,300), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’. Other health insurance providers can increase their appearances for ‘images’ by using high-quality media and using accurate alt information.

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 health insurance providers, they'll want to pay particular attention to phrases including high conversion intent terms, such as 'instant access', 'includes dentist', or potentially 'pre-existing condition coverage' (if this is something they can offer).

Bupa secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (20,061) and positions 4–10 (44,386). Longtail keywords can fewer competition compared to shorttail keywords, enabling brands to stand out from their competitors.

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.

We’ve included an example of Bupa’s sponsored posts. This UK health insurance provider should aim to reduce the amount of written text per post to allow social media followers to scan the post while they’re scrolling.

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. Health insurance providers can look to create content across the full breadth of health and lifestyle, a sector where content is widely shared as users turn to online sources to guide changes in eating, exercise, and other lifestyle habits.

Vitality has the largest Facebook page (90,900 Likes), and the largest Instagram account (77,200 followers). However, BHSF was the provider to secure the highest engagement rate (15,725) — an important factor for brands to see if their followers are interacting with their social media posts.

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. Any website operating in the healthcare space must be particularly conscious of accessibility, from both a branding and potential customer perspective.

Westfield Health has secured the most accessibility alerts (181), closely followed by Nuffield Health (163). Additionally, Spire Healthcare flagged 39 contrast errors, which can affect readability for those with a colour vision deficiency. It’s important that all health insurance providers work to reduce alerts and errors to enhance the web experience for all users, no matter what device they’re using.

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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