The Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK home furniture retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK home furniture retailers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK home furniture retailers has just been published. It covers the 11 largest retailers in the UK, including Swoon, Oak Furniture Superstore, LuxDeco, Furniture Village, Furniture and Choice, Oak Furnitureland, The Cotswold Company, Loaf, Heal's, Barker and Stonehouse, and Housing Units.
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 home furniture retailers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and increase in-store footfall (where relevant). 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 Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form below or schedule a call.
For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 home furniture retailers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK home furniture retail brands 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 and 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. Retailers in any sector will need to effectively keep on top of changing stock levels, and implement a strong redirect strategy when removing items for sale. This will reduce 4xx errors, and prevent users from heading down dead ends or turning elsewhere from frustration.
In the last audit, Furniture Village reported 1,738 4xx errors. In this quarter, this home furniture retailer reduced its errors to 14, suggesting that it’s fixed any broken links. However, the retailer to watch is Heal’s, which flagged 2014 errors and should assess any broken links to prevent sending customers down dead ends.
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 will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. With mobile browsers accounting for 72.9% of all e-commerce sales in 2021, home furniture retailers must ensure that their site is prepared for an increasingly mobile-first consumer base.
For Q2 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 65 and 3, with only Dwell UK reporting a score above the recommended 50%. However, Housing Units flagged the lowest site speed. Given that its website is image-dominant, it should ensure that all images are compressed and optimised to prevent them from slowing down its site speed.
Domain authority (DA) 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. Furniture retailers will want to look towards interior design publications and bloggers who will be interested in their brand and create content within the right niche.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however, it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA range for this quarter ranged between 70 and 23, with Oak Furnitureland reporting the lowest DA for this quarter. This home furniture also reported backlinks from the fewest domains, which it should look to increase to help with its DA rating.
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for core, 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. Non-essential items and treats are likely to see falls in consumer interest due to the cost of living crisis. Consumers are, therefore, more likely to hold on to older pieces of furniture for longer, only replacing or buying items when there is a great need.
More retailers reported a loss in organic mobile traffic than organic desktop traffic, suggesting that home furniture retailers should ensure their website is optimised for mobile users. This includes having an easy-to-use website with clear navigations to prevent customers from getting confused.
Google Universal Search Results are 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 home furniture retailers, they will want to pay particular attention for 'image' and 'local pack' rankings, which will help improve product visibility, along with capture attention from local shoppers who may then visit in-store.
Furniture Village continues to hold the top spot for the most overall Universal Search results. This home furniture retailer saw most of these appearances from the ‘image’ category — the same as our previous audit. Alternatively, Dwell UK reported zero appearances for images. It should look to increase this, as customers expect an image-dominant website for this sector.
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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Home furniture retailers should specifically look towards high purchase-intent phrases and terms when building out their longtail keyword strategy, including things such as delivery options and financing.
Furniture Village is still at the top spot for the most longtail keywords in all positions. We’re impressed to see Barker and Stonehouse’s keyword appearances for positions 4–10, given its ranking for positions 3. Ranking well in positions 4–10 is one of the quickest ways to increase a website’s ranking.
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that brands 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 in 2019. Facebook ads are an opportunity to show furniture items within lifestyle settings or showcase current offers and deals, inspiring social media users to browse and purchase from the retailer.
We’ve included three examples of Loaf’s sponsored Facebook posts. It used a variety of vertical videos and an image carousel, suggesting that this retailer is testing engagement based on media choice. However, two of its sponsored posts didn’t include text, which is unusual and looks unfinished. Plus, it’s a missed opportunity to add information about the retailer’s offerings.
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 a long period of time. It's great for your engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content that achieves traffic over a long period of time. Pinterest presents a strong opportunity for home furniture retailers as their comparatively affluent audience is well-immersed in the inspiration and consideration phase of planning any purchases.
Five of the retailers favoured Pinterest, which is a wise social media choice for an industry with high-value products. Additionally, the Cotswold Company is still number one for the largest Facebook page (240,400 Likes), but Swoon isn’t far behind with 201,200 Likes. Having a high social media following allows brands to share updates and new releases about their products.
About 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. Home furniture retailers will want to think about the impression they are conveying to customers needing additional accessibility, and ensure that key product details are made clear for everyone browsing the site.
In our last audit, Oak Furnitureland flagged 354 alerts, which it’s slightly increased to 355 in this quarter. Having examined its website, this home furniture retailer’s alerts are mainly due to redundant alternative text. It’s important that this retailer rectifies this to ensure that those using a screen reader have information about the images.
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 Collov Home Design on Unsplash