The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK kitchen appliance brands has just been published. Learn how the top 9 UK kitchen appliance brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK kitchen appliance brands has just been published. It covers the 9 largest national kitchen appliance brands, including SharkNinja, Morphy Richards, Dualit, Tefal, Hotpoint Appliances, Kenwood, Prestige, KitchenAid, and Russell Hobbs.

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 kitchen appliance brands to win brand exposure, drive online views, and increase in-store recognition and purchases. 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 six of the metrics we evaluated these top 9 kitchen appliance brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK kitchen appliance brands 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 brand based on 50+ metrics and indicators of a 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 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.

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. For kitchen appliance brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for consumers looking to make a new purchase and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as best-selling appliances, comparison pages, and any key feature pages that customers may need to access.

In our last report, Prestige recorded 1,773 4xx errors — an increase from the previous quarter. In Q1 2024, Prestige has increased these errors once again to 2,034. This brand should consider alternative products or ranges that they can redirect to when products are removed.

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 will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. When operating in a competitive market, kitchen appliance brands will need to ensure they're offering an exceptional customer experience at every touchpoint, including the speed of their site.

The mobile site speed ranged between 42 and 7, with all brands falling below 50% (what’s considered ‘good’). Morphy Richards has dropped from 59 in our last audit to 31 in this quarter. This kitchen appliance brand has lots of images on its homepage, and it should compress these images or consider lazy loading to optimise its mobile site speed.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

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. Kitchen appliance brands should be continually pushing to improve their domain authority and can achieve this with a strategic approach to digital PR and outreach.

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 rating for this quarter was between 75 and 38, with only Prestige at the lower end — and the only brand to score below 50. Prestige should incorporate strategies to its this rating, such as optimising its content through target keywords and increasing page speed.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

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. Kitchen appliance brands, who are less likely to see consumers make 'impulse purchases', must ensure that they are optimising for keywords across the full range of awareness, consideration, and conversion terms to capitalise on traffic at each of these stages.

We’re pleased to reveal that 4 of the 9 brands saw an increase in organic mobile traffic year on year. Impressively, Morphy Richards had a 94,785% increase from the previous year. We think this is due to them reinvigorating a .co.uk site and moving away from using .com

Universal Search Opportunity

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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. For kitchen appliance brands, 'reviews' are an excellent way to increase visibility through universal search and will help brands stand out against their competition with customer endorsements.

SnarkNinja has the highest appearances for Universal Search results, with most of them coming from ‘Reviews’ (15,600). The other brands should follow suit to increase their appearances for ‘Reviews’ in a customer-dominating industry.

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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options kitchen appliance brands could be optimising for, such as 'buy airfryer online UK', or 'kettle next day delivery'.

SharkNinja has the most appearances for overall longtail keywords and also has the highest total appearances in the top three search results. Tefal is in the bottom two for the total appearances for longtail keywords, though is out-performing Prestige for the top three search results, proving that it’s adopted an effective keyword strategy.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecasted 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.

We’ve included three examples of SharkNinja’s Facebook posts. These include three vertical videos to cater to mobile users. This brand also has a clear CTA and no more than two lines of text to allow the visuals to catch online followers’ attention.

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 a long period of time. It's great for your engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Kitchen appliance brands can get creative with content and social media, by sharing recipe content, images of their products in lifestyle settings, and news of any special offers or sales.

All brands — apart from one — favour Facebook. Tefal has an impressive 3.8m Facebook likes, while SnarkNinja surpasses all brands with 194,700 Instagram followers. Interestingly, neither of these brands have the top total engagement; Kenwood takes that trophy with a total of 4,266.

Website Readability & Accessibility

Around 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, even subconsciously, brands lose customer interest as they turn to other kitchen appliance brands that can better meet their accessibility requirements.

In our last report, Russell Hobbs flagged for 330 alerts. In this quarter, this brand has slightly decreased this number to 313, though, after closer inspection, the brand should address the following issues: redundant title text and links.

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 Daniel Norris on Unsplash