The Q2 2023 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 Q2 2023 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 Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

What The Industry Research Report Covers

The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer 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.

While most of the kitchen appliance brands we researched were recording low levels of 4xx and 5xx errors, Prestige stood out as the exception, with 728 4xx errors.  This amount could prove problematic for Prestige and their customers, who may be getting directed to dead ends across the site. Prestige should ensure redirects are in place to funnel potential customers to alternative products, and that their internal linking structure is updated to remove any broken links.

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 benchmark for an 'okay' score is 50-89, though we have found that brands across many sectors struggle to achieve a score in this range. The only kitchen appliance brand to do so is Dualit, who scored 59 in mobile page speed. For brands with the lowest mobile page speed scores, Tefal (scoring 8) and Hotpoint (scoring 17), they'll need to ensure they're not sacrificing site speed for large images, videos, or other dynamic website elements.

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. For kitchen appliances, DAs ranged from Kenwood's 76 down to Prestige's 40. For Prestige, and other brands near the end of this scale, they should be considering how to gain links from authoritative publications within their niche, to improve on these scores.

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.

Sharkninja were, by far, the winners when it came to organic traffic, securing a 180% increase in mobile traffic (going from 582,943 visits in 2022 to 1,634,412 in 2023). While many sectors we specialise in have seen reductions in traffic due to the cost of living crisis, Sharkninja have seen a boom in popularity thanks to customers turning to air fryers as a cost-effective way of preparing food. Though securing less traffic overall, Morphy Richards have also seen a huge rise in organic traffic, securing 758% more visits YoY. The remaining brands all saw either a loss in traffic compared to 2022, or very minimal gains.

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 retailer 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.

SharkNinja have secured the most 'Reviews' with 4,800 results. They have also taken advantage of 'People Also Ask' results, giving them an opportunity to share information from their site, directly on the SERP. A strong performance for 'People Also Ask' results indicates a strategic approach to longtail keywords. Other brands should be reviewing their own site content to ensure they're boosting their chances of appearing for 'People Also Ask', 'Reviews', and other universal search results.

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'.

Tefal are ranking for the lowest number of longtail keywords overall, appearing for 2,221. However, with 20% of these ranking in positions 1-3, they are outperforming two of their competitors. While a high volume of longtail keywords in the top 100 does indicate a huge amount of potential for any brand, performing well is the only way to secure traffic.

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.

Below, we can see examples of Dualit's recent Facebook ads. Dualit have used a range of creatives that are visually distinct, yet have strong brand cohesion. This means that they can effectively test performance of each ad against one another, and ensure that Facebook users will be matched with the ad they are most likely to engage with.

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.

Facebook is almost universally the platform most used by our kitchen appliance brands. Unsurprisingly, with Sharkninja storming the air fryer trend that has secured them such an uplift in organic traffic, this has impacted social performance too, with them achieving 19,286 engagements cross-platform. 

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.

Russell Hobbs are generally performing well on accessibility, recording very minimal errors or contrast errors. However, we discovered 319 alerts throughout their site. Alerts tend to have minimal impact compared to errors, and can often be due to duplicate alt text for images, or redundant title tags. Despite this, Russell Hobbs should be reviewing all alerts to ensure that there are no unnecessary alt tags or headings that could be impacting user experience and site speed.

Q2 2023 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;

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 2023 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 Erik Mclean on Unsplash