UK Kitchen and Cookware Brands - Digital Marketing Benchmark Report, Q3 2023

The Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK kitchen and cookware brands has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK cookware brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK kitchen and cookware brands has just been published.  It covers the largest 11 national kitchen and cookware brands, including ProCook, Portmeirion, Circulon, Denby Pottery Company, Hexclad Cookware, Salter, Our Place, Le Creuset, Home & Cook, Anolon, and Grunwerg - it highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons in 20+ online performance metrics.

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 brands to win brand exposure, generate online orders, and drive in-store interest & recognition. 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 Q3 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 brand 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. For kitchen and cookware brands, particularly those aiming to offer a luxury cooking experience, a high-performing, easy-to-navigate website is essential for instilling consumer confidence, and ensuring that potential customers can find the products they are looking for.

In Q2, we noted that Circulon, Portmeirion, and Grunwerg each returned more than 1,000 4xx errros in our crawls. Though Circulon and Grunwerg are still flagging the same level of errors, Portmeirion has reduced this figure to just 7. This is a significant improvement in a short time frame and points to a concerted effort to improve the site's technical compliance.

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 sites such as kitchen and cookware brands, who are juggling a wide range of products and may feel the pressure to make items stand out, high-resolution images and content can hold back performance when it comes to site speed.

We have seen universal falls in mobile page speed scores in all sectors we specialise in. A fall in performance for brands should therefore not be too much of a cause for concern, however, it remains a useful benchmark to compare with competitors. Though Home & Cook and Portmeirion have seen their scores fall to 38 and 32 (from 56 and 54 respectively), they both remain comfortably ahead of their competitors.

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, ie. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. For kitchen and cookware brands, collaborations with online culinary publications, homeware suppliers, or even bloggers in their niche could be a great way to boost these figures.

Domain authority is considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. A ‘good’ DA score depends on the competition level of the industry. However, a ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing. Domain Authorities for kitchen and cookware brands span from 60 (ProCook) down to 16 (Hexclad Cookware). With such a broad range of DAs, Hexclad (along with the other brands near the end of the scale) should consider how they can harness digital PR to start building authority and, in turn, gain visibility online.

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. For brands within a space that may consider themselves more of a luxury or treat item, such as luxury kitchen and cookware, they may find that their organic traffic naturally starts shrinking, in line with a reduced consumer interest during the cost-of-living crisis.

Only three of our eleven kitchen and cookware brands achieved any growth in traffic year on year. Hexclad and Our Place both increased their gains from Q1, while Salter saw 323% more digital footfall than in 2022. Though these brands are not securing the most traffic overall, any increase while competitors are seeing falls in traffic is commendable, and other kitchen and cookware brands should be on the lookout for whether their loss has proved to be a gain for smaller competitors..

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. 'Image' and 'review' results would be particularly useful for kitchen and cookware brands, who would be able to show their products to users without them visiting their site and build trust in their products by encouraging customer reviews.

Portmeirion and Denby Pottery are still leading the way with Universal Search results, and remain strong in their respective top results. Portmeirion now has 3,300 'review' results, while Denby has made 1,200 'people also ask' appearances. To ensure your brand is making the most of Universal Search opportunities, the full scope of results should be considered in your organic strategy.

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. Kitchen and cookware brands should be optimising for longtail keywords that show high purchase intent - though they may not score highly in terms of search volume or traffic, these keywords will pay off as being more likely to secure purchases.

ProCook is still ranking for the highest volume of longtail keywords overall (18,048), along with a high volume of appearances within the top three (1,093). However, they still have a huge amount of potential to increase these figures, with a further 2,672 appearances within positions 4-10. Though Le Creuset is ranking for fewer longtail keywords overall, they've now secured 1,417 appearances within the top three results.

Facebook Adverts

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 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 examples of HexClad's Facebook ads below. HexClad, the brand which has spent the most on paid media, have tapped into TikTok-style video, using a greenscreen to engage audiences. Ads like this will fit natively within organic content and therefore be more likely to naturally grab 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 longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Kitchen and cookware brands can bridge across both food-focussed recipe content, along with interior design and lifestyle pieces.

Surprisingly, none of our eleven kitchen and cookware brands were shown to be using Pinterest as their most used platform. With a focus on inspiration, and an abundance of lifestyle and recipe content present on the site, this could be a lost opportunity to drive engagement with their on-site content.

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. Though the temptation may be there for luxury brands to choose style over function, they must not underestimate the impact of making their site accessible for all potential customers.

In Q2, we noted that ProCook were seeing the largest volume of accessibility barriers, with 104 errors being flagged in our audit. Though ProCook has only nominally improved, to 97 alerts, HexClad is now showing far more alerts, with 142. Though these levels aren't as high as some of the sectors we specialise in, both ProCook and HexClad will still want to ensure they're taking steps to remove any obstacles for potential customers with disabilities. 

Q3 2023 Winners and Losers Summary

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 kitchen and cookware brands on, check out our quick-look table below; 

GET THE FULL 79-PAGE Q3 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 Becca Tapert on Unsplash