The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK men’s suit retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK men’s suit retailers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK men’s suit retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK men’s suit retailers, including Moss, Suit Direct, Charles Tyrwhitt, T.M.Lewin, Slater Menswear, Skopes, Hawes and Curtis, Turnbull & Asser, Thomas Pink, Gieves & Hawkes, Hackett London, and Ben Sherman.

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 men’s suit retailers to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and increase both orders and in-store footfall. 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 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 men's suits & clothing retailers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK mens suit retailers 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.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.

For Q1 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK men’s suits retailers was £8,404 with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £4 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively. In this quarter, Ben Sherman has the highest budget wastage at £60,00, and Suit Direct has the lowest budget wastage at £957.

 There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Moss has the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £1, and Hackett London has the highest at £16.

The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Hackett London has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £406,000, and Moss has the lowest at £6,380.

By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.

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. Men’s suit retailers will want to ensure customers can find information on products for sale, such as colours, measurements fabrics, and fit, along with an organised website that’s easy for customers to navigate.

Suit Direct reported the most 4xx errors (1,666). This men’s suits retailer should regularly analyse their server logs to detect patterns or repeated 4xx errors. They should also monitor their visitors’ behaviour by using analytic tools, such as Google Analytics to identify where these 4xx errors occur most frequently.

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. In a fashion sector, high-resolution images and videos are important to showcase the products, though brands must ensure that download speeds for this media doesn’t impact their site speed, which is important for a user-friendly experience.

The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 63 and 3, with Hawes and Curtis reporting the lowest mobile speed. Mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic globally, which is why it’s important for brands to prioritise mobile performance to reach more users online.

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. For brands in the fashion sector, establishing connections with high-authoritative websites can drive in more backlinks from a trusted source, helping to increase their DA rating. A keyword strategy will also assist with driving organic traffic, which is a powerful SEO tool for increasing DA.

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 score for this quarter ranged between 71 and 32, with Skopes repoting the lowest DA score. This men’s suits retailer should remove low-quality or spammy backlinks to help increase this DA score. Additionally, optimising for fast loading times and minimising pop-ups and ads can enhance the web experience for users.

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. Fashion brands may see a reduction in traffic, due to the cost-of-living crisis and the need for customers to cut back on expendables. Therefore, when assessing organic traffic, it’s important to benchmark against others in the sector, taking this into consideration.

Three of the UK men’s suits retailers saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Ben Sherman reporting the biggest decrease (-50%). Meanwhile, 7 reported a decline on mobile, with Ben Sherman also reporting the biggest decrease (-72%).

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 fashion brands, the ‘Image’ Universal Search result provides a chance to show products, and ‘Reviews’ is also another important component brands should focus, as people are more likely to purchase from a brand that’s trusted by the public.

Moss secured the most Universal Search appearances (63,751), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’ and ‘reviews’. On the other hand, Gieves & Hawkes reported the least overall Universal Search appearances (546). All brands should aim to secure Universal Search appearances to help with their rankings in search engines.

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. Fashion brands can capitalise on highly descriptive longtail keywords to increase their SEO strategy, helping to assist with organic traffic. For example, ‘men’s slim fit grey suit’ or ‘charcoal textured light pink waistcoat’.

Moss secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (5,831) and 8,454 appearances for positions 4–10. If these retailers’ content is highly aligned with user intent, ranking in positions 4–10 can still be profitable, especially if the keyword fits into a well-targeted content strategy.

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 examples of Slater Menswear’s sponsored posts. This men’s suits retailer should focus on uploading images with a sense of branding to help improve brand awareness.

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. Fashion brands can create shareable social content that details new releases, the latest deals, and upcoming product launches to inspire their online followers.

Charles Tyrwhitt has the most Facebook Likes (308,100), while Hackett London has the most Instagram followers (343,700). Regularly posting interesting and/or informative content helps brands stay top of mind. Consistency in visibility can boost brand recognition, leading to increased customer trust and loyalty.

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. Fashion brands can create shareable social content that details new releases, the latest deals, and upcoming product launches to inspire their online followers.

Skopes flagged the most accessibility alerts (365). This men’s suit retailer can reduce their accessibility alerts, such as by ensuring all links and buttons are accessible using both a mouse and keyboard, using descriptive text to links and buttons, rather than vague anchor text like ‘click here’.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2025 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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