The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK men’s suit retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 6 UK men’s suit retailers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK men’s suit retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 6 UK men’s suit retailers, including Moss Bros, Slater Menswear, Skopes, Charles Tyrwhitt, T.M.Lewin, and Suit Direct.

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 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 6 men's suits retailes 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. 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.

In Q1 2024, 4xx errors are fairly low for all retailers, with Moss Bros scoring the highest at 72. A quick fix for this is to check any internal broken links, so customers aren’t being lead to a page that’s no longer available. No brands have any 5xx errors, showing that the servers are compatible with each website.

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 all brands ranged between 38 and 22 in our audit. All websites fell below the recommended 50% score (which is considered a ‘good’ site speed). They must refrain from stuffing too many images into the homepage — or at least adopt ‘lazy loading’ to increase their 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. 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 rating for this quarter is between 66 and 31, with Skopes at the lower end of the scale. Skopes has a nice balance between redirects coming from images and text, though it should concentrate on its PR strategy to receive more internal backlinks from high-authoritative sites. Charles Tyrwhitt (66) and Moss Bros (62) both surpass the ‘excellent’ score.

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.

Four of the 6 brands had an increase in traffic compared to last year, with Suit Direct seeing a 33% increase. Moss Bros and Slater Menswear saw a 44% and 20% loss, respectively.

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 Bros came in with the highest appearances for Universal Search results, scoring the highest in the ‘Image’ sector (18,800). Interestingly, Charles Tyrwhitt surpassed Moss Bros in the ‘Reviews’ category, with a total of 3,100 appearances.

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’.

All brands were in the thousand mark for the top 100 longtail keyword appearances, with Moss Bros taking the lead. This suit retailer also has the most searches in the top three (3,433). Skopes, on the other hand, is falling behind its competitors with only 116 appearances in the top three search engine results.

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 Suit Direct’s Facebook posts. Amongst its three posts, it adopts two vertical videos and one vertical image, tailoring to mobile users. Due to the differentiation between the amount of text between one post compared to the other two, it’s apparent that Suit Direct is experimenting to see which has the highest engagement interest.

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.

Facebook is the preferred channel for 5 of the 6 brands, with Skopes favouring Pinterest. Charles Tyrwhitt saw the highest total engagement, which is an important component for a successful social media strategy. Moss Bros has the largest Facebook page, while T.M.Lewin has nearly double its Instagram followers.

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.

Facebook is the preferred channel for 5 of the 6 brands, with Skopes favouring Pinterest. Charles Tyrwhitt saw the highest total engagement, which is an important component for a successful social media strategy. Moss Bros has the largest Facebook page, while T.M.Lewin has nearly double its Instagram followers.

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 Alexander Naglestad on Unsplash