The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK online appliance brands has just been published. Learn how the top 9 UK online appliance brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK online appliance brands has just been published. It covers the 9 largest national online appliance brands, including AO, Appliances Direct, Euronics UK, Appliance City, Boots Kitchen Appliances, Hotpoint, Beko, AEG and Miele GB.
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 online appliance brands to win brand exposure locally, online views, and appliance orders. 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.
For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 9 online appliance brands on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK online appliance brands or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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.
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.
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 online appliance brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for consumers looking into online appliance brands and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as best-selling appliances, special offers, and any key feature pages that customers may need to access.
Euronics UK flagged 39 4xx errors, and it’s important that brands assess their links to ensure they aren’t broken and lead users to the right page.
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. Online appliance brands need to ensure their customers have a positive experience on their mobile site to instil high levels of trust and ensure customers are able to quickly access the information they need about their potential new appliances.
The mobile site speed this quarter ranged between 51 and 9, with only 1 online appliance scoring above the recommended 50%. However, the brand to watch is Euronics UK, which flagged the slowest site speed. Upon closer inspection, this online appliance brand should reduce page weight to help with download speeds.
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. Online appliance brands should be continually pushing to improve their DA, they can do this by collaborating with and outreaching to external publications and bloggers within their niche to build their backlink profile.
The DA for this quarter ranged between 74 and 33, with Boots Kitchen flagging the lowest DA. While this brand didn’t receive the fewest number of backlinks, it reported backlinks from the fewest domains, which can affect a brand’s DA score.
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. For online appliance retailers (where the customer buyer journey is longer than in the FMCG market), they should be optimising across a full range of awareness, consideration, and conversion keywords, ensuring they have multiple touchpoints for customers as they travel further through their decision-making process.
Three of the online appliance brands saw a decrease in organic mobile traffic, with Appliances Direct reporting the biggest loss (-47%). On the other hand, only 2 saw a decrease in organic desktop traffic. The data also shows that organic traffic is mainly coming from customers using a desktop.
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. Online appliance retailers should be utilising all universal search features as potential customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs' and 'people also ask' results, so they can ensure they're making a sound investment in their new appliance.
AO remains at the top spot for the most Universal Search appearances (92,077), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’ and then ‘reviews’. Brands can help increase their Universal Search results for ‘images’ by including relevant meta descriptions and alt txt.
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 online appliance brands could be using such as ‘best place to buy washing machines’, ‘where to buy fridges online’, or 'hotpoint oven next day delivery'. Though these may have lower monthly search volumes, the high purchase intent makes them high-value and an important piece of your keyword strategy.
AO continues to report the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (8,337) and position 4–10 (19,710). Brands should regularly assess their keyword strategy to ensure they’re using phrases that their target audience type into search engines.
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. For online appliance brands, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product releases, updates, and deals.
We’ve included 3 examples of Miele’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK online appliance brand included vertical media to cater to those reading the posts from a mobile, and it also stuck to a maximum of 3 lines of text, helping to improve scannability for scrollers.
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. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about different appliance styles and special offers.
Beko has the largest Facebook page (7.2 million Likes), while Miele has the largest Instagram account (927,300 followers). It’s important that brands post content regularly to keep their followers in the loop and showcase their latest releases and/or offers.
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 online appliance brands that can better meet their accessibility requirements.
In our previous audit, Euronics UK reported 181 accessibility alerts, which it’s slightly increased to 184 this quarter. However, the brand with the most accessibility alerts is Appliances Direct, which saw 318 accessibility alerts. It’s important that brands take steps to reduce their accessibility alerts to improve readability for those using a screen reader.
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.