The Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK pet food suppliers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK pet food suppliers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK pet food suppliers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK pet food suppliers, including Tails.com, Lily's Kitchen, Butternut Box, KatKin, VioVet, Pure Pet Food, Different Dog, Trophy Pet Foods, Pooch and Mutt, Tuggs, Natures Menu, and Forthglade Natural Pet Food.

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 UK pet food suppliers to win brand exposure, drive traffic online and, for those with bricks and mortar locations, even increase 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 Q4 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q4 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 UK pet food suppliers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK pet food suppliers 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 retailer 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 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. UK pet food suppliers should ensure all links direct to the promised page, and provide replacement links, if necessary.

Tails.com flagged 225 4xx errors (the highest of all brands). If links are returning these errors, there’s a risk that brands might lose valuable traffic and harm their website’s authority. Tails.com should regularly amend and update links to prevent this from happening.

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 pet food suppliers, they’ll want to ensure their website is mobile friendly to help increase their chances of customers remaining on their website. There are steps websites can take to increase site speed, too, such as compressing images and reducing page weight.

The mobile site speed ranged between 65 and 25, with Lily's Kitchen flagging the lowest site speed. This pet food supplier should include lazy loading to help improve the web experience for users.

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, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that is not gained through sponsored ads. All pet food suppliers should focus on securing high-quality backlinks by uploading link-worthy content in the form of infographics or articles containing original research.

A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA rating for this quarter ranged between 66 and 14, with Tuggs flagging the lowest DA score. This pet food supply company should focus on a PR strategy to develop relationships with high-authority websites that have a similar target audience.

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. Pet owners will always be looking for pet food supplies, though the cost-of-living crisis might have impacted traffic levels for some brands as consumers look to products with a lower price tag.

Three of the suppliers reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop, while 5 saw a decline on mobile. With this in mind, all pet food suppliers should ensure that their website is easy to use and the checkout process is simple on a mobile.  

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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. For pet food suppliers, they’ll want to focus on results for ‘images’ and ‘reviews’.

VioVet secured the highest Universal Search appearances (34,678), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’. However, 5 brands didn’t receive any impressions for ‘reviews’, and they should reach out to past customers and encourage them to leave a review online.

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. UK pet food suppliers should follow a longtail keyword strategy and regularly assess the performance of each phrase and make adaptions if necessary.

Pooch and Mutt secured the highest longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,271), while VioVet received the most appearances for positions 4–10 (4,005). It’s important that brands utilise their appearance for positions 4–10 to help improve their position in search engines.

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. Facebook ads provide an opportunity for pet food suppliers to reach new audiences and promote their latest products or discounts to pet owners.

We’ve included an example of Butternut Box’s sponsored posts. This pet food supplier should include more line spaces and reduce the amount of text included on each post.

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. 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 ticket deals and availability.

Tails.com has the largest Facebook page (177,300 Likes), while Pooch and Mutt has the largest Instagram account (112,400 followers). It’s important that brands upload content to their social media channels regularly and that they post content that benefits their target audience.

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. Pet food suppliers should be particularly mindful of having an accessible site, as being poorly prepared for visually impaired users could not only lose customer confidence but look very poor for their brand!

Different Dog reported the highest accessibility alerts (179), and it should carry out an evaluation of its website to locate these alerts and amend them to help improve readability for those using a screen reader.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q4 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.

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