The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK protein and sports nutrition brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK Protein and sports nutrition brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK protein and sports nutrition brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national protein and sports nutrition brands, including Myprotein, MaxiNutrition, PhD Nutrition, Grenade, foodspring, Bulk ™, Innermost, Protein Works, HERMOSA, Form, Optimum Nutrition, and Science in Sport.
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 protein and sports nutrition brands to win brand exposure, drive online views, and win 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 below or schedule a call. 
Q3 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 protein and sports nutrition brands on, check out our quick-look table below; 
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK protein and sports nutrition brands or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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 protein and sports nutrition brands, care should be taken that the removal of any products does not impact existing links, such as from blog posts, category pages, or alternate product recommendations.
PhD Nutrition flagged 103 4xx errors, which it should aim to reduce by verifying links and updating or removing any broken ones. Otherwise, customers may become frustrated and choose to leave the website, resulting in reduced sales and brand trust.
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. In an increasingly competitive market, geared towards high performance in exercise and sports, protein and sports nutrition brands will want to ensure their sites are also quick, easy to use, and give a positive impression of their brand from every touchpoint.
The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 62 and 21, with PhD Nutrition flagging the lowest site speed. Upon closer inspection, this protein and sports nutrition brand should assess that all images are sized proportionately to cater to mobile users and consider using a responsive mobile theme.
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 isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Protein and sports nutrition brands should be continually pushing to improve their DA, and could collaborate with leading fitness publications and bloggers in order to build this authority.
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 for this quarter ranged between 76 and 28, with HERMOSA flagging the lowest DA. This protein and sports nutrition brand saw the fewest backlinks and should consider assessing its backlink strategy to improve its DA score. For example, guest blogging on websites with a similar target audience is a great approach to increase backlinks.
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. With sports and fitness remaining an ever-growing sector, we expect protein and sports nutrition brands to be able to capitalise on these growth opportunities.
Three brands saw a drop in organic traffic for both mobile and desktop. HERMOSA reported the biggest decrease for mobile (-81%), and Optimum received the biggest decrease in desktop Nutrition (-14%). Brands can increase their organic traffic by adopting an effective keyword strategy and ensuring they’re using a mobile-friendly website theme.
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. Protein and sports nutrition brands should be utilising all universal search features as their customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs', and 'people also ask'.
Myprotein continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (42,266), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’. HERMOSA reported the fewest appearances, and this brand should optimise images to help improve rankings in SERP for this category.
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. Protein and sports nutrition brands should look at high-conversion potential terms when expanding their longtail keyword portfolio, in order to improve, not only general visibility and traffic, but sales stemming from organic traffic.
Myprotein remains at the top of the scoreboard for the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (3,942) and positions 4–10 (7,581). HERMOSA remains at the bottom of the scoreboard, and this brand should assess its longtail keyword strategy to ensure it’s using phrases that its target audience use.
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. For UK protein and sports nutrition brands, Facebook ads are an opportunity to increase sales by targeting fitness enthusiasts.
We’ve included examples of Protein Works’ sponsored Facebook posts. This brand used vertical imagery and videos to cater to mobile users, though it should limit its text to a maximum of 3 lines to attract its followers’ 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 that achieves traffic over a long period of time. Protein and sports nutrition brands can create content across the full spectrum of fitness and sports content - topics which are likely to engage a social media audience and win social shares.
Myprotein has the largest Facebook page (2.4 million Likes) and Instagram account (1.1 million followers). However, PhD Nutrition secured the highest total engagement (33,506) — which is an important category for brands to assess to check their followers are interacting with their posts.
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. Protein and sports nutrition brands, which are likely to sell many similar products with only slight differences, must ensure that their site is clear for users with any vision deficiencies to navigate.
In our last audit, foodspring reduced its accessibility alerts to 207, but this has increased to 313 this quarter — with the majority of these due to redundant title text. It’s important this brand spends time reducing these to help with readability for those on a screen reader.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q3 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 Jyoti Singh on Unsplash
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