The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK sleep brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK sleep brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q2 2024 benchmarking report for UK sleep brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK sleep brands, including Silent Night, Tempur, Sleepeezee, Emma, OTTY, Dormeo, Simba, Vispring, Eve, Hypnos, Brook + Wilde Sleep, and Relyon Beds Ltd.

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 sleep brands to win brand exposure, generate online orders, and drive in-store recognition (where relevant). 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.

Q3 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 sleep brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK sleep 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 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. Sleep brands will want to keep on top of changing stock lines in order to ensure customers can easily find the product that suits their specific needs.

Tempur reported 1,196 4xx errors, and this sleep brand should assess its website and remove/update any broken links to prevent its consumers from becoming frustrated. Poorly optimised links can affect a website’s SEO score.

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. With many sleep brands' products looking similar, they will be keen to ensure their items stand out with high-quality lifestyle images, and graphics & videos talking through their products' benefits. However, assets like this can easily bring down site speed performance, if not properly optimised.

The mobile site speed score in our last audit ranged between 60 and 7. This quarter, the range is between 63 and 10, with OTTY reporting the lowest mobile site speed. Upon closer inspection, this sleep brand should incorporate lazy loading for improved user experience and SEO.

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. Sleep brands can look to build domain authority by collaborating with publications and bloggers within their niche. Spotting opportunities for evergreen content, that can be publicised more heavily around events such as 'national sleep day', helps create long-lasting links that will stay relevant all year round.

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 74 and 22, with Brook + Wilde Sleep flagging the lowest DA score. This sleep brand also reported the fewest backlinks, and it should focus on developing relationships with other high-authoritative 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. Typically, most brands in non-essential sectors are seeing falls in traffic year on year, and potential customers are likely to delay big purchases, like mattresses and beds, unless absolutely necessary.

In our previous audit, Eve reported the lowest organic traffic for both mobile and desktop. This quarter, Hypnos flagged the lowest organic traffic for mobile (-13%) and desktop (-38%). Brands can make improvements to their organic traffic by ensuring they’re following a successful keyword strategy that’s well-researched and monitored.

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. For sleep brands, making good use of the 'reviews' universal search result will allow them to build trust in customers directly from the SERP.

Silent Night remains at the top of the leaderboard for the most Universal Search appearances (19,833). On the other hand, Brook + Wilde Sleep reported the fewest overall appearances (58) and should reach out to past customers to ask for an online review.

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. Sleep brands should be looking to include high conversion-potential longtail keywords in their strategy, such as 'memory foam king mattress next day delivery', as these indicate users looking for products with immediate availability.

Silent Night continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances in position 3 (1,445) and positions 4–10 (3,424). Following an effective keyword strategy is an effective way for sleep brands to increase their organic traffic.

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 sleep brands to quickly reach audiences with offers, new lines, and key products they’re looking to push.

We’ve included an example of Emma’s sponsored posts. This sleep brand utilised vertical videos on each post, which can improve the user’s experience, preventing them from having to rotate their phone to view the video.  

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. For sleep brands, they can look to create content that is topical for seasonal events but can remain relevant all year round, such as cooling mattress technology that can work alongside both summer and winter duvets for optimal comfort.

Eve reported the highest engagement rate (1,936). It’s important that all brands assess their engagement rate as a way to detect whether their followers are interacting with their content. A brand can help lots of social media followers, but if users aren’t engagement with their posts, they’ll need to assess their topics, post length, upload times, and more.

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. With blue often being a favoured brand colour for sleep brands, they must ensure that contrast is sufficient enough to make their content readable.

In our previous audit, OTTY flagged the most accessibility alerts (66). This quarter, it’s increased its alerts to 76, though Brook + Wilde Sleep reported the most accessibility alerts (82). All brands should aim to reduce their alerts to improve usability and readability for those using 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.

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