The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK sleep retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK sleep retailers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK sleep retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national sleep retailers, including Beds.co.uk, Dreams, Mattressman, And So To Bed, Land of Beds, Mattress Online, Happy Beds, Bedstar, MattressNextDay, Feather & Black, Soak & Sleep, and Bensons for Beds.
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 retailers to win brand exposure, drive online orders, and even generate 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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 sleep retailers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing sleep retailers, 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 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 & 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. Sleep retailers will need to ensure they're keeping on top of changing lines in stock, and that key pages such as product comparison content and delivery information are clearly signposted.
In our last audit, we reported that MattressNextDay flagged 585 4xx errors, and it’s increased its errors to 622 in this quarter, showing that it’s not made any improvements to its internal linking structure. However, Bedstar is the sleep retailer with the highest number of 4xx errors, flagging 3,033 in this quarter. This sleep retailer must address these issues to prevent customers from becoming frustrated.
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 sleep retailers, they'll be offering similar, if not the same, products as competitors, so it's essential that users are able to access what they're looking for quickly, to avoid them turning elsewhere.
The site speed score for this quarter ranged between 57 and 8, with Beds.co.uk reporting the lowest. This sleep retailer must adopt lazy loading to increase webpage loading times. Furthermore, only Mattressman scored above 50% (the recommended site speed), and this sleep retailer uses medium-sized images across its site to help with site sped.
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. For sleep retailers, who are selling similar product lines to their competitors, an effective digital PR campaign will not only help improve DA, but gain valuable backlinks that may refer customers to their site.
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 was between 72 and 17, with 8 companies scoring above the 40 benchmark. Beds.co.uk is at the bottom of the leaderboard and the second-to-last retailer with the fewest backlinks, which it should look to increase to help with its DA rating.
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. As with many e-commerce sectors, we are seeing a sector-wide fall in traffic to sleep retailer sites, indicating this is an area consumers are cutting back on during the cost-of-living crisis.
Only 3 of the 12 sleep retailers encountered a loss in organic mobile traffic compared to the previous year. Bedstar saw a 39% loss in traffic — which is still lower than our previous audit. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, Soak & Sleep reported a 199% increase.
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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. For sleep retailers, 'reviews' and 'image pack' results are a useful way of grabbing attention from potential customers directly from the SERP, and standing out from competitors.
Dreams remains at the top of the leaderboard for the most Universal Search results overall, though it saw fewer ‘people also ask’ appearances (4,100 compared to the previous 5,000). It also reported 29,000 ‘image’ results (an increase from 24,300 in the previous quarter).
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 retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. As mentioned, when retailers are selling similar, if not the same, products, capitalising on organic visibility and being strategic with keywords is essential for capturing opportunities for sales.
Dreams secures the most appearances for the top 3 search engine results, and is also in the top position for all categories, so there’s no indication that this sleep retailer will lose the top spot in the next quarter. Mattressman has 2,145 appearances in positions 4–10, though is lower down on the leaderboard for positions 3. Securing appearances for longtail keywords in positions 4–10, which can provide an opportunity for brands to increase their organic traffic.
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 3 examples of Dreams’ sponsored Facebook posts. It utilises two vertical videos and one vertical image. This sleep retailer used an image and a video with the same material, suggesting that it’s trialing which media type receives the highest engagement.
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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Though we generally see brands favour Facebook and Instagram as their platform of choice, Pinterest is an exciting avenue for sleep retailers to consider, as they can tap into a comparatively affluent audience who are immersed in the consideration stage of the buying cycle.
Nine of the 12 brands favour Facebook, although it’s split down the middle between brands with the highest following on Facebook or Instagram. Having multiple social media profiles allows brands to reach out to various demographics across an online audience. Happy Beds has the highest total engagement (16,657) — an important component of a successful social media strategy is getting your followers to engage with your content.
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, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. With blue often being a favoured colour within the sleep sector, sleep retailers using blue as part of their brand colour must ensure there is sufficient contrast between text and background colours, in order to remain accessible.
In our last audit, we noted that Dreams reported 356 accessible alerts, which it’s increased even further in this quarter to 419. After taking a closer look into the cause of these alerts, most of these errors are due to redundant title text. Dreams must address these alerts to improve accessibility 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.
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