The Q4 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 Q4 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 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.
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.
Feather & Black flagged 141 4xx errors — the highest of all UK sleep retailers. This brand should assess for any broken links and update them. Otherwise, it risks frustrating consumers by sending them down a dead end.
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.
In our previous report, Beds.co.uk reported the lowest mobile site speed (2). This quarter, beds is still at the bottom of the leaderboard but has increased its mobile site speed to 7. The mobile site speed ranged between 63 and 7, and all brands should aim for at least 50%.
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 for this quarter ranged between 71 and 22, with beds.co.uk reporting the lowest DA. Brands can increase their DA score by focusing on creating and uploading content that other websites will want to link to (expert knowledge, unique information, etc.).
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.
Bedstar reported the biggest loss in organic traffic on desktop (-49%), and Dreams reported the biggest loss on mobile (-53%). All brands can increase their organic traffic by adopting a successful keyword strategy.
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.
Happy Beds secured the most Universal Search appearances (27,519), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’ and then ‘images’. Beds.co.uk received the least overall Universal Search appearances and didn’t report any impressions for ‘reviews’. This UK sleep retailer should reach out to past customers and ask them to leave an online review.
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 secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,427) and positions 4–10 (9,722). On the other hand, Bedstar reported the fewest longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (108), though not the fewest for positions 4–10. Securing keyword appearances for position 4–10 is one of the quickest, most effective ways for brands to increase their online presence in 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 supermarkets, they can use Facebook ads to drive in-store and online footfall in high-competition areas, along with ensuring visibility on key events and product lines.
We’ve included an example of Mattressman’s sponsored posts. This UK sleep retailer included bullet points on one post, which is an effective way to help with readability for impatient social media followers.
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.
Feather & Black secured the highest total engagement (5,279) — which is an important category for companies to assess, as it allows brands to track if their social media followers are interacting with their posts.
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 previous report, Dreams reported 365 accessibility alerts — the highest of all brands. This quarter, it’s very slightly reduced this figure to 344, and Bedstar has received the highest accessibility alerts (619). Upon closer inspection, the majority of these are due to redundant title text, and it should modify the title to be more descriptive.
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 BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash