The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK sofa specialists has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK sofa specialists perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK sofa specialists has just been published. It covers the 11 largest sofa specialists in the UK, including DFS, ScS, The Sofa & Chair Company, Sofa Club, Sofas & Stuff, SofaSofa, Swyft, Sofology, sofa.com, Darlings of Chelsea, and Snug.

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 sofa specialists to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate in-store footfall (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 six of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 sofa specialists on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK sofa specialists 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. For sofa specialists, they'll want to ensure key informational pages, such as branch locations, payment options, and delivery estimates, are clearly signposted and not blocked off by 4xx errors.

Sofology flagged 66 4xx errors, and this UK sofa specialist should assess for any problem links and update any accordingly to prevent consumers becoming frustrated and leaving the website.

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 will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. Sofa specialists may be tempted to include large, high-quality images on their sites to show products at their best. However, when also needing to juggle large quantities of products, sofa specialists must ensure they are striking a happy medium between form and function.

The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 55 and 6, with sofa.com reporting the lowest site speed. After close examination, this UK sofa specialist should ensure that all images are optimised and compressed to help increase its mobile site speed.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) 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. 

By working with a digital PR specialist, sofa specialists will be able to reclaim existing link opportunities, along with strategising on engaging, eye-catching PR campaigns that will gain backlinks and, even more crucially, referral traffic and brand awareness.

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 for this quarter ranged between 61 and 37, with SofaSofa seeing the lowest DA score. This company reported the most backlinks, but these were from the second-to-fewest domains. It’s important that brands aim for backlinks from various websites, which have a high authority.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for core, 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. During lockdown and Covid, we saw consumers invest in their home environments, making them more comfortable and stylish. However, following this boom, we are witnessing near-universal falls in traffic across the homeware sector.

Four of the companies reported a decrease in organic traffic for desktop, and 5 reported a decrease in organic traffic for mobile. To make improvements across the board, all sofa specialists should ensure there website’s theme is mobile-friendly to help increase organic mobile traffic YoY.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results are 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. 'Reviews' and 'images' are both great options for sofa specialists, who can demonstrate customer satisfaction and product styles directly from the SERP.

DFS remains at the top spot for the most Universal Search results (49,243), with the majority of these continuing to come from ‘images’ (39,300).

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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Sofa specialists will want to ensure they're including phrases which show a high purchase intent in their strategy, such as terms including 'quick delivery', 'no interest finance', or 'matching three piece suite.'

DFS continues to secure the top spot for the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (7,939) and positions 4–10 (12,661). All brands should regularly assess their keyword strategy to ensure they’re using terms that their target audience uses.

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 sofa specialists, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product launches, sales, and promotions.

We’ve included examples of SofaSofa’s sponsored Facebook posts. Each post continued text to promote an offer, helping to entice online followers to make a purchase.

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 engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content that achieves traffic over a long period. Pinterest is a useful platform for any brand within the homeware space, such as sofa specialists, as it boasts a comparatively more affluent audience than other platforms, who are immersed in the decision-making stage of purchasing.

Sofology continues to have the largest Facebook following (157,500 Likes), while Sofa Club holds the most Instagram followers (257,700). Having a strong social media presence is a great way for companies to increase brand awareness and sales.

Website Readability & Accessibility

About 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. Sofa specialists should ensure they are not excluding visually impaired customers on the basis of having a non-accessible site and must ensure that all potential sofa customers are able to browse products with ease.

In our last audit, Snug raised some concerns for accessibility alerts. This quarter, Sofas & Stuff received the most accessibility alerts (646), which it should look to reduce to help with 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.

Photo by Naomi Hébert on Unsplash