The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK theme parks has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK theme parks perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK theme parks has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK theme parks, including Alton Towers Resort, LEGOLAND, Thorpe Park, Paultons Park, Drayton Manor Resort, Flamingo Land Resort, Chessington World of Adventures Resort, Crealy Theme Park & Resort, Pleasure Beach Resort, Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts, Diggerland, and Lightwater Valley.
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 animal attractions to win brand exposure, sell online tickets, and even improve digital 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 Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key take-aways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 theme parks on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK theme parks 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 under-perform. 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. It’s essential UK theme parks have easy-to-use websites that highlight the theme park’s facilities and will be a location for customers to purchase tickets. Brands should take into consideration clear pricing, pricing methods, and an up-to-date site containing important information about location, rides available, etc.
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. Customers desire a website with quick-loading speeds, which will increase ticket sales. A slow-loading site will contain large, un-optimised images, videos, lots of information per page, heavy coding, and more.
In our previous audit, Pleasure Beach Resort reported the lowest mobile site speed (14). This quarter, Pleasure Beach Resort remains the slowest for mobile site speed — this time, seeing a reduction to 9. Upon closer inspection, it should either adopt lazy loading or reduce page weight. Thorpe Park scored the highest mobile site speed (42).
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gage of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Theme parks should be continually pushing to improve their DA, which they can achieve by adopting a PR for backlinks from high-authoritative websites. An active blog page and a fast site speed are also effective strategies to help improve the DA rating for each brand.
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 73 and 41, with Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts reporting the lowest DA score. This UK theme park also saw the fewest number of backlinks (and from the fewest domains), and it should adopt a PR strategy to reach out to websites with a similar target audience to help improve its DA ranking.
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. An effective organic search strategy can set apart one brand from the next, and it helps to reduce the cost of sponsored advertisements. Companies should take care to monitor their keyword strategy and make suitable changes based on the results.
In our previous report, 7 of the 12 UK theme parks saw a decrease in organic mobile traffic, and 3 saw a decrease for desktop. This quarter, only LEGOLAND saw a decrease in organic mobile traffic, and no brands saw a decrease in organic desktop traffic. Gulliver's Theme Park Resorts encountered an impressive 218% increase in organic desktop traffic.
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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Theme parks should utilise all universal search features, as potential customers will want to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs', and 'people also ask'. This is also an opportunity to provide useful, quick content for commonly asked questions that show high potential for conversions.
Alton Towers Resort continues to land the most Universal Search appearances (a total of 19,976), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’. On the other hand, all UK theme parks scored zero for ‘reviews’, ‘image pack’, and ‘FAQs’.
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. There are many longtail keyword options that theme parks could use, such as ‘theme parks in north, UK’ and ‘theme parks for the family’.
Alton Towers Resort remains at the top of the scoreboard for the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (5,346) and positions 4–10 (6,867). On the other hand, Diggerland saw the fewest longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (94), and it should assess its keyword strategy.
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. Animal attractions can adopt a social media strategy to expand reach to help increase ticket sales.
We’ve included 3 examples of Flamingo Land Resort’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK theme park include a video for each post. Using new videos for a post has an 8% more conversion per dollar than sponsored posts made with reused videos.
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. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about entertainment and attraction updates.
Alton Towers Resort continues to have the largest Facebook page (1.4 million Likes) and Instagram account (264,700 followers). Upon closer examination, this UK theme park posts content regularly and uses personalised content (with an Alton Towers Resort representative present) to help with branding).
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. All theme parks should aim for zero contrast errors and zero accessibility errors on their websites to improve readability for those using a screen reader.
In our previous audit, Flamingo Land Resort flagged 171 accessibility alerts, which it’s increased to 190 this quarter. This UK theme park should assess redundant links and redundant title text to prevent affecting readability 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.