The Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK tyres and servicing brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK tyres and servicing brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2023 benchmarking report for UK tyre and servicing brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national tyre and servicing brands, including ATS Euromaster, Tyre Shopper, Kwik-Fit, Formula One Autocentres, blackcircles.com, BookMyGarage, WhoCanFixMyCar, Evans Halshaw, Mr Clutch Autocentres, Halfords, National Tyre & Autocare, and Protyre.

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 tyre and servicing brands to win brand exposure locally, drive online views, and encourage either online purchases or visits to branches. 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.

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 & 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 tyres and servicing brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for drivers needing to locate local retail and garage options for their vehicles and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages such as branch locators, or for key product lines.

In our last report, we noted that Protyre was seeing the highest level of 4xx errors, recording 345 in our crawls. In Q3, Protyre has reduced this figure to just 38. The site with the biggest cause for concern is now National Tyre & Autocare, which flagged 1,159 4xx errors in our crawls. National Tyre & Autocare must ensure that no key pages are being blocked by dead ends, abruptly halting any conversion journeys clients may be on.

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. As with ensuring your site is technically compliant, tyre and servicing brands must ensure their site experience is fast and efficient so users don't turn elsewhere.

In our last report, we saw that mobile page speed scores for tyre and servicing brands ranged from 14 to 73, with Protyre taking the lowest score. In Q3, these scores ranged from 21 to 63. Protyre is now achieving a score of 33, placing ninth overall, while Halfords have slipped to be the slowest tyre and servicing site.

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. Tyre and servicing brands can look to producing content and PR campaigns across the full spectrum of automotive ownership, and should be able to secure backlinks from a range of sector-specific and regional press publications.

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. As in Q1, DAs for tyre and servicing brands ranged from 29 to 76, with Formula One Autocentres remaining the lowest-scoring brand.

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. Many retail brands are seeing sector-wide falls in organic traffic. Though tyre and servicing brands should be an ever-essential product for any automotive owner, brands may find car owners are updating their tyres and opting for servicing less frequently, resulting in less overall traffic to the sector.

In our last report, two brands were still achieving traffic year on year. In Q3, all twelve tyre and servicing brands have seen falls in traffic year on year. The biggest loss has been seen by BookMyGarage, which has seen organic visibility fall by 67% when compared to 2022.

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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Local pack' results could prove particularly useful to tyre and servicing brands, helping them appear for 'near me' searches and capture potential customers looking for nearby branches.

As in Q1, we saw that 'reviews' was the most used Universal Search result in terms of volume, with Halfords still maintaining the top spot, with 78,100 appearances. However, the most widely used result across all brands was 'people also ask' - an opportunity to share information on products and improve brand visibility directly from the SERP itself.

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 retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Tyre and servicing brands should consider their chances of ranking for key, transactional-focussed keywords and phrases, which might include availability, location, and models of vehicles.

Mr Clutch Autocentres are still ranking for the fewest longtail keywords, and have seen a reduction in rankings inside the top twenty results. However, Mr Clutch has also seen an increase in total longtail keywords ranked for - this indicates that the site's overall appearance for longtail keywords is improving, but content is not yet properly optimised to reach high positions. Mr Clutch can turn to its growing number of total longtail keywords ranked for as a first step to improving on this performance.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that brands 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 can be useful for both national and local garage reach.

Below, we've included examples of ATS Euromaster's Facebook ads. ATS have replicated one creative in two size formats - giving the option to have a mobile, and desktop-first version. This enables them to optimise based on user devices, maximising engagement potential and improving viewer experience.

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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Tyre and servicing brands which are working to improve their DAs and longtail keyword performance will find they naturally build up a good stock of shareable content, particularly if they use appealing images and stats that can be shared on social media.

Facebook is the primary platform for most tyre and servicing brands, with the exception of Kwik-Fit which has seen most of their 99,335 engagements come from Twitter. Halfords have the largest audience on Facebook, with 250,400 likes - this represents a pre-engaged audience that are more likely to see organic social posts, reducing the need to rely heavily on paid ads.

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, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. All brands should be considering accessibility within their website design, even in sectors such as automotive, where the need may not be as readily apparent.

As with Q1, none of our tyre and servicing brands are free from accessibility barriers. In our last report, we noted that Halfords was seeing the highest level of accessibility alerts, returning 169 in our audits. In Q3, Halfords has achieved only very minor improvements, now returning 157 alerts.

Q3 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

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

GET THE FULL 79-PAGE Q3 2023 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 Cedrik Wesche on Unsplash