The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK lighting brands has just been published. Learn how these top 5 brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK lighting brands has just been published. It covers the largest 5 UK decorative lighting brands, including Litecraft.co.uk, Lights4fun, PAGAZZI Lighting, LampShopOnline, and Lighting Direct.
The research illuminates who is winning the biggest share of voice online, and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other lighting brands to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and increase both orders and the acquisition of new stock. 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.
Q1 2025 winners leader board
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 5 lighting brands on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK lighting brands or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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 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.
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. UK decorative lighting brands should see the fewest number of errors on their website to prevent consumers from becoming frustrated. One area brands should look out for is 4xx errors, and they should assess for any broken links and update them as soon as possible to prevent sending consumers down a dead end.
It's important that brands aim to keep 4xx errors at bay, and there were only 2 lighting brands that reported these errors (3 and 4). However, all brands flagged 3xx errors, with Lighting Direct reporting the highest (1,160). Lighting Direct can reduce these errors by removing URLs that receive 4xx errors and replacing them with a new destination URL.
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. All brands should aim for the fastest site speed to prevent consumers growing impatient and then leaving their website. One of the best ways to do this is by utilising a mobile-friendly theme.
In our previous report, Lights4fun reported the slowest mobile site speed (28). Lights4fun has increased their mobile site speed score to 75. This quarter, the mobile site speed ranged between 96 and 71, with LampShopOnline currently receiving the lowest score. Reducing page weight and ensuring they’re using a mobile-friendly website theme are two sure ways to make a positive difference.
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. UK lighting brands should focus on creating shareable content that websites will want to direct their audience to.
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 score for this quarter ranged between 58 and 32, with LampShopOnline reporting the lowest DA score. This UK lighting brand was also in the bottom 2 for the least number of backlinks. The best way for a brand to increase their number of backlinks is to focus on uploading unique content that’ll interest target audience. This will then encourage other websites to link back to their website.
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. UK decorative lighting brands have an opportunity to gain organic traffic by using an effective keyword strategy — and longtail keywords are a great way to stand out from competitors. This requires researching keywords its target audience uses as well as undergoing competitor research.
Three of the 5 brands reported an increase in organic traffic on desktop, while 2 saw an increase on mobile. With this data in mind, all brands should ensure that their website is mobile-friendly to encourage users to access their website from a mobile. Otherwise, they risk missing out on traffic from mobile users.
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, and a site can appear for Universal Search results without being strong in standard rankings. UK decorative lighting brands will want to ensure they have a strong performance for 'reviews' and ‘images’ to help increase their online rankings.
Lights4fun continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (22,834), with the majority of these coming from ‘reviews’ and ‘images.’ On the other hand, LampShowOnline reported the fewest overall appearances (3,243). This lighting brand should optimise all of their images to improve their chances of ranking in SERPs.
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. UK decorative lighting brands can optimise their keyword strategy by incorporating phrases of 3+ words, such as ‘autumn lighting decorations’ or ‘cosy indoor lights.’
Lights4fun continues to report the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (3,950). Lighting Direct has taken the top spot for appearances for positions 4–10 (3,480), which could increase their chances of moving up the scoreboard for position 3.
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.
We’ve included an example of PAGAZZI Lighting’s sponsored posts. This UK lighting brand included a vertical video and 2 vertical images across the sponsored posts, which is an indication that they’re catering to mobile users. They also included the same text across all posts, suggesting they’re testing which media choice receives the highest interaction.
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 brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. UK decorative lighting brands should focus on building a trustworthy, close relationship with its online followers, and it’s important that they post content regularly to help with this.
Lights4fun has the most Facebook Likes (66,900) and the most Instagram followers (186,600). All brands should also monitor their engagement rate, as this provides them with data to indicate whether their audience is interacting with their content. PAGAZZI Lighting received the highest total engagement (271).
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. Brands should focus on reducing accessibility alerts, errors, and contrast errors to improve readability for those using a screen reader.
In our previous audit, LampShop Online received the highest accessibility alerts (499). This quarter, LampShop Online has nearly doubled these alerts, reporting 806. This lighting brand should assess their website and make changes, such as structuring their website with logical headings, including a descriptive alt txt for all images, and more.
Get the full 70-page Q1 2025 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 Daniel Stiel on Unsplash
Let's be social
Join our growing social communities to learn more about the benefits of digital marketing and the people who make us tick.