The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK lighting brands has just been published. Learn how these top 5 brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 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 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 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.
Lights4fun reported 11 4xx errors, and this lighting brand should have redirects in place to avoid a broken linking structure. All brands reported 3xx errors, with Litecraft.co.uk reported the most (51). This means that its redirect links also need updating.
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.
The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 56 and 28, with Lights4fun reporting the slowest site speed. Upon closer examination, this brand should utilise lazy loading for an improved user experience.
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 for this quarter ranged between 58 and 27, with Litecraft.co.uk reporting the slowest score for this category. While this brand didn’t receive the fewest number of backlinks, it can take other steps to improve its DA score, such as including an internal linking strategy, boosting its mobile site speed, and reducing low-quality backlinks.
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.
None of the brands saw a decline in organic traffic for both mobile and desktop, though the data shows that all brands saw more traffic from desktop users. With this in mind, all brands should ensure their website is mobile friendly to encourage users on the go.
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 secured the most Universal Search appearances (23,950), with the majority of these coming from ‘images (15,600). Alternatively, LampShopOnline reported the fewest Universal Search appearances (6,145).
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 saw the most longtail keyword appearances (4,801 for position 3 and 3,842 for positions 4–10). All brands should aim to increase their appearances for positions 4–10 for one of the quickest and effective ways to increase their online search.
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 examples of Litecraft.co.uk’s sponsored Facebook posts. All images were vertical to tailor to mobile users. However, 2 of its posts included the same text and imagery, and it should aim to diversify its posts to maximise testing results.
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 largest Facebook page (65,600 Likes) and Instagram account (178,900 followers). However, PAGAZZI Lighting reported the highest total engagement (3,714), which is an area that all brands should track
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.
LampShopOnline reported 499 accessibility alerts, with the majority of these due to redundant title text, and it should ensure that the title text and alternative text aren’t identical to help reduce this figure.
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 Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash
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