The Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK pet insurance brands has just been published. Learn how these top 5 companies perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2024 benchmarking report for UK pet insurance has just been published. It covers the largest 5 UK pet insurance companies, including ManyPets, Animal Friends, Petplan UK, Healthy Pets Insurance, and Waggel.
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 UK pet insurance companies to expand brand exposure, increase organic traffic, devise a keyword strategy, and more. This report identifies limitations that some companies are experiencing and how they can reduce them 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 pet insurance companies on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK pet insurance companies 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 pet insurance companies should regularly assess their linking strategy to ensure they’re not directing customers to dead ends, where they can become frustrated and potentially leave the website.
ManyPets reported 192 4xx errors, and this company should check that all links directing consumers to the promised page, or they should add a replacement link instead.
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. UK pet insurance companies should use a mobile-friendly website theme to help increase the site speed, especially given that consumers are likely to leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 58 and 31, with ManyPets reporting the slowest score. Upon closer examination, this company should reduce the amount of weight per page to help increase its site speed score.
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. All UK pet insurance companies should aim for backlinks from various high-authoritative websites with their target audience, which requires them to create relatable, accurate, and engaging content that other websites will want to link 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 72 and 38, with Healthy Pets Insurance reporting the lowest DA score. While this company didn’t flag the fewest backlinks, it did report backlinks from the fewest domains. It’s important that brands aim for backlinks from various sources to help improve their DA score.
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. We can expect to see a fluctuation of organic traffic year on year, especially given the cost-of-living crisis. Brands should focus on following an effective keyword strategy to help increase their findings in search engines as consumers search for a pet insurance company.
Two companies reported a loss in organic traffic for mobile, and two saw a decline in organic traffic for desktop. Alternatively, Waggel saw a 125% increase in organic traffic for desktop, which could be due to a URL update or from following a successful keyword approach.
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. 'Reviews' and people also ask are both great options for UK pet insurance companies, who can demonstrate customer satisfaction and product styles directly from the SERP.
Petplan UK reported the highest Universal Search appearances (24,099), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’ and ‘people also ask’. Alternatively, Healthy Pets Insurance flagged the fewest Universal Search appearances (49).
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 pet insurance companies will want to ensure they're including phrases for pet owners, such as terms including 'pet insurance signup, ‘pet insurance for dogs’, or ‘pet insurance low excess.'
Petplan UK saw the highest longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (3,303) and positions 4–10 (6,333). Reporting lots of appearances for positions 4–10 is an effective and quick way for companies to increase their position in SERPs.
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 Waggel’s sponsored Facebook posts. Each post included personalised imagery, which is a great way to increase branding across a social platform.
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. Posting to social media consistently is a great opportunity for companies to announce the latest news and updates while also building a trusted community with followers. Companies should also focus on tracking their total engagement to assess whether or not their followers are interacting with their posts.
Petplan UK has the largest Facebook page (156,200 Likes) and the largest Instagram account (22,400 followers). This company posts consistently and uses a combination of reels and posts for diverse content.
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. UK pet insurance companies should ensure they are not excluding visually impaired customers on the basis of having a non-accessible site and must ensure that all consumers are able to browse services with ease.
Animal Friends saw the most accessibility alerts (138), which it should aim to reduce by fixing redundant title text. Additionally, Petplan UK reported 26 contrast errors, which it should assess to ensure it’s catering to those with colour deficiencies.
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 Mike Kilcoyne on Unsplash
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