The Q3 2025 benchmarking report for UK animal attractions has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK animal attractions perform across the digital space.

The brand new Q3 2025 benchmarking report for UK animal attractions has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK animal attractions, including Chester Zoo, London Zoo, The Aspinall Foundation, Edinburgh Zoo, Whipsnade Zoo, West Midland Safari Park, Longleat, Colchester Zoo, Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Dudley Zoo, Birdworld, and Paignton Zoo Environmental Park.

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.

Q3 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

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

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK animal attractions or request a copy of the report for the full review.

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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.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.

For Q3 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK animal attractions was £4,780, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £455 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.

There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Whipsnade Zoo reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £7, and Chester Zoo has the highest at £5,289.

The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Longleat has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £37, and Chester Zoo has the highest at £201,000.

By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.

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 animal attractions, they’ll want to ensure their checkout process is simple and that they regularly assess their internal linking structure to ensure they’re directing consumers to links that are working.

In our previous report, Dudley Zoo received the most 404 errors (225). This quarter, Dudley Zoo remains the animal attraction with the most 404 errors, though they’ve since decreased their total to 219. 404 errors disrupt the browsing journey, making it harder for users to find what they need. Frustrated visitors may leave quickly and turn to competitors instead. Over time, this leads to lost trust and fewer returning customers, so it’s important all brands work to limit these errors.

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. When you're competing to sell tickets to events, such as an animal attraction park, an unappealing site (or one that doesn't signpost well to tickets) can mean users turn to your competitors instead. Animal attractions should ensure that their websites load quickly — ideally, no longer than 3 seconds. Otherwise, there’s a risk that consumers should grow impatient and leave the website.

In our previous report, West Midlands Safari Park received the slowest mobile site speed (3). This quarter, West Midlands Safari Park remains the animal attraction with the slowest mobile site speed, though they’ve since increased their speed to 7. Bounce rates rise when mobile pages aren’t optimised for performance, as users have less patience on smaller screens. Heavy images, uncompressed files, or too many scripts can all slow down loading, but streamlining these elements helps reduce abandonment.

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 gage of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Animal attractions can look to collaborate with high-authoritative websites, along with any publications within their niche, to gain high-authority backlinks that will improve their DA. Animal attractions should focus on increase backlinks, and uploading content that’s unique, informative, and selfless will encourage other websites with a similar target audience to link back to. 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.

In our last audit, Birdworld reported the lowest DA (48). This quarter, Birdworld remains the animal attraction to watch, and they’ve since decreased their DA score to 47. Backlinks can help increase a brand’s DA score, but not all backlinks are equal; links from reputable, high-authority sites carry more weight. A single backlink from a credible source can boost domain authority more than dozens of low-quality links. Building relationships and creating shareable content can naturally attract these valuable links.

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. Due to the cost-of-living crisis, we're seeing that many potential customers across a number of sectors are either cutting back on expendable items, or opting for cheaper alternatives. Animal attractions may feel the impact of this, though they can continue to follow a keyword strategy to improve the results for this category.

Three brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Birdworld seeing the biggest loss (-17%). On mobile, 4 brands received a decrease in organic traffic, with Chester Zoo seeing the biggest drop (-69%). A balance of desktop and mobile organic traffic ensures consistent visibility across devices. Search engines reward websites that perform well on both, boosting rankings further. This mix helps brands maintain a strong presence no matter how users choose to browse.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results  is an evolving opportunity to make your pages more visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, 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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. For animal attractions, they'll want to ensure they're appearing for 'Local Pack' results, ensuring they are prominent when potential customers are looking for a nearby visit.

London Zoo is now the animal attraction to beat the most Universal Search appearances (6,185), and Chester Zoo is currently in second place (5,333).

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 brand-new search terms as they enter Google’s index. For animal attractions, long-tail keywords could be focused on specific offerings that potential customers are looking for, such as ‘London conservation zoo’.

Chester Zoo secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,435) and the most appearances for positions 4–10 (2,240). Longtail keywords can be integrated into meta titles, descriptions, and image alt text. These small but important areas help search engines understand the relevance of a page. Consistently optimising across the site increases visibility for niche searches.

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. Animal attractions can adopt a social media strategy to expand reach to help increase ticket sales.

We’ve included screenshots of Colchester Zoo’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK animal attraction included vertical imagery/video to cater to social media users on a mobile.

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. Content creation also helps with DA, appearances for longtail keywords and 'people also ask' results, so animal attractions look to creating shareable pieces that can support performance in all of these areas. 

West Midlands Safari Park secured the most Facebook Likes (567,500), and Longleat secured the most Instagram followers (237,900). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Edinburgh Zoo received the highest total engagement rate (10,789) and the highest average engagement (252).

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. Sites such as animal attractions often focus on their need to appear visually appealing and can therefore fall short of the accessibility requirements their users with visual challenges will need. For consumers using a screen reader, all brands should look to eradicate any accessibility alerts and contrast errors.

In our previous audit, West Midlands Safari Park reported the most accessibility alerts (322). This quarter, West Midlands Safari Park remains the animal attraction to watch, and they’ve since increased their accessibility alerts to 364, suggesting they might not be actively monitoring their website or maybe unaware of the implications of these alerts. Without fixing these alerts, visually impaired visitors may not fully access content. This creates a barrier that prevents equal participation. 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q3 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 Rory Tarplee.