The Q3 2025 benchmarking report for UK bathroom retail brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK bathroom retail brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q3 2025 benchmarking report for UK bathroom retail brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK bathroom retail brands, including Bathroom City Ltd, Bathroom Mountain, Bathroom Supastore, Bathroom Takeaway, UK Bathroom Warehouse, Bathroom Planet, Bathroom Discount Centre, Better Bathrooms, Victorian Plumbing, Plumbworld (Online Home Retail Ltd.), Bathrooms.com, and QS Supplies.
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 bathroom retail brands to win brand exposure locally, online views, and orders. 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.
For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 bathroom retail brands on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK bathroom retail brands or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each retailer based on 50+ metrics and indicators of a 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.
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing and 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.
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 bathroom retail brands was £14,562, 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 £12 . 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, Bathrooms.com reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £3, and both Bathroom Mountain and QS Supplies have the highest at £43.
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, Bathrooms.com has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £380, and Victorian Plumbing has the highest at £792,000.
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.
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. Bathroom retail brands should pay particular care to ensure they’re not directing customers to broken links, which sends them to a dead end. Instead, all brands should regularly maintain and, if applicable, provide replacement links.
In our previous audit, Better Bathrooms received 16 404 errors. This quarter, Better Bathrooms has reduced their 404 errors to 9, and they’re no longer the brand to watch. This quarter, UK Bathroom Warehouse flagged the most 404 errors (17). These errors often indicate a website has broken links, which can harm a website’s credibility with their audience and authority with search engines.
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 will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. A fast mobile site speed can increase conversions, while a slow mobile site speed (below 50%) can encourage users to leave a website and potentially never return.
In our last report, Bathroom Takeaway received the slowest mobile site speed (17). This quarter, Bathroom Takeaway is no longer the brand to watch, and they’ve increased their mobile site speed to 29. Seeing improvements suggests this brand is aware of the negative impacts a slow-loading website can have on their authority. The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 64 and 27, with Bathroom Supastore reporting the slowest site speed.
Domain authority (DA) 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. Bathroom retail brands should focus on creating and uploading high-quality content that’s shareable to encourage high-authority websites with a similar target audience to link back to them. Forming relationships with other websites can also increase the quality and volume of their backlinks.
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 previous audit, Bathroom Planet reported the lowest DA score (16). This quarter, Bathroom Planet remains the brand to watch, and they’ve since decreased their DA score to 15. Publishing high-quality content is one of the most effective ways for a brand to increase their DA score and can also help to increase organic traffic.
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for core, 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. In a cost-of-living crisis, we can expect to see a fluctuation of organic traffic on both desktop and mobile, though brands can improve their traffic by ensuring their website is user-friendly and following a keyword strategy.
Seven bathroom retail brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with UK Bathroom Warehouse seeing the biggest drop (-71%). On mobile, 9 brands reported a decrease in organic traffic, with UK Bathroom Warehouse also seeing the biggest drop (-91%). This brand should ensure their website is optimised for mobile to avoid missing out on traffic.
Google Universal Search Results are 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. Bathroom retail brands should be utilising all Universal Search features, paying particular attention to ‘images’ and ‘reviews’.
Victorian Plumbing remains at the top of the scoreboard for the most Universal Search appearances (28,665) — a reduction from 25,107 previously. On the other hand, UK Bathroom Warehouse received the fewest overall appearances (257). This bathroom retail brand should ensure all images are optimised with alt text, as this is a quick and effective way to boost their overall appearances.
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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options bathroom retail brands could be using such as ‘online bathroom supplier’, ‘buy bathroom suites online’, or ‘buy bathroom accessories'.
Victorian Plumbing continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (3,393) and positions 4–10 (12,736). On the other hand, UK Bathroom Warehouse received the fewest appearances for position 3 (6) and positions 4–10 (12).
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. For bathroom retail brands, Facebook ads are an opportunity to showcase new product releases and expand their audience reach.
We’ve included screenshots of Bathroom Supastore’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK bathroom retail brand should include a CTA to encourage social media users to take an action.
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 a long period of time. It's great for your engagement, but great for Google, too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about different styles and special offers.
Victorian Plumbing secured the most Facebook Likes (104,900) and the most Instagram followers (47,700). Facebook was the most popular social media platform of all brands. Victorian Plumbing received the highest total engagement rate (3,451) and the highest average engagement (158).
Around 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, even subconsciously, brands lose customer interest as they turn to other bathroom brands that can better meet their accessibility requirements.
In our last audit, Plumbworld reported 651 accessibility alerts, and Bathroom Planet reported 33 contrast errors. This quarter, Plumbworld has increased their accessibility alerts to 1,302, and Bathroom Planet has increased their contrast errors to 34. These alerts and errors can make it hard for some users to interact with a website.
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.