The Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK bike retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK bike retailers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2025 benchmarking report for bike retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 bike retailers, including Evans Cycles, Wiggle, Chain Reaction, Tredz Bikes, Merlin Cycles, SIGMA Sports United, Leisure Lakes Bikes, Tweeks Cycles, 99 Bikes, Winstanleys Bikes, Wheelbase Shop, and Specialized.
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 bike retailers to expand brand awareness and enhance their website navigation, speed, and more to increase traffic and conversions. This report also 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 Q2 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.
Q2 2025 Winners LEaderboard
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 bike retailers on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing online learning providers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
What The Industry Research Report Covers
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand 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 Q2 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK bike retailers was £1,427, 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 £11 . 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, both Leisure Lakes Bikes and Tweeks Cycles reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £2, and Specialized has the highest at £80.
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, Wheelbase Shop has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £906, and Tredz Bikes has the highest at £50,500.
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. Bike retailers should monitor website errors to deliver a quality user experience, which includes fixing broken links to help with SEO, organic search traffic, crawability, and more.
In the previous quarter, Evans Cycles reported 67 4xx errors. This quarter, Evans Cycles has decreased these errors to 21. Even though they’re still the bike retailer to watch, it’s important to celebrate any progress. Reducing 4xx errors can prevent visitors from becoming frustrated, helping them to build a positive perception of a brand.
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. Page speed makes a big difference as to whether a consumer will remain on the website or potentially visit it again. All bike retailers should undergo methods to increase site speed, such as using a mobile-friendly theme and including lazy loading.
In our previous audit, Wheelbase Shop flagged the slowest mobile site speed (9). This quarter, Wheelbase Shop has increased their mobile site speed to 16, and they’re no longer the brand to watch. The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 69 and 3, with Leisure Lakes Bikes flagging the slowest mobile site speed.
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, ie. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Page speed makes a big difference as to whether a consumer will remain on the website or potentially visit it again. All bike retailers should undergo methods to increase site speed, such as using a mobile-friendly theme and including lazy loading.
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. The DA for this quarter ranged between 81 and 35, with Tweeks Cycles reporting the lowest DA score. This bike retailer should consider building relationships with other reputable websites in the same niche to help increase the quantity and quality of 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. During the cost-of-living crisis, we can expect to see a fluctuation in organic traffic on both devices, given that consumers are being more cautious of spending their money. However, bike retailers can see follow a strategy to increase their organic traffic, such as creating high-quality content and following a keyword strategy.
Four bike retailers reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Wiggle flagging the biggest loss (-47%). Meanwhile, on mobile, 6 bike retailers saw a decrease on mobile, with Wiggle seeing the biggest loss (-50%). Given that traffic on mobile saw the biggest decline compared to desktop, all brands should ensure their website is mobile-friendly to help encourage more traffic.
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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. To help increase rankings in SERPs, bike retailers should focus on ‘images’ and ‘reviews’, which requires optimising visuals and encouraging past customers to leave an online review.
Evans Cycles continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (11,262) — an decrease from 32,596 in our previous audit. The majority of these appearances were from ‘images’ (8,500), and Wiggle reported the fewest appearances for ‘images’ (51).
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. Bike retailers should have a longtail keyword strategy to help increase their organic traffic and searchability online. Phrases they could use may increase ‘sports hybrid bikes’, ‘full suspension mountain bike’, and more.
Evans Cycles continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (5,324) and positions 4–10 (8,634). On the other hand, Wiggle reported the fewest appearance for position 3 (48) and positions 4–10 (211). This bike retailer should ensure they’re regularly researching low-competitive, high conversion rate longtail keywords to use across their website.
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 screenshots of Tredz Bikes’ sponsored Facebook posts. This UK bike retailer should consider branding their images to make it easier to recognise the bike retailer and help them to stand out amongst all of the social media noise.
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 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. Bike Retailers can create shareable social content that details new stock, the latest industry news, and information that’s relevant to their target audience.
Specialized has the most Facebook Likes (2.1 million) and the most Instagram followers (1.7 million). Specialized also reported the highest total engagement rate (27,894) — a metric all bike retailers should regularly assess to track their social media followers are interacting with their 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. When websites aren’t designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Websites that aren’t accessible can frustrate consumers, resulting in them losing trust in your brand. Bike retailers should regularly assess their contrast errors, accessibility alerts, and errors to avoid negatively impacting readability for those with a colour vision deficiency or those using a screen reader.
In our previous audit, Merlin Cycles flagged 96 accessibility alerts. This quarter, Merlin Cycles is no longer the brand to watch, and they’ve reduced these alerts to 89. Currently, the brand to watch is 99 Bikes, which reported 160 accessibility alerts. These alerts can neglect some users with disabilities, affecting how they navigate the website and, potentially, their perception of the brand.
Get the full 70-page Q2 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.
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