The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK energy providers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK energy providers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK energy providers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national Energy providers, including British Gas, EDF, E.ON, ScottishPower, OVO Energy, Octopus Energy, Utility Warehouse, Shell Energy, npower Business Solutions, SSE Renewables, Utilita Energy and Green Energy UK.

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 energy providers to win brand exposure, drive online views, and generate new customer enquiries. 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 Q1 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q1 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

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

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing energy providers, 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 site 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 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

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 Q1 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK energy providers was £35,221, 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 £47 . 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, EDF has the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £8, and Utilita Energy has the highest at £341.

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, Utilia Energy has the highest estimate monthly ad spend at £551,000, and EDF has the lowest at £1,880.

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. Energy providers will want to ensure key information, such as rates and quote generators, are clearly signposted and not blocked off by broken links.

EDF reported the highest 4xx errors (405), with SSE Renewables at a close second place (404 4xx errors). There are several steps a brand can take to reduce their 4xx errors, such as regularly checking for broken links and implementing 301 redirects for removed pages. Broken links can take visitors to a dead end, disrupting their trust in 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. As with technical site compliance, energy providers will want to ensure their site is quick to use and frustration-free for any visitors, to indicate a high level of service.

In our previous audit, SSE Renewables reported the lowest mobile site speed (29). This quarter, SSE Renewables has increased their mobile site speed to 40. Currently, the brand to watch is ScottishPower, with a score of 22. Mobile site speed is important for brands, as faster loading speeds can create a smoother browsing experience for users. When users don’t have to wait longer than 3 seconds for a page to load, they’re more inclined to remain on the website and return in the future.

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. Energy providers would benefit from engaging with a digital PR specialist, who can identify opportunities to reclaim backlinks, and create engaging content that national press will want to share.

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 score for this quarter ranged between 79 and 50, with Shell Energy flagging the lowest DA (a slight decrease from 50 in our previous report). Domain authority has a big impact on websites, as a higher domain authority typically correlates with better search engine rankings, as a well-optimised website communicates to a search engine that the website is trustworthy.

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. Fluctuating energy prices will have consumers shopping around to try and identify the best price. Therefore, energy providers must have a strong organic strategy to capitalise on this restless consumer base.

Six of the brands reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop, while Shell Energy received the most significant increase (+5576%). Meanwhile, 10 brands reported a decline on mobile, with Shell Energy also receiving a significant increase for mobile, too, (+4438%). Brands should take into consideration organic traffic across both mobile and desktop. Mobile users typically spend less time on a website compared to desktop, making it important that the website is simple to navigate and quick to access content.

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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Optimising for 'people also ask' results is a great way to build brand awareness and confidence directly from the SERP, as energy providers can provide much-needed answers before users have set virtual foot on their site

British Gas continues to secure the most overall Universal Search appearances (13,578) — a slight decrease from 17,896 in our previous audit. Universal Search appearances are important for websites because they can lead to higher click-through rates because users trust these results as they often provide direct answers to their queries.

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. Energy suppliers will want to optimise for high-conversion potential keywords and phrases, including terms like 'switch energy provider' and 'new energy customer offers'.

British Gas remains the brand to beat, with 11,738 longtail keyword appearances for position 3 and 18,274 appearances for positions 4–10. There are some ways brands can increase their longtail keyword appearances, such as refreshing and optimising past content with more relevant longtail keywords and monitoring trends and updating keyword accordingly.

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 E.ON’s sponsored posts. This UK energy provider included branded imagery, helping to make the posts personal to this brand.

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 such as energy-saving tips and advice will be engaging, topical, and most likely to be shared by social media users.

Octopus Energy has the most Facebook Likes (213,000) and the most Instagram followers (87,100). However, Utilita Energy secured the highest total engagement rate (20,163). Social media isn’t a platform just for brands to promote their services/products but to build a trustworthy relationship with their target audience.

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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. As energy is an essential need for any customer, energy providers must ensure their sites are universally accessible.

In our previous audit, EDF was the one to watch, with 248 accessibility alerts. This quarter, EDF is still the brand to watch, reporting 258 accessibility alerts — an increase from our previous report. Brands can make their websites more user-friendly and contain fewer accessibility alerts by reducing empty links and empty buttons. There are other ways all brands can limit accessibility alerts, such as avoiding low-contrast text.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 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 Mike Movassaghi.

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