The Q4 2023 benchmarking report for UK fitted furniture brands has just been published. Learn how the top 7 UK fitted furniture brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q4 2023 benchmarking report for UK fitted furniture brands has just been published. It covers the 7 largest fitted furniture brands in the UK, including Sharps Bedrooms, Neville Johnson, Empatika Fitted Furniture, Hammonds Furniture, Sliderobes, Strachan Furniture Makers, and Online-Bedrooms.co.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 fitted furniture brands to win brand exposure, drive online views, and ultimately win purchases. 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 Q4 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q4 2023 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 7 fitted furniture brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK fitted furniture brands 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 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.

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 fitted furniture brands, they'll want to ensure key informational pages, such as pricing, payment options, and delivery and installation estimates, are clearly signposted and not blocked off by 4xx errors.

In the last report, Hammonds Furniture raised some concerns with its 141 4xx errors. In this quarter, Hammonds Furniture saw an increase to 148 4xx errors. It needs to maintain its internal linking structure and add more redirects to any old links. This fitted furniture brand also flagged for the highest 3xx errors (615), which it needs to address before the next quarter.

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 will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. Fitted furniture brands may be tempted to include high-quality videos and images on their sites, to entice customers, but each brand must ensure that these are appropriate sizes that will not slow down mobile devices.

This quarter, the site speed ranges from 58 to 16, which is an improvement on the highest end of the scale. Sharps Bedroom saw the highest score, while Strachan Furniture Makers has lowest score. Strachan Furniture Makers should disable any unused plugins and enable mobile caching.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

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. By working with a digital PR specialist, fitted furniture brands can look at link reclamation, in addition to out-of-the-box thinking to develop exciting PR campaigns that tie into their product lines.

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. This quarter, the site speed ranges from 58 to 16, which is an improvement on the highest end of the scale. Sharps Bedroom saw the highest score, while Strachan Furniture Makers has lowest score. Strachan Furniture Makers should disable any unused plugins and enable mobile caching.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

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. Following the lockdown and Covid boom of home improvement, we have seen falls in organic traffic across all sectors within the space.

As anticipated, all seven brands saw a loss in organic mobile traffic, which isn’t surprising giving the cost of living crisis, as people don’t have as much spare money for such luxuries. Empatika Fitted Furniture continues to sit at the bottom of the leaderboard with a 95% traffic loss in this quarter.

Universal Search Opportunity

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. 'Reviews' and 'images' are both great options for fitted furniture brands, enabling them to give users a good perception of their service and products directly from the SERP.

‘Images’ continues to earn the most points. Six out of the seven brands scored 0 for ‘reviews’, which they could look to increase to expand their SERP rankings.

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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Fitted furniture brands will want to pay particularly close attention to phrases that indicate a high-purchase intent, such as 'quick installation', 'payment plans', and '12 year guarantee'.

Hammonds Furniture holds the number one position for the most longtail keywords, with Sharps Bedrooms at a very close second. Sharps Bedrooms outperforms Hammonds Furniture for the top three positions, suggesting that is has a more strategical keyword strategy. Unfortunately, Empatika Fitted Furniture still has no appearances in the top three positions.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that brands 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 in 2019. Facebook ads are an opportunity to show the high quality, appealing furniture on offer from these fitted furniture brands, and engage potential customers through social media. Facebook ads are an opportunity to show the high quality, appealing furniture on offer from these fitted furniture brands, and engage potential customers through social media. Below, you’ll find screenshots of Hammonds Furniture’s Facebook ads. It uses two vertical videos to make content mobile-friendly along with an image. Though, this brand should look to remove the white background on visuals so it doesn’t get lost in the sea of other Facebook pages.

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 that achieves traffic over a long period. Pinterest is a useful platform for fitted furniture brands to consider, as it boasts a comparatively more affluent audience than other platforms, who are immersed in the decision-making stage of purchasing.

Sliderobes has the highest total number of engagements, which is an important component of a social media strategy. Interestingly, Sharps Bedrooms has the largest Facebook following but a low engagement rate. Meanwhile, Hammonds Furniture has the largest Instagram following. This brand often runs giveaways on its Instagram, which is a great way to expand its audience.

Website Readability & Accessibility

About 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. Fitted furniture brands may include accessibility as a key feature in their product lines, so this should be extended to their digital presence to make sure their brand is welcoming at any touchpoint.

In our last report, Sharps Bedrooms flagged for a 122 alerts, which it’s decreased to 17 in this quarter — demonstrating its evaluated its website. Both Strachan Furniture Makers and Hammonds Furniture should reduce their contrast errors on their websites to make them more accessible.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q4 2023 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 Huy Nguyen on Unsplash