The Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK garden and horticulture retailers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK garden and horticulture retailers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK garden and horticulture retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK garden and horticulture retailers, including Crocus.co.uk, Thompson & Morgan, J.Parker's, Suttons Consumer Products Ltd., Marshalls Garden, YouGarden, Hayloft Plants, Primrose, Gardening Express, Dobbies Garden Centres, Harrod Horticultural, and Patch.

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 garden and horticulture retailers to win brand exposure locally, drive organic visibility, and generate online 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 Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, 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 UK garden and horticulture retailers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing garden retailers, 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 Q2 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK garden and horticulture retailers was £2,974, 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 £18 . 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, J.Parker's reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £4, and Dobbies Garden Centres have the highest at £37.

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, Dobbies Garden Centres has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £28, and J.Parker's has the highest at £49,600.

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. Garden and horticulture retailers will need to create a website that their audience can trust, which means creating a positive site experience while consumers are looking for products. Ensuring that all links are active and working is one approach to build a trusted relationship with their target audience.

In our previous audit, Dobbies Garden Centres reported the highest 4xx errors (97). This quarter, Dobbies Garden Centres is still the brand to watch, and they’ve increased these errors to 414. Unfortunately, 404 errors can frustrate users, as they’re directed to a page that’s no longer active, which can increase bounce rates.

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. All garden and horticulture retailers should aim for a download speed of a maximum of 3 seconds to prevent consumers growing impatient and leaving the website. Incorporating a mobile-friendly website theme with a minimal design is an effective way to increase site speed.

The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 38 and 7, with J.Parker's reporting the slowest speed. All brands should aim for at least 50% for mobile site speed, as a faster-loading website providers a more user-friendly experience and can decrease bounce rates.

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. Brands should aim for backlinks from high-authoritative websites and from a variety of them. The best way to achieve this is by delivering high-quality content that other websites will want to share to their audience.

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 71 and 37, with Hayloft Plants reporting the lowest DA. All brands can increase their DA score by trying to maximise their opportunities for securing high-quality backlinks, such as guest blogging and building connections with high-authoritative brands with the same target audience.

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. It’s expected to see a fluctuation in organic traffic on both mobile and desktop, though retailers can increase their organic traffic by incorporating a successful keyword strategy to help them rank in search engines.

Eight retailers saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Primrose seeing the biggest loss (-49). Meanwhile, on mobile, 9 retailers saw a decrease on mobile, with Primrose also seeing the biggest loss for this device (-61%).

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. For garden and horticulture retailers, they'll want to capitalise on the opportunity to share ‘images’ and ‘reviews’ for an authentic approach as well as the opportunity to showcase their product range.

Thompson & Morgan secured the most overall Universal Search appearance results (40,519), with the majority of these coming from ‘images’ (28,100) and ‘people also ask’ (11,800). On the other hand, Harrod Horticultural reported the fewest overall results (2,946). This retailer should look for missed opportunities to help increase this overall figure.

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. Longtail keywords for garden and horticulture retailers could show high-conversion intent, with specific phrases that relate to their product range.

Thompson & Morgan secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,339) and positions 4–10 (9,621). Following a longtail keyword strategy is a great way for brands to rank for low-competitive, high-conversion phrases to help increase their position in search engines.

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. Facebook ads are a great way for blinds and shutters brands to reach people who are specifically looking to make improvements to their homes.

We’ve included screenshots of Patch’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK garden and horticulture retailer should avoid repeating images and texts to ensure they’re incorporating diversity with their sponsored social media posts.

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. For brands in a service-based sector, such as care home providers, content is an opportunity to create long-term touchpoints with prospective residents and their families, by creating pieces that help support them through managing at home, before guiding them to care home residency when the time comes.

Patch has the most Facebook Likes (205,900) and the most Instagram followers (296,100). All brands should also monitor their total engagement rate, and Thompson & Morgan secured the highest result for this metric (25,386).

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. All websites should limit accessibility alerts, errors, and contrast errors to adhere to those using a screen reader and those with a colour vision deficiency. This will require brands to regularly assess these areas on their website to retain a high standard.

In the last quarter, Primrose flagged 725 accessibility alerts. This quarter, Primrose remains the retailer to watch, but they’ve reduced these alerts to 583. Harrod Horticultural is at second place for these alerts (303). Accessibility alerts can harm the user experience, as these alerts can make it more difficult for some users to navigate a website.

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.