The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK high-street banks has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK high-street banks perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK high-street banks has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national high-street banks, including Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Metro, Santander, TSB, The Co-operative Bank, Virgin Money, Yorkshire Bank, and Clydesdale.
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 high-street banks to win brand exposure, drive online visits, and generate in-branch footfall. 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 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 high-street banks on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing brands, 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 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. Bank customers need to trust their providers to give an excellent level of service and a site full of dead ends due to 4xx errors is likely to reduce consumer confidence.
In our previous audit, Santander reported 374 4xx errors, which it’s increased to 514 in Q1 2024. This high-street bank must assess all links to check they work properly to avoid sending customers to broken links. TSB also had an alarming number of 4xx errors (377) — and it should also assess its links.
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 ensuring sites are technically compliant, banks can improve consumer confidence by providing a quick, seamless experience through mobile page speed.
For Q1 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 57 and 9, with only 2 of the 12 banks scoring above the recommended 50% for site speed. Moreover, Lloyds reported the lowest site speed. Upon closer inspection, this high-street bank should reduce the amount of content on a single page to help increase this score.
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. High-street banks can build their DA by sharing information about money-saving techniques, demographic studies of spending, and guides on different financial products.
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 range for this quarter was between 83 and 64, with all banks scoring above the recommended 40. Virgin Money reported the highest score, and brands should adopt an effective keyword strategy and include a blog to their site and update it regularly to further increase their rating.
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. High-street banks may see increased traffic from account holders shopping around for better interest rates, or to find better deals on credit cards and loan options during the cost of living crisis.
Nine of the high-street banks saw a loss in organic desktop traffic, and 20 saw a loss in organic mobile traffic. The data shows that brands receive most of their traffic from desktop users, so they should look to optimise their site for those with a mobile to help with 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 site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 'Local pack' could prove to be a beneficial Universal Search result for high-street banks to generate in-branch footfall, while 'people also ask' results provides an opportunity for banks to share information about key products.
Barclays has overtaken Lloyds for the most Universal Search appearances with a total of 30,200. However, Lloyds is a close runner up with 28,500 appearances. Most of Barclays’ appearances came from ‘local pack’, through Lloyds has more for ‘people also ask’ and ‘featured snippet’. For Barclays to stay on top, it should look to increase appearances for these categories.
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. Banks will want to ensure their longtail keyword strategy includes topical terms and questions that are likely to gain visitors, such as queries surrounding mortgage renewals,
Below, we’ve provided examples of Metro’s sponsored Facebook posts. All 3 posts included unique text, which is an effective strategy to test which receives a higher engagement and conversions. Though two posts used the same video, implying that this bank is testing conversion rates of text.
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.
Below, we’ve provided examples of Metro’s sponsored Facebook posts. All 3 posts included unique text, which is an effective strategy to test which receives a higher engagement and conversions. Though two posts used the same video, implying that this bank is testing conversion rates of text.
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. As with improving DA and generating backlinks, high-street banks can create informative, engaging content that educates social media users about different financial products. However, as seen in Virgin's Facebook ads, social media is also an opportunity to have fun with their brand, and secure engagement from non-money focussed content.
Eleven of the 12 UK high-street banks favour Facebook, with one favouring X/Twitter. Virgin Money reported the highest total engagement, although HSBC has the highest Facebook following (3,100,000).
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 banking is a universal need, high-street banks must ensure they're able to serve a site that is easy to navigate and trust in to anyone with a vision deficiency.
In our last audit, Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale Bank raised concerns with their accessibility alerts. In this quarter, Yorkshire Bank reported 103 alerts — the same as the previous quarter. Clydesdale Bank has very slightly reduced its alerts 103 to 102 in this quarter. However, TSB is the bank to watch, as it reported 130 accessibility alerts. Having taken a closer look, the majority of these alerts are due to redundant title text.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2024 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 Etienne Martin on Unsplash
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