The Q3 2025 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 Q3 2025 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 Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
Q3 2025 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.
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 Q3 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK high street banks was £45,356, 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 £207 . 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, Lloyds reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £27, and TSB has the highest at £1,969.
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, Royal Bank of Scotland has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £40,500, and TSB has the highest at £1,250,000.
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. UK high street banks should regularly monitor their links to ensure they’re not directing users to broken links, which could cause them to become frustrated.
In the previous quarter, The Co-operative Bank reported the most 404 errors (122). This quarter, The Co-operative Bank has decreased their 404 errors to 96. Currently, the high street bank with the most 404 errors is HSBC, which reported a total of 328. Regularly auditing websites for broken links is one of the best ways to prevent 404 errors. Tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console can quickly identify pages that no longer work. Fixing these promptly keeps the browsing experience smooth.
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. High street banks should aim for a maximum of 3 seconds for a page to load, as any longer can cause users to become impatient and potentially leave the website.
In our previous audit, HSBC reported the slowest mobile site speed (15). This quarter, HSBC has increased their mobile site speed to 28, suggesting they’re following a plan to continuously improve their website optimisation on mobile. Compressing and optimising images is one of the fastest ways to improve mobile site speed. Large image files can slow down loading times significantly on mobile networks. Using modern formats like WebP helps pages load faster without losing quality.
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 is generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. In our last audit, Yorkshire Bank received the lowest DA (64). This quarter, Yorkshire Bank remains the high street bank with the lowest DA, and they’ve since decreased their score to 62, keeping them at the bottom of the leaderboard. Domain authority reflects a website’s overall strength and credibility, which influences how well it can rank in search results. Sites with higher authority are more likely to appear on the first page for competitive keywords. This gives them greater visibility and traffic opportunities.
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.
10 banks reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Metro receiving the biggest loss (-33%). On mobile, 9 banks received a decrease in organic traffic, with Metro reporting the biggest drop (-32%). Mobile and desktop organic traffic can differ because user intent often changes by device. Mobile users usually want quick answers, directions, or local results, while desktop users may spend more time on research. This shift in behaviour impacts how traffic comes in and engages with the brand.
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.
Lloyds remains the company with the most Universal Search appearances (19,642) — a decrease from 50,196. The majority of these appearances came from ‘people also ask’ (15,300).
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.
NatWest secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (25,509) and the most appearances for positions 4–10 (43,625) — overtaking Lloyds. Longtail keywords allow websites to target very specific search queries, attracting users who know exactly what they’re looking for. This makes traffic more qualified and likely to convert. Instead of competing for broad terms, brands can rank for niche searches.
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. For UK high street banks, Facebook ads are an opportunity to reach new audiences and promote new branding.
We’ve included screenshots of Santander’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK high street bank should consider the amount of text used per post to help make their posts more scannable.
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.
HSBC secured the most Facebook Likes (3.1m) and the most Instagram followers (75,300). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. NatWest received the highest total engagement rate (4,833), and The Co-operative Bank the highest average engagement (57).
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 previous audit, TSB reported the most accessibility alerts (148). This quarter, TSB has slightly reduced their accessibility alerts to 146 — any progress demonstrates a brand is aware of the impacts of these alerts. Alerts about keyboard navigation issues indicate that some users with motor disabilities may be unable to interact with the site. If buttons, links, or forms aren’t accessible without a mouse, these visitors are left out. Fixing such problems ensures the site is usable for everyone.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q3 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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