The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for home brands & accessories has has just been published. Learn how the top home brands & accessories perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for home brands & accessories has just been published. It covers the largest 11 home brands & accessories, including Graham and Green, AMARA, Anthropologie, Cuckooland.com, Oliver Bonas, Cox & Cox, Pooky Lights, Rockett St George, The White Company, Soho Homes, and Graham & Brown.
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 home brands to win brand exposure, drive online enquiries, and generate sales. The report highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons across 20+ online performance metrics and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for winning brand exposure, online growth and sales.
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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 11 home brands on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing UK home brands, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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.
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 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 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK niche home brands was £21,215 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 £25 . 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, AMARA reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and Rockett St George has the highest at £247.
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, Rockett St George has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £247, and The White Company has the highest at £537,000.
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.
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. These home brands will want to ensure prospective customers can easily access key pages, such as product information and specifications, pricing, and product updates.
In our previous audit, Graham & Brown received the most 404 errors (229). This quarter, Graham & Brown has reduced their 404 errors to 3, no longer making them the brand to watch. Currently, Graham and Green flagged the most 404 errors (113). 404 errors because they break the sense of continuity within a website. Visitors expect links to work consistently, and broken links undermine the overall experience. When continuity is lost, users may feel less inclined to invest time in browsing additional pages or engaging with the content.
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. For home brands & accessories, they'll want to provide an excellent customer experience at every touchpoint, giving the impression of quick service from the moment a user steps virtual foot on their site.
In our last audit, The White Company received the slowest mobile site speed (3). This quarter, The White Company remains the brand with the slowest mobile site speed, and they’ve since decreased their score to 0. Mobile site speed strongly influences how professional a website appears. Visitors often associate fast, responsive sites with modern, well-managed brands, while slow sites can feel outdated or neglected. Even if the content is valuable, poor performance can overshadow its quality in the user’s mind.
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. Home brands & accessories should create relationships with brands with a similar audience to adopt guest blogging in the hopes of increase the number of backlinks to their website.
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, Cuckooland.com reported the lowest DA score (55). This quarter, Cuckooland.com remains the brand with the lowest score, and they’ve since decreased it to 52. Technical SEO best practices play a significant role in supporting domain authority growth. Websites should ensure fast loading times, especially on mobile devices, and minimise technical issues such as broken links and duplicate content.
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. With the cost-of-living crisis, it’s to be expected that brands will see a decrease in organic traffic due to consumers limiting the amount of money they spend on non-essential items.
Two brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with Cuckooland.com receiving the biggest loss (-33%). On mobile, 2 brands received a drop in organic traffic, with Cuckooland.com reporting the biggest drop on this device, too (-34%). Ignoring mobile usability is something to avoid to increase organic traffic. Sites that work well on desktop but poorly on mobile risk losing a large portion of potential organic traffic. Mobile issues can negatively impact rankings across all devices.
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. Given that these home brands are in the retail industry, it’s to be expected that ‘images’ will be the most popular category for Universal Search results, and brands should ensure that images are properly sized and accurately and appropriately referenced through alt descriptions and captions.
Oliver Bonas continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (59,189) — an increase from 50,355 previously. The majority of their appearances this quarter came from ‘images’ (57,000).
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 retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Our brands should be looking to optimise for keywords with high purchase/booking intent, that indicate a user at the lower part of the conversion funnel.
Oliver Bonas continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (5,927) — an increase from 5,924 previously. Oliver Bonas also secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (12,394) — an increase from 11,892 previously. Websites benefit most from longtail keywords when they are used consistently and thoughtfully. Rather than forcing keywords into content, they should be integrated naturally and support genuine user value.
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 an effective way for UK home brands & accessories to share their latest releases and deals and expand their reach.
We’ve included screenshots of Soho Homes’ sponsored Facebook posts. This UK niche home brand included vertical images to cater to those using a mobile. One key benefit of vertical images is improved attention capture. Because they dominate the screen compared to square or landscape formats, users are more likely to pause and actually look at the content. This extra attention can translate into more reactions, comments, and shares.
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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Home brands & accessories should focus on assessing the total engagement rate and not just focus on the number of followers, as assessing this category allows brands to see if their online followers are interested in their content.
Graham & Brown secured the most Facebook Likes (483,900), and The White Company secured the most Instagram followers (1.1m). Pinterest was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Graham & Brown received the highest total engagement rate (21,895) and the highest average engagement (437).
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. Any home brand must be particularly conscious of accessibility, from both a branding and potential customer perspective.
In our previous report, Rockett St George flagged the most accessibility alerts (252), and Oliver Bonas reported the most contrast errors (45). This quarter, Rockett St George has reduced their accessibility alerts to 147, and Oliver Bonas has decreased their contrast errors to 36. While both brands remain the ones to watch, it’s a positive sign to see improvements. Contrast errors can also a brand’s credibility and professionalism. A website that is difficult to read may appear poorly designed or outdated, which can undermine trust. Brands that prioritise clear, legible content convey attention to detail and care for their audience.
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.