The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK home improvement brands has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK home improvement brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK Home improvement brands has just been published. It covers the largest 11 national home improvement brands, including Plumbworld, Screwfix, Tool Station, Wickes, Selco Builders, B&Q, Homebase, Bradfords, Jewson, City Plumbing and Wolseley. 

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 improvement brands to win brand exposure, and drive both online traffic & in-store 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 11 home improvement brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK home improvement 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 & 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 brands within the home improvement and DIY space, they'll often be supporting large websites hosting a huge range of products that regularly changes. Retailers will need to ensure that product and stock updates are well-considered within their internal linking strategy and that any changes do not impact the customer experience.

In the last audit, B&Q flagged 7,697 5xx errors, which it’s increased to 8,722 in this quarter. This home improvement brand should consider upgrading its server to reduce these errors. Additionally, Screwfix reported 778 4xx errors — the most of all brands — and should fix any internal broken 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. DIY and home improvement sites should be well-equipped to handle last-minute, or on-the-go mobile searches from any customers searching for supplies mid-project.

We have seen universal falls in mobile page speed across all sectors we specialise in, so expected to see a reduction in scores for home improvement brands.

For Q1 2024, the mobile site speed ranged between 46 and 15, with City Plumbing reporting the lowest speed. This brand should create a page load strategy to increase this score for the next quarter.

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. Home improvement brands can look to collaborate with online trade publications or interior design bloggers in order to improve their DA, and ensure they're being linked to from high-authority sites.

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 ranged between 78 and 50, with all brands scoring above the minimum benchmark. These home improvement brands can further improve their DA rating by adopting a PR strategy to increase high-authoritative backlinks from reputable sites.

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. With our DIY and home improvement brands selling similar stock (with brand loyalty only going so far), strategic keyword optimisation is key to ensuring visibility is strong on high-conversion products and leading items.

Ten of the 11 brands saw a decrease in organic mobile traffic — which is also the same for organic desktop traffic. However, the loss hit a bit harder for mobile traffic. For example, Bradfords reported a 64% loss on mobile and a 44% loss on desktop.

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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. For any e-commerce brand, 'reviews' are a useful way of building trust with prospective customers, and boosting visibility on products. For home improvement brands, 'people also ask' provides an opportunity to rank for any DIY or construction queries too.

B&Q continues to rank the highest for the most Universal Search results (1,061,000), with the majority of these appearances coming from the ‘image’ category. Screwfix is at a close second place for several 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 retailer new search terms as they enter Google’s index. As we've mentioned, longtail keyword rankings put brands in good stead for appearing in 'people also ask' search results, so have the added benefit of boosting Universal Search visibility too.

Screwfix has taken the lead for the most appearances in the top 3 positions. B&Q only has 1,084 fewer appearances in position 3, though has most appearances in positions 4–10, suggesting that it might overtake Screwfix by the next quarter.

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 home improvement brands, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product releases and deals.

Here are 3 of Jewson’s sponsored posts. This brand used questions to help with engagement and short lines of text to make the content easier to attract people’s attention as they’re scrolling social media.

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 retailer engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. For DIY and home improvement stores, they'll have two audiences - at-home DIYers and trade professionals. This presents the opportunity to create two distinct content plans, that can appeal to a wide range of potential customers.

Both Wickes and B&Q continue to favour Pinterest — a platform that’s effective for sharing inbound links in a customer-facing niche. Bradfords has the largest number of total engagement (42,900), despite having the second to lowest Facebook Likes and Instagram followers. High engagement rates are key to ensuring that your social media followers see and interact with your posts. 

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, retailers lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. As with ensuring their sites are technically compliant, large e-commerce brands, such as those in the home improvement sector, should ensure that their site is simple to read and digest, as well as navigate.

Ten of the 11 brands favoured Facebook, with one favouring X. City Plumbing reported the highest total engagement (20,575). B&Q has the highest Facebook following (449,000) and Instagram following (217,000). Homebase isn’t far behind with 444,200 Facebook Likes.

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.

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