The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK home improvement brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK home improvement brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK Home improvement brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national home improvement brands, including Plumbworld, Screwfix, Tool Station, Wickes, Selco Builders, B&Q, Homebase, Bradfords, Jewson, City Plumbing, Wolseley, and Huws Gray.

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 2026 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 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.

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 Q1 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK home improvement brands was £30,715, 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 £38 . 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, Wolseley reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and Jewson has the highest at £187.

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, Selco Builders has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £1,260, and Wickes has the highest at £1,320,000.

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. 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 our previous audit, Wolseley received the most 404 errors (106). This quarter, Wolseley remains the brand to watch, and they’ve since increased their total number of 404 errors to 110 — suggesting they’re not closely monitoring their site for these errors. 404 errors are commonly perceived as negative by website visitors because they interrupt the user journey without warning. When a visitor clicks a link expecting useful content and is met with a ‘page not found’ message, it immediately creates frustration. 

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.

In our last audit, Jewson received the slowest mobile site speed (12). This quarter, Jewson has increased their mobile site speed to 28 — suggesting they’re following a plan to improve their website’s user experience. Currently, the mobile site speed ranges between 45 and 10, with City Plumbing receiving the slowest speed. Mobile site speed shapes the overall user experience and satisfaction. Users expect websites to perform efficiently on their mobile devices as a basic standard. When this expectation is met, users are more likely to stay, return, and recommend the site to others.

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. In our last audit, Bradfords reported the lowest DA score (52). This quarter, Bradfords remains the brand with the lowest DA, though they’ve since increased their score to 53. Increasing domain authority requires a long-term, strategic approach that focuses on quality, relevance and trust. One of the most important best practices is consistently creating high-quality content that genuinely meets user needs. Search engines favour websites that publish original, well-researched and useful content, as this signals expertise and reliability.

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.

Seven brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with Homebase receiving the biggest loss (-44%). On mobile, 6 brands received a drop in organic traffic, with Homebase reporting the biggest drop on this device, too (-54%). Technical SEO plays a key role in ensuring content is discoverable and accessible across devices. Websites should regularly audit for crawl errors, broken links and indexing issues that could limit visibility. Page speed optimisation, clean URLs and proper use of canonical tags all help search engines understand and rank pages more effectively.

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 secure the most Universal Search appearances (340,975) — an increase from 313,581 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (292,700).

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.

B&Q continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (155,733) — an increase from 149,806 previously. B&Q also continues to secure the most appearances for positions 4–10 (239,045) — an increase from 237,554 previously. Regularly reviewing and updating longtail keyword content ensures it remains effective over time. Refreshing content with updated terms, examples and insights helps maintain rankings. Ongoing optimisation signals that the website remains current and trustworthy.

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.

We’ve included screenshots of City Plumbing’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK home improvement brand should use different imagery per post to avoid social media users from becoming bombarded with the same material.  

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.

B&Q secured the most Facebook Likes (467,000) and the most Instagram followers (301,000). Twitter was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Screwfix received the highest total engagement rate (14,804), and Jewson received the highest average engagement (96).

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.

In our previous report, Jewson flagged the most accessibility alerts (463). This quarter, Jewson remains the brand with the most accessibility alerts, and they’ve since increased their total to 488. Accessibility alerts highlight a failure to provide an inclusive experience. Visitors expect websites to be usable by a wide range of people, regardless of ability or device. When accessibility issues are present, they reflect poorly on the website and harm overall user perception. 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 2026 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.