The Q2 2026 benchmarking report for UK house builders has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK house builders perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2026 benchmarking report for UK house builders has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national house builders, including Barratt Homes, Berkeley Group, Crest Nicholson, Taylor Wimpey, Bellway, Redrow, Persimmon, Bloor Homes, Countryside, Miller Homes, Bovis Homes, and Linden Homes.
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 house builders to win brand exposure, drive online enquiries, and generate show home viewings. 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 Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key take-aways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 house builders on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing house builders, 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 under-perform. 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 Q2 2026, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK house builders was £62,076 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 £10. 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, Miller Homes reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £4, and Taylor Wimpey reported the highest at £18.
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, Miller Homes has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £49,500, and Barratt Homes has the highest at £1,240,000.
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. House builders have the benefit of not needing to juggle large volumes of product pages, which can often be a stumbling block for ecommerce sites, but they must still ensure that key pages are clearly signposted and easy to find.
In our previous audit, Bovis Homes reported the most 404 errors (22). This quarter, Bovis Homes has increased their total to 37, suggesting they’re not regularly auditing their website for these errors. However, the brand to watch currently is Berkeley Group (102). Encountering a 404 error can be frustrating for users who are expecting to find specific information. Instead of reaching the desired page, they're met with a dead end, which can disrupt their browsing experience and leave them feeling disappointed.
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. House builders will want to give a positive impression of their brand from each digital touchpoint, ensuring that their site is quick and easy to use, so as not to put off potential home buyers.
In our previous audit, Crest Nicholson reported the slowest mobile site speed (11). This quarter, Crest Nicholson remains the brand to watch, and they’ve since decreased their score to 8. Fast-loading pages can make content easier to consume, particularly on mobile devices where users often skim information quickly. Delays between page loads can interrupt reading flow and reduce engagement with important content.
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gage of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. House builders can look to include outreach to local news sites (in areas they're building in), home-bloggers, and interiors publications to gain backlinks and improve referral traffic.
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 previous audit, the brand with the lowest DA score was Bloor Homes (58). This quarter, Bloor Homes has increased their score by one point to 59, moving them up the leaderboard. Currently, the brands to watch are Bovis Homes and Miller Homes (53). Websites with higher authority are often more attractive for partnerships and collaborations. Other organisations are more willing to work with sites that already have strong SEO credibility. This can open opportunities for guest posting, co-marketing, and content sharing.
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. Changing consumer habits and mortgage rates will have impacted the new home sector, as prospective buyers may be holding off on a new house purchase for when interest rates fall.
Two brands reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Crest Nicholson reporting the biggest loss (-31%). On mobile, Crest Nicholson was the only brand to report a decrease in organic traffic (-12%) — an improvement from -37% previously. Search intent can vary significantly depending on the device being used. Mobile users often search for immediate solutions or quick information while on the move, whereas desktop users may conduct more in-depth research before making decisions. Websites may therefore attract different audiences across 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. 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. 'Image pack' and 'local pack' results are key for house builders to raise interest in their homes directly from the SERP, and build awareness of new developments in key areas.
Taylor Wimpey continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (20,211) — a decrease from 25,945 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (18,300).
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. For house builders, they will want to keep an eye on high-conversion potential keywords, including mentions of bookings, mortgages, locations, and availability.
Taylor Wimpey secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (4,723) — an increase from 4,339 previously. Taylor Wimpey also continued to secure the most appearances for positions 4–10 (6,289) — a decrease from 6,468 previously. Websites using longtail keywords often face less competition in search engine results. While broad keywords can be difficult to rank for, more specific phrases may provide a better opportunity to achieve higher organic rankings.
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.
We’ve included screenshots of Countryside’s sponsored Facebook posts. Long, dense paragraphs can reduce readability for users with visual impairments or reading difficulties. Better spacing and shorter text sections help make Facebook content more accessible for a wider audience.
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. As with developing DA scores, house builders can look to creating informational content on anything to do with home ownership, from mortgage applications, to facilities in local areas, and even house maintenance.
Barratt Homes secured the most Facebook Likes (193,700), and Taylor Wimpey secured the most Instagram followers (110,500).
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. For house builders, having an non-accessible site will also send the message that their homes themselves may not be accessible for those with vision deficiencies.
In our previous report, Miller Homes received the most accessibility alerts (512). This quarter, Miller Homes has made great progress to decrease their total to 14. Currently, the brand with the most accessibility alerts is Berkeley Group (57). Excessive alerts can contribute to alert fatigue. When users are presented with too many warnings or notifications, they may begin to ignore them altogether, including those that are genuinely important.
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.