The Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK lingerie brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK lingerie brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK lingerie brands has just been published.  It covers the 12 largest national lingerie brands, including Curvy Kate, Bravissimo, Bra Stop, Triumph, Belle Lingerie, Victoria’s Secret, Panache, Lounge, La Senza, Bluebella, Pour Moi, and Boux Avenue.

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 lingerie brands to win brand exposure, drive online views, and secure new orders. 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 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 lingerie brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK lingerie 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 site 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 and 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 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK lingerie brands was £1,909, 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 £12 . 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, both Bra Stop and Panache have the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £2, and Bluebella has the highest at £29.

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, La Senza has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £48, and Pour Moi has the highest at £46,700.

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 lingerie brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for consumers researching retailers, and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as best sellers, offers on particular product lines, and even FAQs regarding delivery and returns.

In our previous audit, La Senza reported 170 4xx errors. This quarter, La Senza has increased their 4xx errors to 224, but Pour Moi received the most 4xx errors of all lingerie brands (297). Lingerie brands should take steps to reduce their 4xx errors to ensure that they’re not incorporating broken links throughout their websites.

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 will see a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. With mobile browsers accounting for 72.9% of all e-commerce sales in 2021, lingerie brands (along with other e-commerce sectors) need to be prioritising their mobile site in terms of site speed and experience. 

In our previous report, Boux Avenue received the lowest mobile site speed (11). This quarter, Boux Avenue has increase their mobile site speed to 23, and Pour Moi currently has the lowest score (8). On the other hand, Belle Lingerie has the fast mobile site speed (43). It’s important that all brands take mobile site speed seriously, as a website that’s slow to load will discourage users from remaining on their website, increasing bounce rates.

Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority

Domain authority (DA) 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. Lingerie brands should be continually pushing to improve their DA, they can do this by sharing their variety of lingerie products and offers, and by collaborating with fashion publications and bloggers that fit within their niche

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. Last quarter, Belle Lingerie reported the lowest DA score (44). This quarter, both Belle Lingerie and Victoria’s Secret are at the bottom of the scoreboard (50). Both brands can increase this score by adopting a PR strategy that encourages trusted websites in their niche to backlink to them.

Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop

A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for core, 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. Luxury items and treats such as lingerie are likely to see reduced levels of interest from consumers in the cost of living crisis, so lingerie brands should be looking at which keywords have the highest conversion opportunity, in order to make the most of a limited pool of potential customers.

In our previous report, 4 brands saw a decline in organic traffic on desktop, and 5 saw a decline on mobile. This quarter, 6 saw a decline on desktop, showing an overall decrease in performance on this device. Meanwhile, 7 saw a decline on mobile, also showing an overall decline in performance. Brands can make improvements in this area by creating and following a keyword strategy.

Universal Search Opportunity

Google Universal Search Results are 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. Lingerie brands should be utilising all universal search features as potential customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs' and 'people also ask' questions. 'Image' is a particularly useful Universal Search feature for any brand within the fashion industry, providing the opportunity for customers to see products before visiting the site.

Pour Moi continues to secure the most overall Universal Search appearances (30,453) — a slight decline from 36,266 in our previous audit. Some brands didn’t report any appearances for ‘images’ and should ensure they’re optimising all images to increase their overall Universal Search score.

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 new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options lingerie brands could be using such as ‘matching blue underwear set’, ‘lingerie sales UK’, or even 'buy trending swimwear 2023' or 'matching Christmas pyjamas' to capitalise on future seasonal terms.

Boux Avenue continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (3,264) and positions 4–10 (3,872). Pour Moi is further down the scoreboard for position 3 but is second place for positions 4–10 (3,349). Their performance for these categories could see them increasing their rankings in search engines.

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 lingerie brands, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product launches, sales, and customer reviews.

We’ve included examples of Boux Avenue’s sponsored posts. This UK lingerie brand increase vertical videos to cater to mobile users and an image carousel, which is a great way to showcase multiple products in a single post.

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 a long period of time. It's great for your engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. Social media could be especially useful for sharing information about different lingerie styles and special offers, and on-site blogs provide a great opportunity to share the latest seasonal trends.

Victoria’s Secret continues to secure the most Facebook Likes (29.7 million) and the most Instagram followers (78.9 million). All brands should ensure that they’re posting to social media regularly and monitoring comments from their audience and responding to them in a timely manner to help build trust with their audience.

Website Readability & Accessibility

About 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 and they turn to other lingerie brands. We've noted that many brands use pink as a primary brand colour - while bright, hot pinks provide an effective contrast on a white background, paler shades may be harder to read.

In our previous audit, La Senza was the brand to watch, reporting 891 accessibility alerts, and Bravissimo reported 71 contrast errors. This quarter, La Senza has increase their accessibility alerts to 911 (the highest of all brands), and Bravissimo has also increase their contrast errors to 83 (also the highest of all brands). These alerts and errors can harm the users’ web experience, and brands should reduce them.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 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 Mike Movassaghi.

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