The Q3 2023 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 Q3 2023 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 Q3 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

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.

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 last report, we noted that Triumph was seeing the highest level of 4xx error codes. In Q3, Triumph cut this figure down to just 13, nearly eliminating all dead ends on the site. Bluebella is now returning the largest volume of error codes, with 4,121 4xx errors showing in our crawls.

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. 

We have seen universal falls in mobile page scores across all sectors we specialise in but, while falls in performance alone are not necessarily too concerning, this remains a useful way to gauge performance against competitors. Mobile page scores for lingerie brands now range from 3 to 41, with Bluebella still lagging behind the competition.

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. DAs for lingerie brands in Q3 remain similar to Q1, with scores falling between 43 and 73. Victoria's Secret, which sits at the lowest end of this scale, must ensure they have a consistent digital PR strategy in place to build its Domain Authority within the UK.

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 Q3, only Victoria's Secret, Bluebella, and Panache have secured more organic traffic year on year. Belle Lingerie, which had seen a drop of 61% in Q1, has reduced its loss in traffic to 44% in Q3.

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.

Boux Avenue has secured the most appearances for Universal Search results, with most of these being made up of 'reviews'. Bravissimo, which has secured the second highest Universal Search visibility, has made the most appearances for 'people also ask' results - a strong indication of a good performance for longtail keywords. 

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.

Pour Moi is still ranking for a high number of longtail keywords compared to their competitors, but ranking for very few in the top 20, with only around 5% ranking in positions 1-3. Pour Moi should be looking at how to improve their existing rankings, but also at how to expand their strategy to include new, high-potential terms.

Facebook Adverts

With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) forecast to hit over 42 million users by 2022, it is not surprising that brands 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 in 2019. For brands within the fashion sector, such as lingerie, visual opportunities to advertise are invaluable as they are an opportunity to inspire and excite their target market, boosting visibility among new customers while re-engaging with past buyers.

We've included examples of Belle Lingerie's Facebook ads below. Belle Lingerie has used the carousel ad format to ensure a wide range of products are shown in a single ad. 

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.

We saw in our research that Belle Lingerie is still falling behind the competition when it comes to both Facebook Likes and Instagram Followers. Maintaining a following is a great way to ensure ongoing brand exposure with your target market, so Belle Lingerie must look into how it can compete with other brands within the lingerie sector. 

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 Q1, we noted that Curvy Kate was seeing the most challenges in maintaining site accessibility, with 89 alerts. Though this figure has not improved, with Curvy Kate now returning 100 in our audit, Triumph has become the least-accessible lingerie brand, with 172 alerts being flagged within our report. The lingerie brands seeing issues should be reviewing their current site set ups, to identify the areas most likely to be causing these challenges. 

Q3 2023 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;

GET THE FULL 79-PAGE Q3 2023 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.

Photo by Nati Melnychuk on Unsplash