The Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK online appliance brands has just been published. Learn how the top 11 UK online appliance brands perform across the digital space.

The latest Q4 2024 benchmarking report for UK online appliance brands has just been published.  It covers the 11 largest national online appliance brands, including AO, Appliances Direct, Euronics UK, Appliance City, Boots Kitchen Appliances, Hotpoint, Beko, AEG, Miele GB, Currys, and Marks Electrical Group.

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 online appliance brands to win brand exposure locally, online views, and appliance 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 Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.

Q2 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just six of the metrics we evaluated these top 11 online appliance brands on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK online appliance 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 a 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 Q2 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK online appliance brands was £22,946, 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 £14 . 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, AO reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £3, and Boots Kitchen Appliances has the highest at £81.

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, Appliance City has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £756, and Currys has the highest at £811,000.

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 online appliance brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for consumers looking into online appliance brands and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages, such as best-selling appliances, special offers, and any key feature pages that customers may need to access.

In our previous audit, Boots Kitchen Appliances reported 54 4xx errors. This quarter, Boots Kitchen Appliances has increased their 4xx errors to 113 and should consider included 303 pages to redirect visitors. However, this brand isn’t currently the one to watch, as Currys reported 215 4xx errors (the highest of all brands). These errors can frustrate users, so it’s important that brands aim to reduce them.

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. Online appliance brands need to ensure their customers have a positive experience on their mobile site to instil high levels of trust and ensure customers are able to quickly access the information they need about their potential new appliances.

In our previous audit, both Appliances Direct and Miele GB were the brands with the lowest mobile site speed. This quarter, Miele GB has moved further up the leaderboard, and Appliances Direct has improved to second to last. Currently, Appliance City reported the slowest mobile site speed (4). This online appliance brand should ensure they’re using a mobile-friendly website theme and utilising lazy loading to help increase their speed.

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. Online appliance brands should be continually pushing to improve their DA, they can do this by collaborating with and outreaching to external publications and bloggers within their niche to build their backlink profile.

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. The DA score for this quarter ranged between 79 and 33, with Boots Kitchen Appliances reporting the lowest score. This online appliance brand should ensure they’re posting quality, original content to encourage other websites 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. For online appliance retailers (where the customer buyer journey is longer than in the FMCG market), they should be optimising across a full range of awareness, consideration, and conversion keywords, ensuring they have multiple touchpoints for customers as they travel further through their decision-making process.

Six brands saw a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Appliance City reporting the biggest loss (-30%). Meanwhile, all 11 brands saw a decrease on mobile, with both Appliance City and Euronics UK reporting the biggest loss (-37%).

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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Online appliance retailers 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' results, so they can ensure they're making a sound investment in their new appliance.

Currys secured the most overall Universal Search appearances (94,300), with the majority of these appearances coming from ‘images’ (59,000). On the other hand, Boots Kitchen Appliances reported the fewest overall Universal Search appearances (1,321) and should look for missing opportunities to help increase this figure.

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 online appliance brands could be using such as ‘best place to buy washing machines’, ‘where to buy fridges online’, or 'hotpoint oven next day delivery'. Though these may have lower monthly search volumes, the high purchase intent makes them high-value and an important piece of your keyword strategy.

Currys reported the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (57,681) — over 8 times as many as the runner up. Currys also reported the most appearances for positions 4–10 (111,367) — over 5 times as many as the runner up.

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 online appliance brands, Facebook ads are an opportunity to ensure customers see product releases, updates, and deals.

We’ve included screenshots of Appliance City’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK online appliance brand should aim for diversity in their texts and imagery to prevent social media users from scrolling past their content and not engaging due to repetitive posts.

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 appliance styles and special offers.

AO has the most Facebook Likes (1.7 million), while Currys has the most Instagram followers (167,100). All online appliance brands should approach social media as a way to engage with their audience and not just to sell their products, as this can come across as too sales-y.

Website Readability & Accessibility

Around 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, even subconsciously, brands lose customer interest as they turn to other online appliance brands that can better meet their accessibility requirements.

In our previous audit, Appliances Direct reported 289 accessibility alerts — the highest of all brands. This quarter, Appliances Direct has increase their accessibility alerts to 364, continuing to make them the brand to watch. Euronics UK came in at second place, with 243 accessibility alerts. Both brands should aim to reduce these accessibility alerts to ensure all users have a fair and user-friendly web experience.

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 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 Rory Tarplee.