The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK online learning providers has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK online learning providers perform across the digital space.
The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK online learning providers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national online learning providers, including Open Study College, Oxbridge, Online Learning College, ICS Learn, Learndirect, Udemy, FutureLearn, Stonebridge College, NCC, Avado, LearnPac, and Reed.
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 UK online learning companies to develop their brand’s voice, assess and up-level their domain authority score, track their organic traffic performance, and more. This report highlights the areas where brands are succeeding and categories where they could make improvements.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q1 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.
Q1 2026 Winners LEaderboard*
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 online learning providers on, check out our quick-look table below;
To understand what the *CTM Digital Performance Index™ is click here.
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's top and poorest-performing online learning providers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
What The Industry Research Report Covers
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand 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 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
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 online learning providers was £32,527 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 £19. 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, Stonebridge College reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, and NCC has the highest at £39.
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, Oxbridge has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £360, and Udemy has the highest at £841,000.
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. UK online learning companies should aim to make their website as error-free as possible to improve the trust consumers have in their brand as well as enhance their SEO performance.
In our previous audit, Online Learning College received the most 404 errors (929). This quarter, Online Learning College remains the provider with the most 404 errors, but they’ve since decreased their amount to 732. Proactively planning site migrations and redesigns helps prevent large-scale 404 issues. Mapping old URLs to new ones before launch ensures continuity for users and search engines, protecting traffic and avoiding mass dead ends across the site.
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. It’s important that a website doesn’t take any longer than 3 seconds to load, as any longer can cause a consumer to grow impatient and leave. Choosing a mobile-friendly theme is an effective way of boosting a brand’s site speed.
In our previous report, both Learndirect and Stonebridge College received the slowest mobile site speed (23). This quarter, Learndirect has increased their mobile site speed to 33, and Stonebridge College has increased theirs to 37. Currently, the mobile site speed ranges between 89 and 30, with Avado reporting the slowest score. When a mobile site loads slowly, users are more likely to abandon it and switch to a competitor. Fast mobile performance helps retain visitors and keeps them engaged with your content or products.
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 is not gained through sponsored ads. UK online learning companies should focus on building their domain authority by building relationships with websites that have a similar target audience to increase the number of high-quality backlinks.
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 last report, LearnPac reported the lowest DA score (21). This quarter, LearnPac remains the online learning provider with the lowest DA score, though they’ve since increased their to 27 — demonstrating progress. Building a strategic backlink profile is a proactive way to improve domain authority. Earning links from credible, relevant websites through partnerships, digital PR, and content collaboration increases trust signals and strengthens a site’s perceived authority.
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. UK online learning companies should track and assess their organic performance and pay close attention to the difference in results based on devices. Due to the nature of this industry, it’s expected that they’ll receive more traffic from users on a desktop.
Six brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with LearnPac reporting the biggest loss (-70%). On mobile, eight brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with LearnPac reporting the biggest drop (-100%). Maintaining strong technical SEO foundations is essential for organic growth on all devices. Clean site architecture, proper indexing, and crawlability ensure search engines can easily discover and rank pages for both mobile and desktop searches.
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, and a site can appear for Universal Search results without being strong in standard rankings. UK online learning companies will want to ensure they have a strong performance for 'reviews' and ‘people also ask to help increase their online rankings.
Reed continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (10,756) — an increase from 8,812 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘people also ask’ (7,700).
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 brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. UK online learning companies can optimise their keyword strategy by incorporating phrases of 3+ words, such as ‘online learning company’ or ‘home learning provider.’
Reed continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (9,936) — an increase from 8,866 previously. Reed also secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (43,066) — a decrease from 49,012 previously. Websites can proactively strengthen their performance with long-tail keywords by deeply researching real user search behaviour and intent. Understanding the specific questions, phrases, and problems people search for allows brands to create content that directly matches demand, improving relevance and organic visibility.
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 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 any online learning provider, Facebook ads are an opportunity to drive traffic to specific courses. If they haven’t already done so, they should be identifying under-subscribed courses to promote to improve numbers or using organic search term volumes as a guide for where general consumer interest lies.
We’ve included screenshots of FutureLearn’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK online learning provider utilised branded imagery in their posts to help social media users recognise them at a glance and make them more memorable.
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 brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. UK online learning companies will need to have a strong online presence so that consumers have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the brand first before making a purchase. Social media is also a great opportunity to reach new audiences and build its customer base.
Udemy secured the most Facebook Likes (8.5m) and the most Instagram followers (3.6m). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Reed received the highest total engagement rate (2,830), and Avado received the highest average engagement (19).
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. Brands should focus on reducing accessibility alerts, errors, and contrast errors to improve readability for those using a screen reader.
In our previous report, Reed flagged the most accessibility alerts (67). This quarter, Reed continues to report 67 accessibility alerts — making them the online learning provider to watch still. Additionally, NCC previously reported 88 contrast errors. This quarter, NCC continues to report 88 contrast errors.
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.
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