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

The latest Q1 2025 benchmarking report for UK pet food suppliers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 UK pet food suppliers, including Tails.com, Lily's Kitchen, Butternut Box, KatKin, VioVet, Pure Pet Food, Different Dog, Trophy Pet Foods, Pooch and Mutt, Tuggs, Natures Menu, and Forthglade Natural Pet Food.

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 pet food suppliers to win brand exposure, drive traffic online and, for those with bricks and mortar locations, even increase in-store footfall. 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 UK pet food suppliers on, check out our quick-look table below;

Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK pet food suppliers 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 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 pet food suppliers was £2,740, 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, Forthglade Natural Pet Food has the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £3, and Different Dog has the highest at £37.

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, Tuggs has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £1,190, and Butternut Box has the highest at £75,700.

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. UK pet food suppliers should ensure all links direct to the promised page, and provide replacement links, if necessary.

In our previous report, Tails.com flagged 225 4xx errors. This quarter, Tails.com has reduced their 4xx errors to 94 — though, they’re still the pet food supplier with the highest errors. It’s important that brands update or remove broken links, taking into consideration outdated links and/or fixing typos.

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. For pet food suppliers, they’ll want to ensure their website is mobile friendly to help increase their chances of customers remaining on their website. There are steps websites can take to increase site speed, too, such as compressing images and reducing page weight.

In our last report, Lily’s Kitchen flagged the slowest mobile site speed (25). This quarter, Lily’s Kitchen has reduced their mobile site speed to 22, though they’re not the brand with the slowest mobile site speed; Natures Menu has the lowest mobile site speed (10). All brands should aim for a minimum of 50% for a mobile site speed to decrease bounce rates and encourage new users. Slow-loading websites can discourage users from reaching the checkout stage as the process will take longer.

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. All pet food suppliers should focus on securing high-quality backlinks by uploading link-worthy content in the form of infographics or articles containing original research.

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 67 and 19, with Tuggs reporting the lowest DA score. Pet food suppliers can make improvements to their DA scores by focusing on uploading quality content, as this will encourage other websites to provide backlinks to them. The content should also solve the reader’s pain points, as this will further encourage backlinks.

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. Pet owners will always be looking for pet food supplies, though the cost-of-living crisis might have impacted traffic levels for some brands as consumers look to products with a lower price tag.

Four of the UK pet food suppliers reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Trophy Pet Foods flagging the biggest decrease (-46%). Meanwhile, 8 (double that of desktop) reported a decrease in traffic on mobile, with Tails.com flagging the biggest decrease (-57%).

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 that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. 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. For pet food suppliers, they’ll want to focus on results for ‘images’ and ‘reviews’.

VioVet continues to hold the top spot for the most overall Universal Search appearances (18,212) — nearly 3 times the results of the runner up.

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 pet food suppliers should follow a longtail keyword strategy and regularly assess the performance of each phrase and make adaptions if necessary.

Pooch and Mutt secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,323), while VioVet secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (4,792). Receiving results for positions 4–10 certainly isn’t an opportunity wasted, as these appearances can increase a brand’s ranking 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. Facebook ads provide an opportunity for pet food suppliers to reach new audiences and promote their latest products or discounts to pet owners.

We’ve included examples of Lily’s Kitchen sponsored posts. This UK pet food supplier included bullet points in their post to encourage users to obtain the information quickly at a glance compared to long streams of text.

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. 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 ticket deals and availability.

Tails.com has the most Facebook Likes (178,600), and Pooch and Mutt has the most Instagram followers (119,100). Brands should regularly assess their following count and monitor which type of posts receives the highest engagement rate for feedback on future posts.

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, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Pet food suppliers should be particularly mindful of having an accessible site, as being poorly prepared for visually impaired users could not only lose customer confidence but look very poor for their brand!

In our previous report, Different Dog reported the highest accessibility alerts (179). This quarter, Different Dog has slightly reduced their accessibility alerts to 174, though they’re still the pet food supplier with the most alerts.

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 Rory Tarplee.

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