The Q2 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 Q2 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 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 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 Q2 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK pet food suppliers was £3,313, 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 £196 . 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, Tails.com reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £11, and Forthglade Natural Pet Food has the highest at £2,033.

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 £286, and Butternut Box has the highest at £83,400.

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 the last quarter, Tails.com reported 94 404 errors. This quarter, Tails.com has increased these errors to 119, keeping them as the pet food supplier to watch. Too many 404 errors can reduce a website’s crawl efficiency, which means important pages might be missed.

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 the last quarter, Natures Menu saw the slowest mobile site speed (10). This quarter, Natures Menu has increased their mobile site speed score to 24, and they’re no longer at the bottom of the leaderboard. The mobile site speed for this quarter ranged between 54 and 15, with Tuggs receiving the slowest site speed for mobile. A lightweight website theme is a quick and effective fix for brands to increase their mobile site speed.

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 this quarter ranged between 66 and 19, with 4 UK pet food suppliers scoring in the ‘excellent’ zone. However, the pet food supplier to watch is Tuggs, which reported the lowest DA score of all brands. This pet food supplier should reach out to industry sites, contribute guest posts, list their business in reputable directories, and aim to earn organic mentions through a keyword strategy.

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.

Any pet food supplier reporting a decrease in organic traffic on either/both desktop or mobile should ensure they’re following a keyword strategy that they’re regularly monitoring. A drop in traffic could also be due to a website not being optimised for suitable devices, and brands should take into consideration the screen size and how this will impact the amount/type of content displayed.

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’.

Universal Search appearances are important to websites because they can increase online visibility and traffic, as a website’s content will appear in a range of search results, such as images, people also ask, and more.

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 continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (1,712) and positions 4–10 (3,741). All pet food suppliers should monitor their keyword’s impressions and look for missing opportunities with the intention of continually increasing their organic traffic.

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 screenshots of Different Dog’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK pet food supplier should reduce the number of lines of text per post to not discourage social media users from scrolling past their content.

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 (178,300), and Butternut Box has the most Instagram followers (114,800). Social media is a great way to create an online community and grow a loyal audience naturally as well as keep their customers updated on their latest releases/updates.

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 the previous quarter, Different Dog reported 174 accessibility alerts. This quarter, Different Dog has increased their accessibility alerts to 212, making them the pet food supplier to watch this quarter, too. These alerts can limit their audience and create a poor user experience, since their website will become harder to navigate for some people. 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 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.