The Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK pet supplies has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK pet supply retailers perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2026 benchmarking report for UK pet supply retailers has just been published. It covers the largest 12 pet supply retailers trading in the UK, including Pets at Home, Petplanet.co.uk, Jollyes - The Pet People, Pets & Friends, Pet Drugs Online, VioVet, Zooplus, The Pet Express, Real Pet Store, My Pet Warehouse, and petshop.co.uk.
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 pet supply retailers to win brand exposure, drive traffic online, and even increase in-store footfall, where relevant. 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.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics, we evaluated these top 12 pet supply retailers 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 pet supply retailers, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
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.
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 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 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 pet supply retailers was £8,585 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 £5. 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, Pets at Home reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £4, and Petplanet.co.uk has the highest at £18.
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, Petplanet.co.uk has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £55, and Zooplus has the highest at £325,000.
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.
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. Brands within the pet supplies space will be juggling huge volumes of products for a wide range of different animals and breeds. They’ll want to ensure potential customers can easily find what they need and aren’t met with dead ends if looking for specialist products.
In our previous audit, Jollyes - The Pet People received the most 404 errors (9). This quarter, Jollyes - The Pet People has reduced their 404 errors to, suggesting they’re following a plan to improve their website’s optimisation. Currently, the pet supply retailer with the most 404 errors is Animed (5,037). 404 errors interrupt the user’s journey at the exact moment they expect to find relevant information, creating frustration and confusion. When visitors repeatedly encounter missing pages, they begin to lose confidence in the website’s reliability and may abandon it entirely.
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 owners looking for food and other supplies, they’ll want to access what they’re looking for quickly, especially when items are needed urgently.
The current mobile site speed ranges between 62 and 10, with petshop.co.uk flagging the slowest speed. Users expect instant access to content on their phones, shaped by fast apps and social media platforms. A slow mobile website feels outdated and can damage perceptions of quality and trustworthiness.
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 isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Brands in the pet supplies sector can look to collaborate with animal bloggers, and run pet breed based PR campaigns to gain exposure and backlinks.
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. In our last report, My Pet Warehouse reported the lowest DA score (2.3). This quarter, My Pet Warehouse remains the retailer to watch, and they’ve since decreased their DA score to 1.3. Internal linking strategies play a proactive role in authority building. By linking strategically between related pages, websites distribute authority across their content and help search engines understand topical relevance and site structure.
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. We’ve seen organic traffic fall for retailers across many of the sectors we specialise in, mostly in response to the cost of living crisis, as consumers cut back on essential items. For pet suppliers, they may feel this impact by pet owners opting for less specialist products, that may be available in their local supermarket for a lower cost.
Six brands reported a drop in organic traffic on desktop, with Pets & Friends reporting the biggest loss (-27%). On mobile, six brands reported a drop in organic traffic, with Pets & Friends reporting the biggest drop on this device, too (-26%). Page speed optimisation should cover both mobile and desktop performance. Compressing images, reducing scripts, and improving server response times help pages load quickly regardless of device.
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 retailer can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Pet supply retailers could look to ‘reviews’ and ‘people also ask’ results, in order to build trust with potential customers and help educate them directly from the SERP.
Pets at Home continues to secure the most Universal Search appearances (27,124) — an increase from 21,656 previously. The majority of their appearances came from ‘images’ (17,900) — a decrease from 19,643 previously.
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. Pet supply retailers can look to their range of products for inspiration and guidance on longtail keyword strategy, including key terms such as ‘next day delivery’ and product weights to appear for users showing high-purchase intent.
Pets at Home continues to secure the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (19,737) — a decrease from 20,882 previously. Pets at Home also secured the most appearances for positions 4–10 (23,586) — a decrease from 1,718 previously. Longtail keywords can be proactively targeted through user-generated content. Reviews, comments, and Q&A sections naturally include detailed language that aligns with specific search queries and expands keyword coverage.
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. Pet supply retailers can use Facebook ads to drive awareness of low-traffic bricks and mortar locations, along with generate visibility on key product lines.
We’ve included screenshots of Pet Drugs Online’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK pet supply retailer utilised branded imagery to help social media users recognise their brand at a glance.
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. Generating informational content will help with longtail keyword performance (and ‘people also ask’ results), and pet supply retailers can look to include shareable content such as infographics to make on-site content engaging on social media.
Pets at Home secured the most Facebook Likes (537,300) and the most Instagram followers (270,600). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Zooplus received the highest total engagement rate (19,961) and the highest average engagement (383).
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 supply retailers should ensure their site is accessible for all as vision deficiency does not exclude pet ownership. In fact, pet supply retailers are in the unique position that at least some of their customers will be shopping for guide dogs or other assistance animals!
In our previous report, The Pet Express flagged the most accessibility alerts (382). This quarter, The Pet Express has slightly increased their total accessibility alerts to 388. However, the retailer to watch currently is petshop.co.uk (a total of 415). Building accessibility into the design process from the start is a proactive strategy that prevents problems before they exist. Designing with inclusive principles ensures that layouts, colours, navigation, and content structures meet accessibility standards from day one.
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.