The Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK tyres and servicing brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK tyres and servicing brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q1 2024 benchmarking report for UK tyre and servicing brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national tyre and servicing brands, including ATS Euromaster, Tyre Shopper, Kwik-Fit, Formula One Autocentres, blackcircles.com, BookMyGarage, WhoCanFixMyCar, Evans Halshaw, Mr Clutch Autocentres, Halfords, National Tyre & Autocare, and Protyre.
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 tyre and servicing brands to win brand exposure locally, drive online views, and encourage either online purchases or visits to branches. 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 2024 WINNERS LEADERBOARD
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 tyres and servicing brands on, check out our quick-look table below; 
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing tyre and servicing brands, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
What The Industry Research Report Covers
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.
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 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.
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 tyres and servicing brands, having an easy-to-navigate site is essential for drivers needing to locate local retail and garage options for their vehicles and particular care should be taken of the pathways to key pages such as branch locators, or for key product lines.
In our last audit, National Tyre & Autocare flagged 1,144 4xx errors. In this quarter, this tyres and servicing brand has increased its 4xx errors to 1,372. It must address these errors to prevent leading customers down dead ends and them becoming frustrated and heading to competitors.
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. As with ensuring your site is technically compliant, tyre and servicing brands must ensure their site experience is fast and efficient so users don't turn elsewhere.
The site speed score for this quarter ranged between 68 and 21, with Halfords scoring the lowest. This brand can increase its site speed score by optimising images to ensure they’re not effecting download speeds for customers.
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 isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Tyre and servicing brands can look to producing content and PR campaigns across the full spectrum of automotive ownership, and should be able to secure backlinks from a range of sector-specific and regional press publications.
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. The DA rating for this quarter was between 76 and 33, with Mr Clutch Autocentres reporting the lowest DA. This brand must adopt a PR strategy to increase its backlinks and work with authoritative brands.
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. Many retail brands are seeing sector-wide falls in organic traffic. Though tyre and servicing brands should be an ever-essential product for any automotive owner, brands may find car owners are updating their tyres and opting for servicing less frequently, resulting in less overall traffic to the sector.
Eight of the 12 brands encountered a loss in organic mobile traffic, suggesting that there’s a universal issue. Mr Clutch Autocentres reported a 47% reduction in digital footfall — the biggest loss of all brands.
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. 'Local pack' results could prove particularly useful to tyre and servicing brands, helping them appear for 'near me' searches and capture potential customers looking for nearby branches.
Halfords still remains at the top spot for the most appearances for Universal Search results (with 296,700 appearances — an increase from the previous quarter).
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. Tyre and servicing brands should consider their chances of ranking for key, transactional-focussed keywords and phrases, which might include availability, location, and models of vehicles.
Halfords is ranking the highest is positions 3, with 43,940 appearances and the highest for positions 4–10, implying that it’s not likely to lose this top spot any time soon. Evans Halshaw is also ranking pretty high for positions 4–10, enabling it the chance to creep up the leaderboard.
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 can be useful for both national and local garage reach.
We’ve included 3 examples of Halfords’ sponsored Facebook posts. Each post includes imagery with a promotion in the hopes to entice its online audience to make a purchase.
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. Tyre and servicing brands which are working to improve their DAs and longtail keyword performance will find they naturally build up a good stock of shareable content, particularly if they use appealing images and stats that can be shared on social media.
Ten of the 12 brands favour Facebook, and Halfords continues to have the largest Facebook group (with 257,800 followers — an increase from our previous audit). Having a strong social media presence can assist with branding and increase traffic to your website.
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. All brands should be considering accessibility within their website design, even in sectors such as automotive, where the need may not be as readily apparent.
In this audit, Halfords flagged 157 accessibility alerts, with the majority of these caused by redundant title text. It’s important that this brand fixes all accessibility alerts to make its website more user-friendly for those using a screen reader. Additionally, Autocentres reported 87 contrast errors, which it must address to improve readability for those with colour deficiencies.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q1 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 Mike Movassaghi.
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