The Q3 2022 benchmarking report for UK window & conservatory suppliers has just been published. Learn how the top 7 UK window & conservatory suppliers perform across the digital space.

The latest Q3 2022 benchmarking report for UK Window & conservatory suppliers has just been published.  It covers the largest 7 national window & conservatory suppliers, including Everest, Anglian Home Improvements, Safestyle UK, Conservatory Outlet, Ultraframe, First Home Improvements and EYG Home Improvements.

The report highlights year-on-year digital performance, plus winner and loser comparisons across 20+ online performance metrics and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for window & conservatory suppliers to win brand exposure, grow market share and increase leads/sales from online sources.

To see a preview and contents page of the Q3 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. 

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.

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.

All seven of the window & conservatory suppliers have fairly low website errors, the brand with the highest amount being Anglian Home Improvements with 15 4xx error codes. Whilst the results are low across the board, there is always room for improvement. All seven brands must ensure their sites don’t lead their users to dead ends, this could lead potential customers to using other sites out of frustration.

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.

We would expect most to achieve at least an ‘okay’ score of 50-89, whereas only four of the seven window & conservatory suppliers did. The mobile page speed scores are currently between 23 and 69, with First Home Improvement bringing in the lowest score. All seven brands have some serious work to do on improving their mobile page 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 gage of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads.

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. Three out of the seven window & conservatory suppliers didn’t even achieve an average score, with Conservatory Outlet scoring the lowest score of 27. Those suppliers at the lower end of the scale need to be focusing on building a stronger backlink profile to compete with the higher scoring 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.

We looked at how all seven window & conservatory suppliers brands have performed compared to last year. Continuous improvement and optimisation is also needed to secure traffic year on year. We found that almost all of the window & conservatory suppliers companies have failed to achieve year on year growth in mobile traffic. First Home Improvements was the only supplier to see a year on year growth, with an impressive 93% increase. Whilst the other six suppliers saw loses of up to 64%, from EYG Home Improvements. All six suppliers need to be looking into the reasons behind these dramatic drops in mobile traffic. 

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 brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings.

We could see that image pack was the highest used universal search feature, with Anglian Home Improvements reaching 1,400 results. However, with all the universal search feature options, all seven are underusing them, with most of the result hitting the hundreds rather than the thousands. We would expect to see much higher results.

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.

Although some of the brands are using a high number of longtail keywords, most of these aren’t within the top 20 ranking longtail keywords. Some brands, such as Conservatory Outlet and First Home Improvements aren’t using anywhere near as many longtail keywords as their competitors, with Conservatory Outlet not ranking for any in the top 3. To compete with those top companies, most of the Windows & Conservatory suppliers need to expand their strategy to include new specific search terms along with improving their existing longtail keywords.

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.

Below, we can see examples of EYG Hope Improvements’ Facebook ads. The use of images of their previous work is great from a potential customers perspective, to see what their windows and/or conservatories look like on real homes. Adding in the branded colours and SALE is also eye catching whilst scrolling social media, making the customer want to stop and read the copy which includes the details of the current deal running.

 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.

With window & conservatory suppliers usually offering a range of products for a range of different types of properties, there is a missed opportunity for content creation. From jumping on social media crazes, sharing before and afters and special offers, there is a huge range of content these brands can be sharing. Many of the seven brands are falling behind in content creation, there is an enormous room for improvement from all seven window & conservatory suppliers.

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.

Though most of the window & conservatory suppliers brands appear to have reasonably accessible sites, with fewer errors than we typically see, however errors are still appearing. Ultraframe are seeing the largest number of errors with 100 alerts on their websites. All seven window & conservatory suppliers should always be reviewing and optimising their accessibility, however those seeing high numbers of errors and alerts need to investigate what the issues within their websites are. 

Q3 2022 WINNERS LEADERBOARD

For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 7 national window & conservatory suppliers on, check out our quick-look table below; 

GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q3 2022 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 Rob Allen.

Photo by Pierre Châtel-Innocenti on Unsplash