Top glasses retailers lose online visibility

Specsavers is the leading online performer in the glasses retailer market despite a decrease in visibility, according to a new report by digital marketing agency, Inside Online.

The Glasses Retailer Insight Report ranks 49 websites according to their online performance, which is measured by analysing areas such as brand reach score, search engine optimisation visibility and link authority score.

Speaking about the findings, inbound content marketer at Inside Online, Gemma Curtis, said: “It looks to have been a difficult year overall for the glasses market with the majority of the top 10 brands losing visibility.”

Inside Online, which produces digital insight reports across different sectors, found that specsavers.co.uk had 550,000 monthly searches and topped the visibility chart despite a 20% decrease year-on-year.

Visionexpress.com and glassesdirect.co.uk were joint second with 135,000 brand searches per month, with tescoopticians.com (60,500) and sunglasshut.com (49,500) making up the rest of the top five.

The report explains that the performance of websites such as lenstore.co.uk, fashioneyewear.co.uk and feelgoodcontacts.com is the reason for the market share decrease in visibility for Specsavers, as well as Tesco Opticians’ (-50% year-on-year).

Inside Online also measured brand exposure on social media, with Sunglass Hut, Specsavers and Ace & Tate all in the top five, demonstrating a strong following and engagement through content and product campaigns.

Sunglass Hut also leads the link authority score table, which measures the number of links per month against the quality of those links. The Frames Direct, Specsavers, Shade Station and Vision Express websites made up the rest of the top five.

Cubitts.co.uk and kiteeyewear.com were named in the top five for having high quality content, with a low volume of website referrals, which Inside Online said demonstrates that these companies have “the right link-building foundations in place, but need to work on scaling that activity to successfully compete in their marketplace.”

Speaking about the importance of content, Ms Curtis explained: “Content has been confirmed as one of the driving rank factors for Google, so retailers should focus on producing rich, informative copy in the near future.”

“Specsavers and Sunglass Hut have enviable social stats, but they could gain an even wider audience by posting more engaging content. Introducing hashtags, competitions and ‘poll’ posts opens your brand to new people – and brands should never rest on their laurels,” she added.