Websites Benchmark Report
Top UK Banks’ Websites Experience Benchmark Report 2023
Acquia analyzed the websites of the top United Kingdom (UK) Banks to determine their state, performance, and accessibility.
The following are the top performers in the areas of digital accessibility, content quality assurance, response time, performance, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Top 5 Websites Overall
In the overall score category, we highlight the websites of top Banks in the UK in terms of SEO, response time, performance, and accessibility.
We scanned a sample of 500 pages from the main publicly facing websites in the financial sector websites in the United Kingdom using Acquia’s Web Governance software during a two-week period in September 2023.
The champions with overall scores ranking in the top five for 2023 are listed below.
| Overall Ranking | Bank Name |
|---|---|
| 1st | Standard Chartered |
| 2nd | HSBC Holdings |
| 3rd | London Stock Exchange Group |
| 4th | NatWest Group |
| 5th | Investec |
Top 5 Websites for Web Accessibility
In the United Kingdom, 24% of the population lives with some form of disability. Many of these people depend on digital accessibility. Your website should be accessible to everyone, regardless of age, level of digital competency, or disability. This is especially important for customers, employees, and future customers.
We advise achieving an accessibility compliance score of at least 70% for organizations using the Acquia Optimize platform in order to demonstrate progress towards compliance.
The average accessibility score for the report was 66.12, just above our recommended threshold.
The following five bank websites scored highest for digital accessibility in 2023.
| Ranking | Bank Name | Accessibility Compliance* |
|---|---|---|
1st | Admiral Group | 100% |
2nd | Schroders | 73% |
3rd | Allfunds Group | 72.77% |
4th | General Accident | 72.29% |
5th | Pershing Square Holdings Ord | 71.42% |
Top 5 Websites for Content Quality Assurance
Acquia Optimize’s Content Quality Assurance module looks for misspellings, broken links, broken images, and readability issues. By working on quality assurance, you can decrease bounce rates, increase conversions, and improve your SEO, helping current and future customers more easily find the information they need about their accounts and your services.
The benchmark average for quality assurance in this report was just 73.37.
However, the banks’ websites listed below deserve credit for making an outstanding effort to raise the bar for content quality assurance.
| Ranking | Bank Name | Content Quality Assurance* |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | F&C Investment Trust | 100% |
| 2nd | Greencoat UK Wind | 100% |
| 3rd | Beazley | 99.2% |
| 4th | Willis Towers Watson | 99.2% |
| 5th | M&G | 98.4% |
Top 5 Websites for SEO
On-page SEO continues to have a crucial impact on search engine rankings. Neglecting essential elements, such as H1 tags, broken links, and excessive internal links, can negatively affect both your rankings and the overall experience of your visitors.
The average SEO score was 82.55.
We praise the following UK banks for taking leadership positions in the SEO category:
| Ranking | Bank Name | SEO Compliance* |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Barclays | 94.43% |
| 2nd | Investec | 91.97% |
| 3rd | London Stock Exchange Group | 91.79% |
| 4th | Hargreaves Lansdown | 91.78% |
| 5th | Standard Life Aberdeen | 90.89% |
Top 5 Websites for Response Time
Ensuring a fast-loading website is essential for SEO, as it is a ranking factor utilized by Google, and enhances user experience. With the help of Acquia Optimize's Heartbeat module, you can monitor your website's performance, ensuring a positive user experience and avoiding any potential visitor frustration.
The United Kingdom top banks’ websites in this report had an average response time of 373.65 ms. Your score must be under 200 ms for you to be considered an excellent performer.
The following top five UK financial institutions can be proud of their exceptional response time results, however:
| Ranking | Bank Name | Average Response Time (ms)* |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | London Stock Exchange Group | 66 ms |
| 2nd | Intermediate Capital Group | 99 ms |
| 3rd | NatWest Group | 109 ms |
| 4th | HSBC Holdings | 111 ms |
| 5th | Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust | 113 ms |
Top 5 Websites for Performance Score
Assessing the overall website performance score (ranging from 0 to 100) using Google LightHouse and Core Web Vitals offers a comprehensive understanding of how factors such as visitor location, network speed, and device impact your site's performance. It provides valuable insights into the overall performance of your website.
The average desktop performance rating for this benchmark report was just 50.23. At Acquia we suggest you aim for a score between 90 and 100.
Below is a list of the top five banks’ websites, based on their desktop performance score in this report.
| Ranking | Bank Name | Performance score (0-100) |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Pershing Square Holdings Ord | 93 |
| 2nd | Greencoat UK Wind | 89 |
| 3rd | M&G | 85 |
| 4th | Aviva | 79 |
| 5th | HSBC Holdings | 70 |