UK Apparel Ecommerce Industry Report

Traffic Volume and Annual Trajectory

UK apparel e-commerce stores averaged 7,444 monthly visits per store in January 2026, marking a year-on-year decline from the 8,188 recorded in January 2025—a drop of -9.1%. Looking across the full two-year dataset, the segment experienced a pronounced seasonal peak in late 2024, with average traffic reaching 14,086 in November 2024 before falling sharply through early 2025. That autumn 2024 surge—driven by the back-to-school, pre-Christmas shopping window—has not been replicated in 2025. The equivalent November 2025 figure came in at just 7,781, representing a -44.8% year-on-year collapse in that traditionally strong month. This indicates that the autumn 2024 peak was either an anomaly, potentially driven by a cohort of high-traffic stores present in that period's sample, or reflects a genuine structural softening in demand heading into 2025. Either way, traffic levels across 2025 have remained remarkably flat, oscillating between 7,498 and 8,329 for most of the year, suggesting the segment has lost both its seasonal amplitude and growth momentum.

Channel Mix: SEO Dominance and Paid Search Marginalisation

In January 2026, organic search accounts for 86.7% of all traffic across UK apparel stores, with SEO delivering 7.29 million visits out of a total 8.4 million across the segment. This heavy reliance on organic search is both a strength and a vulnerability. Organic social contributes a meaningful 13.0% share (1.1 million visits), indicating that platforms such as Instagram and TikTok play a secondary but non-trivial role in driving discovery. By contrast, paid search accounts for just 0.2% of traffic (20,928 visits), and paid social is negligible at 0.0%. This channel distribution reflects a segment where most stores are not investing significantly in performance marketing, leaving organic visibility as the primary growth lever—and the primary risk factor. With organic search traffic declining -15.9% year-on-year, the absence of a paid channel buffer means there is little to compensate for losses in search rankings or algorithm-driven traffic erosion.

Revenue Trends and Traffic-to-Revenue Disconnect

Average monthly revenue per store tells a more nuanced story than traffic alone. Despite the traffic decline in early 2025, revenue held relatively firm: January 2025 averaged £121,358, compared to £85,858 in January 2024—a +41.4% year-on-year increase at that point. This suggests that the high-traffic autumn 2024 period translated into sustained customer value or improved conversion rates into early 2025. However, by the second half of 2025, revenue began to compress. October 2025 averaged £95,622, down -42.7% from the October 2024 peak of £166,823. November 2025 came in at £91,803, compared to £201,859 in November 2024—a -54.5% decline in that month alone. January 2026 has partially recovered to £103,063, up +8.5% from December 2025's £99,007, which may reflect post-holiday clearance or early new-year purchasing. The widening gap between the traffic levels of 2024's peak months and 2025's equivalents, combined with revenue compression, points to a segment under meaningful pressure—reliant on organic channels that are contracting, with limited paid diversification to offset the structural headwinds.

Organic Traffic Decline Marks a Structural Shift

UK apparel e-commerce stores recorded an average SEO traffic of 6,454.56 visits in January 2026, representing a -15.9% year-over-year decline from the 7,957.12 average seen in January 2025. This contraction is part of a sustained downward trend that began after a pronounced seasonal peak in autumn 2024, when average SEO traffic reached its highest point of 13,768.49 in October 2024. Since that peak, organic traffic has shed nearly half its volume over 15 months, suggesting that the autumn 2024 surge — likely driven by back-to-school and pre-holiday search demand — masked underlying structural weaknesses rather than representing a durable growth trajectory.

The decline in organic search rankings compounds the traffic story. Organic SERP positions have deteriorated by -4.3% over the period, indicating that stores are not simply receiving fewer visitors due to reduced search volume, but are actively losing ground to competitors in search engine results pages. The traffic distribution underscores the fragmentation of the segment: 1,121 stores sit below the 50k monthly SEO traffic threshold, and only one store operates in the 100k–250k band, with none reaching over 250k. This concentration at the low end signals that scale advantages in organic search remain largely out of reach for the vast majority of UK apparel retailers in this cohort.

Domain Authority Under Pressure

Average PageRank across the segment stands at 2.49 in January 2026, down -13.1% year-over-year from a range that had stabilised around 3.25–3.49 in late 2024. The authority trend line reveals a sharp correction at the start of 2025, with PageRank dropping from 3.49 in December 2024 to 2.90 in January 2025, a level it largely maintained before a brief recovery to 3.35 in September 2025. That recovery proved short-lived; by January 2026 the metric had fallen to its lowest recorded point of 2.49 in the dataset. A declining PageRank of this magnitude typically reflects either a loss of high-quality inbound links, algorithmic reassessment of existing link profiles, or both — outcomes that are particularly damaging in a competitive category such as apparel where established domain authority is a key differentiator.

Backlink Volume Holds but Referring Domain Quality Warrants Scrutiny

Despite the deterioration in PageRank, raw backlink volumes have remained relatively elevated. As of January 2026, stores averaged 21,159.26 backlinks, down modestly from a May 2025 peak of 35,259.86 but substantially above the anomalous low of 463 recorded in October 2024. Average referring domains in January 2026 stood at 757.95, broadly stable since the step-change increase observed from April 2025 onward when the metric climbed from 464.38 to over 700 and has held there.

The disconnect between a stable-to-growing referring domain count (757.95 in January 2026) and a declining PageRank (-13.1% YoY) is notable. It suggests that while the number of unique domains linking to these stores has expanded, the authority or relevance quality of those linking domains may have declined, or that Google's weighting of existing links has shifted unfavourably. For UK apparel stores seeking to reverse the -15.9% organic traffic trend, link quality improvement and on-page SERP optimisation will be more critical levers than simply accumulating additional referring domains at current quality levels.

Paid Search Investment Collapses Year-on-Year

UK apparel e-commerce stores entered January 2026 with average paid search spend of just $85.67, representing an -88.6% decline in paid search costs compared to the same month one year prior. Paid search traffic followed an almost identical trajectory, falling -86.9% year-on-year to an average of just 87.93 visits per store in January 2026. This near-symmetrical collapse in both spend and traffic suggests a deliberate and broad-based withdrawal from paid search investment rather than a deterioration in campaign efficiency.

The trend has been persistent throughout 2025. At the start of the year, average monthly paid search spend stood at $578.83 in January 2025, already down from the peaks seen in early 2024. Spend then declined steadily through the year, with a particularly sharp drop after June 2025 ($211.90), bottoming out at $94.55 in December 2025 before reaching the January 2026 low of $85.67. As a share of total site traffic, paid search has been squeezed from a high of 12.2% in March 2024 down to just 0.9% in both December 2025 and January 2026—a dramatic shift in the channel's role within the traffic mix.

Google Ads Adoption Remains Limited Across the Segment

Only 26.8% of UK apparel stores were active on Google Ads at any point this year, and that figure narrows further to 20.9% when looking at last month alone, indicating that a meaningful share of stores that ran campaigns earlier in the year have since paused or stopped entirely. Among those still active, average Google Ads spend of $123.83 sits at just 51.0% of the global average of $242.95—meaning UK apparel stores are not only less likely to be running paid search campaigns, but are also spending significantly less when they do.

This underinvestment relative to global peers is notable. The gap is not marginal; UK apparel stores are spending roughly half the global benchmark on Google Ads. Given the concurrent drop in paid search traffic share—from double digits in early 2024 to sub-1% by the end of 2025—this segment appears to be systematically deprioritising the channel, whether due to rising cost-per-click pressures, a pivot to organic or social acquisition, or constrained marketing budgets across the board.

Meta Ads Activity Is Negligible, Total Paid Media Lags Global Benchmarks

Meta Ads adoption within the segment is strikingly low, with fewer than 0.3% of stores running Meta campaigns either this year (0.24%) or last month (0.25%). This near-absence from paid social stands in contrast to the channel's generally strong performance in fashion e-commerce globally. Among the very small number of stores that do run Meta Ads, average spend of $2,603.70 reaches 90.8% of the global average of $2,866.26—suggesting those few stores are investing at scale, but the channel simply has negligible penetration across the segment as a whole.

In aggregate, total paid media spend for UK apparel stores averages $724.41 per month, equivalent to 78.1% of the global average of $928.11. The combination of falling paid search investment, well-below-benchmark Google Ads spend, and minimal Meta Ads participation paints a picture of a segment that is significantly underweight in paid media relative to international peers—a structural characteristic that may be constraining new customer acquisition as organic traffic also faces pressure.

Instagram Remains the Dominant Social Channel Despite Volume Pullback

Instagram continues to generate the largest share of social-referred traffic for UK apparel e-commerce stores, delivering an average of 1,052.2 visits per store in January 2026. While this represents a decline from the April 2025 peak of 1,289.5 visits, Instagram's share of total traffic has remained broadly resilient, holding at 13.6% in January 2026 — up from a low of 12.4% in August 2025 and consistent with the channel's longer-term contribution range of 12.4%–15.0%. The highest share recorded across the tracked window was 15.0% in November 2025, likely reflecting pre-Christmas campaign activity driving stronger content engagement. The January 2026 figure suggests a post-holiday normalisation rather than structural decline.

Posting cadence has softened entering 2026. Stores averaged 2.77 Instagram posts per week in January 2026, down from 3.66 posts per week in December 2025 — a month-on-month reduction of 0.89 posts per week. This pullback in publishing frequency is consistent with the seasonal traffic dip seen across total site visits, which fell to 7,719.0 in January from 8,548.7 in December. For stores with larger followings, the follower distribution data highlights meaningful scale differences: 131 stores exceed 250k followers, while 271 stores sit below 10k — indicating the segment is heavily skewed toward earlier-stage social audiences where organic reach growth is harder to sustain without consistent posting volume.

TikTok's Share Edges Higher Amid Steady Volume

TikTok accounted for 3.0% of total traffic in January 2026, up from 2.4% in November 2025 and the highest share recorded since February 2025 (3.2%). In absolute terms, average TikTok-referred traffic reached 282.5 visits per store in January 2026, broadly in line with December 2025's 290.9 but above the channel's mid-year trough of 250.7 in November. While TikTok's absolute traffic volumes remain considerably lower than Instagram's, the channel's share trajectory is slowly trending upward, suggesting growing content investment or improving algorithmic distribution for apparel content.

Weekly upload frequency on TikTok dipped modestly, falling from 2.86 uploads per week in December 2025 to 2.59 in January 2026 — a decline of 0.28 uploads per week. Despite this, the traffic share improvement indicates that content quality or discoverability may be compensating for reduced posting volume. Stores averaging 4.14 posts per week across all platforms still appear to be prioritising Instagram for volume, with TikTok receiving roughly two-thirds of that cadence.

Organic Social Traffic Reaches New Highs in January 2026

Organic social traffic — traffic attributed directly to unpaid social content without platform-specific referral tagging — reached its highest recorded level in January 2026, averaging 970.9 visits per store and representing 13.0% of total traffic. This marks a sustained climb from near-zero levels at the start of 2025 (just 1.1 average visits in January 2025) and reflects what appears to be a structural reclassification or tracking improvement that took effect in April 2025, when the metric jumped from 15.6 to 380.7. Since that inflection point, organic social's share has risen consistently: from 4.8% in April 2025 to 10.2% in June, 11.5% in October, and now 13.0% in January 2026.

The combination of 13.0% organic social share, 13.6% Instagram share, and 3.0% TikTok share points to social channels collectively accounting for a substantial portion of inbound traffic. With an average engagement rate of 0.012%, however, conversion from follower base to active traffic remains highly concentrated — a challenge particularly acute for the 537 stores with fewer than 50k Instagram followers.

Lighthouse Performance Scores Signal Room for Improvement

UK apparel e-commerce stores recorded an average Lighthouse Performance score of 50.4 out of 100 in January 2026, reflecting a modest +0.01 improvement over the previous month's score of 50.5 (noting the raw score moved from 0.505427 to 0.511603). While the month-on-month trajectory is positive, a score hovering around the halfway mark indicates that a significant proportion of stores in this segment are delivering suboptimal page speed and core web vital experiences to shoppers. In a category where impulse purchases and mobile browsing are prevalent, performance bottlenecks directly translate to lost conversions. The accessibility score followed a similar pattern, edging up from 0.871 to 0.874 month-over-month, suggesting incremental but consistent attention to inclusive design standards across the segment.

SEO Health Remains a Relative Strength

The average Lighthouse SEO score for UK apparel stores stands at 0.928 out of 1.0 in January 2026, effectively flat versus the prior month (0.928 previously, 0.930 currently), representing 0% directional change. This is a notably strong result and suggests that stores in this segment have broadly implemented the technical SEO fundamentals — proper meta tagging, mobile-friendliness signals, and crawlability — even where raw performance lags. Maintaining SEO scores in the 0.93 range positions these retailers well for organic search visibility, a critical acquisition channel in the competitive UK fashion market. The contrast between the high SEO score (92.8/100) and the comparatively weaker performance score (50.4/100) is telling: stores appear to have prioritised search discoverability over user-facing speed, a trade-off that may suppress conversion rates even when organic traffic is successfully acquired.

Catalogue Size and Pricing Dynamics Shape Store Complexity

SKU distribution data reveals that the largest single cohort of UK apparel stores carries between 1,001 and 2,500 products (378 stores), followed closely by stores in the 501–1,000 range (255 stores) and those with fewer than 250 SKUs (246 stores). A further 166 stores operate in the 251–500 bracket, while 90 stores manage catalogues exceeding 2,500 SKUs. The prevalence of mid-to-large catalogues has direct implications for performance scores — larger product libraries increase page weight, image load demands, and JavaScript complexity, all of which put downward pressure on Lighthouse Performance metrics.

Average product pricing tells a volatile story across the observed period. After sitting at £336.03 in August 2025, average pricing spiked sharply to £1,304.30 in September 2025, held near that level through October (£1,301.10), then dropped back to £371.79 in November before gradually climbing to £410.32 by January 2026. The February 2026 data point shows another dramatic spike to £2,192.92, suggesting either a compositional shift in the stores sampled or a seasonal influx of high-ticket outerwear and occasionwear listings. This pricing volatility underscores the heterogeneity of the UK apparel segment, which spans fast-fashion value retailers through to premium and luxury fashion houses — a mix that complicates segment-wide benchmarking but reinforces the need to interpret performance scores in the context of catalogue composition and price positioning.