The UK’s top 10 tyre retail web sites 2023

There’s no denying that the tyre business has become more digital and connected than ever before, but there are a number of sides to that equation. We know that between 60 and 80 per cent of tyre-buying consumers were doing pre-sale research online before the pandemic. Similarly, industry insiders have been saying that 10 per cent of tyres are bought online for something like a decade now. But anecdotal evidence from tyre retailers themselves reveals that, amongst those working for the large chains at least, many customers walk through the door to receive a tyre change that has already been booked online. Apparently, some of the younger generation just walk in and hold up a QR code on their phone! This month’s Tyres & Accessories looked into these kinds of questions, asking what it means for the tyre business to be digitally native. And it starts with a brand-new ranking of the leading tyre retail, e-tail and tyre comparison websites.

In order to create our ranking, we began with specific third-party data relating to the number of pageviews leading businesses in each of those had achieved in the most recent complete month at the time of writing (i.e. June 2023). Of course, pageview data is just one dimension of what it means to be a successful website. Some we spoke to rightly highlighted the importance of various sites’ conversion rate (that is the effectiveness of guiding consumers to the point of sales) as well as the quality of visits as measured by time on-page plus the number of unique users. But at the end of the day, online businesses can’t work without traffic and that is a statistic that everyone both measures and understands. So, next we interrogated our chosen data in relation to secondary third-party sources, corroborating conversations with tyre industry sources and with our own research. That means, while the number cited on the tables are the precise figures generated, we understand that in many cases the rationale is as important as the ranking. And this is something that comes out in the narrative accompanying each category in this article.

Early in the process the decision was made to split the data out into categories for two reasons. Firstly, because the overall picture is far clearer when each category is split out as opposed to lumped together. And secondly, it is more consistent to compare apples with apples. For anyone wondering why we haven’t ranked tyre manufacturer websites, it is because each manufacturer markets themselves online in a different way. Specifically, about 40 per cent of the leading brands we sampled host their sites on the European or global domains of their global parent businesses, which makes it impossible to reliably compare traffic data with those that host their web-presence on a co.uk domain. One further reason is that UK tyre manufacturer website traffic is surprisingly low. Michelin would have very likely been a clear winner, with traffic that would have put it in contention with the top table of tyre retailers (see chart), but others wouldn’t have made it onto that table at all.

The websites belonging to the best-known traditional channel tyre retailers were another story. And it is no surprise that pure-play online tyre retailers as well as tyre-specific production comparison sites are clearly geared up for connecting with the tyre-buying public online.

The top 10 tyre retailers online (UK) 2023

Halfords.com is our top tyre retailer online UK for 2023. On the one hand, after years of aggressive acquisition in a bid to occupy a leadership position in the fast-fit/autocentre sector, its not surprising to see Halfords.com at the top. But, on the other hand, we are all aware that the 10 million-plus-pageview figure is somewhat flattering because it includes not only Halfords Autocentres and acquisitions such as National Tyres and Tyres on the Drive, but also the rest of Halfords consumer-motoring-orientated business. Nevertheless, when you look the data from the e-tail sites we were able to split out, they alone would have put the company in second place. And when you consider that Halfords Autocentres is now the joint largest tyre retail chain brand in the UK, our judgement is that Halfords.com should retain pole position.

Kwik-fit.com is second place with an enormous 1.6 million pageviews in June 2023, a figure that would have easily topped the table in years gone by. Indeed, based on this evidence Kwik-Fit has no-doubt been leading the market for years prior to Halfords’ relatively recent ascendancy.

The recently re-branded Protyre.co.uk represents a strong third place – according to the third-party data we saw – roughly 50 per cent ahead of fourth position. Whether the precise pageview figures are accepted or not, corroborating sources told Tyres & Accessories that Protyre’s traffic growth represents one of the largest retailer increases year-to-date when compared with the same period in 2022.

Fourth-placed ATS Euromaster also continues to offer a strong showing in the market, by far the strongest of those retailers most closely connected to manufacturers. However, industry sources also told us that the gap between ATS Euromaster and fifth-placed F1 Autocentres (F1Autocentres.co.uk) could be considerably closer than what is shown in the data we obtained.

Speaking of tyre retail operations connected to tyre manufacturers, Goodyear’s HiQ franchise network (hiqonline.co.uk) occupies an ambiguous seventh position just behind mrclutch.com in our data. Not only is the difference between those two firms too close for comfort, one third party source unconnected to our data supplier or either retailer told us that they rank HiQ just below eighth-placed JustTyres.co.uk.

Similarly, the gap between the online presence of Bridgestone’s First Stop network (firststop.co.uk) in ninth place and In’N’Out Autocentres (inoautocentres.co.uk) in 10th is vanishingly small, meaning either could occupy either position on a month-to-month basis. Indeed, one corroborating source we consulted ranked 9^th and 10^th the other way around.

What that all means is that, overall, independently-owned tyre retail operations significantly outperform the websites of manufacturer-owned equities. Furthermore, some of the upper-mid-sized independent tyre retail chains are actually punching above their weight and competing with national-scale manufacturer chains in terms of web traffic.

Source: Third party web data; Industry sources; T&A research

*Includes all Halfords retail including non-tyre operations.