UK Retail Benchmark 2025
Gain an advantage and dominate the competition
See how you stack up against your ecommerce competitors, read our 2025 UK Retail Benchmark Report.
Benchmarking ecommerce journeys
Competitive benchmarking 4 of the UK's top retailers
The quality of a digital shopping experience needs to be viewed through the lens of the customer, from the first search to post-purchase customer support. Traditional metrics like NPS or CSAT only paint part of the customer experience picture. So, how do top UK’s top stack up?
QXscore™
Who's winning on digital retail customer experiences?
Marks & Spencer is the top performing retailer with an overall ‘Good’ score.
QXscore
What is QXscore?
QXscore, is a metric developed by UserTesting that empowers digital leaders to measure the overall quality of a customer’s experience across various organisational touchpoints. Drawn from the actions and reactions of 400 retail customers visiting the 4 top UK retailers, this year’s Retail Benchmark quantifies the quality of a digital shopping experience.
Sample: 400 participants (100 per retailer) from the UserTesting Participant Network, February 2025
Key findings
- The majority of participants successfully completed 3 of the 4 core tasks, however, checkout posed challenges, including confusion between account sign-in and guest checkout, last-minute stock or delivery changes, and unexpected steps from basket to payment.
- Participants faced varied challenges, indicating fragmented journeys and prolonged frustration. Retailers should look beyond just "reducing friction" and instead map out where and why these issues occur to diagnose the problem in order to improve the end-to-end digital experience.
- Customers want the online checkout experience to be quick and seamless. If there are too many pages to get through or a site requires unnecessary information, customers can be clicks away from leaving for a competitor.
Success Factors
Factors impacting success
Key insight: A seamless and intuitive user experience is crucial for driving task success and fostering trust, but strong usability alone does not guarantee customer loyalty.
Task Completion
Delivering "good" online experiences, but is that enough to win?
The vast majority of participants were able to complete 3 of the 4 core tasks successfully. Checkout posed challenges, including confusion between account sign-in and guest checkout, last-minute stock or delivery changes, and unexpected steps from basket to payment.
Task Completion
Avoidable friction makes the journey harder than it needs to be
39% of participants encountered obstacles or friction along their journeys.
The type of friction matters as much as the amount of friction. Participants faced varied challenges, indicating fragmented journeys and prolonged frustration. Retailers should look beyond reducing friction and instead map out where and why these issues occur to improve the end-to-end digital experience.
Task Completion
Each obstacle represents a risk to retention
Obstacles force shoppers to invest significant time, even on just one single task.
Average time taken to checkout (seconds)
Average # of clicks needed to complete checkout
These obstacles are standing in the way of an important result—a returning visit. Shopper propensity to return is not guaranteed.
A lengthy or complex checkout process can cause hesitation, leading users to rethink their purchase.
Excessive clicks slow the buying experience and disrupts momentum, making users less likely to complete purchases and rethink their cart.
Loyalty and retention
Barriers to conversion
Get it wrong and there’s a strong chance they won’t be back. An average of 18% of customers lost due to a poor experience.
User Feedback
What shoppers had to say...
Key takeaways
Aligning with your customers' convenience creates satisfaction and in turn, loyalty
- Bottom line? Friction doesn’t just hurt conversion—it damages long-term relationships. A fast, flexible, and frustration-free experience builds trust, encourages repeat business, and strengthens customer loyalty.
- Forcing account creation can drive customers away before they complete a purchase. A guest checkout with an option to sign up later increases voluntary retention.
How do you stack up?
Stand out in an increasingly crowded market by identifying areas and obstacles you can resolve and start differentiating your digital experience.
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