It has been a great year so far for DFS Furniture. Its shares have been rising since its IPO was priced in March at 255p a share, 10p above the low end of its indicative 245p-310p price range.
DFS is a relatively small player with a market cap of about £600m. If you are not familiar with its core business, the group says that it “operates a retail network of upholstered furniture stores in the United Kingdom and Europe, together with an online channel.”
Its core operations look sound, net leverage is under control, and its financials are in good order — but there doesn’t seem to be a proper online strategy in place.
Preliminary SEO Audit
Our preliminary SEO audit shows that the online strategy of DFS requires immediate intervention. The technical set-up of its website presents a disappointing structure, which leads to multiple issues related to its on-page strategy.
- Website: dfs.co.uk
- Technical: its canonicalisation strategy should be revisited, given that many pages present a wrong configuration. Such a set-up could seriously harm its online performance.
- Speed: speed for Mobile and Desktop is well below average.
- Hierarchy structure: the platform is not optimised, while hierarchy needs some very basic SEO work. Its performance could be affected by poor on-page optimisation and duplication, which is reflected in several issues at domain/page levels.
If you want to discuss how DFS could boost its online performance and you are interested in a premium audit of its website please contact our team at info@hedgingbeta.com
(Alessandro Pasetti and Hedging Beta are not invested in any of the companies mentioned in this article.)