“One bottle of overpriced water, a paperback thriller and three AA batteries, please.”

You’re not alone if that sounds like your last dash through a WHSmith travel kiosk.

The 233-year-old retailer has offloaded its 480 UK high-street stores to Modella Capital for £76 million, rebranding the estate as TG Jones and leaving the WHSmith name to live exclusively in airports, stations and hospitals.

High-street outlets delivered just 15% of group profits, while travel now accounts for 75% of revenue and 85% of trading profit.

In short: the street shop is dead, the departure lounge is thriving, and the domain migration that follows will make—or break—years of SEO equity.

Click here to read our latest stationery market report.

Market context

The footfall squeeze

UK high-street footfall fell 4% year-on-year in late January 2025, continuing a three-year slide.
Shoppers haven’t vanished; they’ve merely moved, to travel hubs first, to search next. WHSmith has read the room.

Stationery’s organic battleground

The 2025 Salience Stationery Index shows theworks.co.uk topping visibility, but WHSmith still sits second with an estimated 377k organic traffic score—down 19% YoY and 32% behind overall market growth. Ryman, Smiggle and Flying Tiger are closing the gap fast.

 

Brand numbers to watch

Metric (Mar 2025) WHSmith The Works Market Avg. Why it matters
Traffic Score 376,715 456,180 — Visibility lagging
YoY% change -19% +8% +13% Algorithm pain?
Monthly brand searches 450K 673K — Brand recall gap
Review count/score 49,869 / 4.3 86,995 / 4.9 — Trust deficit

 

Seasonality strategy – stop the 20% slide

WHSmith’s organic traffic in core stationery categories fell almost 20% YoY, even as emerging product terms such as acrylic brush markers (+3,814%) exploded. TG Jones must:

  1. Expand “maker” ranges – tutorial-led content for markers, brush pens and notebooks.
  2. My own peaks—GCSE revision (May—June) and “back to uni” (September)—still drive my search for pens, pads, and folders.
  3. Use travel data – the in-store bestseller list can inspire page titles before Google Trends catches up.

 

Tactics in action

Migration playbook

A full WHSmith → TGJones.com migration risks “go live, go dark” syndrome. Critical tasks:

  • Pre-launch crawl > 2 m URLs; Keep folder paths identical where possible.
  • Map every stationery PLP to its new slug—one 301 hop max.
  • Stage-by-stage redirects; airport subfolders stay put to avoid cannibalising travel rankings.

Content & PR

Salience data flags WHSmith as an overachiever: high traffic, low authority. Translation: decent on-page work, weak link profile. Fixes:

  • Digital PR on education, productivity and travel-gift angles.
  • Leverage 5,000 store staff for local “expert roundup” citations—Google loves first-hand sources.
  • Avoid sloppy SEO shortcuts: burying PDFs of catalogues, “latest offers” pages with no-index tags, and JavaScript-rendered navigation.

Experience wins conversion.

High-street customers linger; travel customers sprint. Replicate that urgency online: post-security countdown timers tied to next-day Click & Collect.

Layer in Trustpilot snippets on PDPs, review freshness matters; 98% of users ignore reviews older than two weeks.

 

Engagement → conversion funnel

Visual aid suggestion: a three-step funnel graphic:

  1. Search need – “Last-minute travel accessories”.
  2. WHSmith organic result – category page with stock checker.
  3. In-terminal upsell – geo-segment pop-up: “Gate 2 store three minutes from you”.

 

Key takeaways

  • Travel money talks – 75% of revenue now flows through travel retail; SEO priorities must mirror that split.
  • Visibility is brittle – a 19% YoY traffic drop shows how fast rankings erode after algorithm hits.
  • Authority vacuum – WHSmith’s link profile lags; PR and partnerships are non-negotiable.
  • Migration = make-or-break – mis-mapped redirects could wipe months of recovery gains.
  • Seasonal spikes shift – emerging art-marker trends hold the growth WHSmith needs.

 

Conclusion

WHSmith has swapped the high street for the departure lounge, and the SERPs will follow suit.

Nail the migration, match travel-pace UX and plug the authority gap, and TG Jones they inherit a revitalised digital footprint.

Fumble any step and they’ll gift share to The Works and Ryman.

P.S We’re a specialist ecommerce agency with 15+ years of experience.