There’s no 100% accurate way of comparing your website’s performance metrics against those of your competitors. When managing your website analytics, arguably the best way of getting some contextual information is Google Analytics Benchmarking.
Benchmarking allows users to compare key metrics such as visits, page-views, pages per visits, and bounce rate with an average value that’s been generated from data provided by other Google Analytics users. The Benchmarking feature will display your data on a line-graph; the graph will also feature a line indicating the average result for that metric for other websites within your industry.
Because you can select which category your website falls into from a hefty list of options, the Benchmarking average you see should be reasonably contextually valid. Google further focuses the Benchmark by splitting websites into three categories (small, medium, and large) depending on the amount of visitors they receives; you should be presented with an average that reflects the size of your web presence.
Why Use It?
Remember that because the Benchmarking line represents an average, it’ll be affected by erroneous results within the analytics data that it’s drawn from. So a few sites with unusually high or low bounce rates, for example, could skew the average seen by other Benchmarking users.
While Benchmarking isn’t an authoritative source for competitor analysis, it is a useful tool for rating your site’s metrics against something other than previous performance. Use it to identify opportunities for improvement, spark strategy, and inspire site development.
Accessing Google Analytics Benchmarking:
All analytics data used in Benchmarking is anonymous, and you have to agree to share your data in order to access the Benchmarking service.
To activate Benchmarking, you need to agree to share your analytics data “.Anonymously with Google and others” in your Data Sharing Settings. You can access this either via your over-arching account settings, or, if you’re setting up a new account, at the Accept User Agreement page; the option you need to agree to is below the Google Analytics Terms Of Service. Then you can overlay the Benchmarking line on your data visualisations by clicking on the ‘Benchmarking’ tab in the visitors section of Google Analytics. Benchmarking can be used no matter which version of the tracking code is installed to your Google Analytics account.
