You've got a great new website. You have visitors coming in daily. You've seen your traffic report. But you can't help wondering "how do I compare to everyone else?" Google Analytics Benchmarking can show you. Google Analytics Benchmarking service provides a look at your Website's statistics compared with industry verticals. Simply put, it can show you how your site compares to other sites of similar size in your industry. So how does it work? First Google collects anonymous data from thousands of websites, aggregates the data, and categorized them by industry. This data is fed into your Google Analytics account as a series of benchmarks to compare your own site statistics to. Currently, benchmarking compares:

• Number of Visits
• Bounce Rate
• Page Views
• Average Time On Site
• Pages/Visit
• New Visits

For each statistic, you'll see a graphical representation of your statistics compared to the benchmark. You will be able to tell at a glance where your site falls. Second, it provides you with data associated with each statistic. You might see, for example, that for the time period you are viewing your website had 1,733 Visits. Directly below this stat, you will see the benchmark. Let's say the benchmark is 2,912 visits. This website is below the benchmark, and may need to step up marketing efforts to catch up to the competition. Google also shows the difference between your website and the benchmark. In the above example, this site is 40.49% below the benchmark. That is some serious ground to make up. Setting Up Benchmarking To enable Benchmarking, navigate to the "Visitors" report in your Analytics account, and click the "Benchmarking" link. On the following page, click the provided link to change your data sharing settings. Follow the simple steps to make changes, and voila! you have enabled benchmarking. Don't forget to select the proper category for your website by using the "Open Category List" link. By enabling Google Benchmarking in your Analytics account, you will be able to get a look at your online competition, and see where your website can make some improvements. Used correctly, it can show you where you may need to focus marketing and design efforts to bring your website in line with industry norms, increase sales, and maximize your web presence.

Tags: AspDotNetStoreFront, e-commerce, Google Analytics, online marketing

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 am and is filed under Analytics, General E-commerce, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.