Google Analytics Benchmarking
For those without the kind of budget to gain access to Hitwise or sufficient traffic volumes to appear in Alexa, the Google Analytics benchmarking tool provides interesting insight into how you rank amongst your peers.
To access Google Analytics benchmarking data you must have opted to share your site data anonymously with Google. This is done from the ‘Edit Account settings’ page and the ‘Google Analytics Data Sharing Settings’ section. Your data is then collated with other site information in an anonymous, aggregated format. Be aware that it could take up to two weeks for the benchmarking data to appear in your Analytics account after the data sharing settings have been changed and saved.
Accessing the benchmarking information is from the ‘Visitors’ tab and the second option ‘benchmarking’ (below Overview). If the function has been configured correctly you will be presented with six small charts showing top-line site metrics with the familiar blue bar but also an additional grey line showing the ‘benchmark’ value for each metric alongside your own. The metrics shown with benchmarking values are:
- Visits
- Bounce rate
- Page views
- Average time on site
- Pages-per-visit
- Percentage new visits
Below each chart you will see the total/average metrics for the data-range selected. Below this figure you will see the corresponding benchmark metrics followed by a +/- symbol and the percentage difference between your average figure and the benchmark to show how you either exceed or fall below the industry average. You are not able to save these charts to the Dashboard view or apply them to other metrics such as search engine referrals to see how your site performs against other sites for search traffic.
So how are these comparisons of use? You can assess how your site performs against similar sites on given days. For example – do you find traffic is slow on a Wednesday? With the benchmarking report for visits you can ascertain if this is a trend shared by other sites in your market or are you an exception? You can also select a different vertical market to plot the traffic trends for that market then determine if you could promote your products or services to a section of that online community to take advantage of higher traffic on given days/weeks/months.
Benchmarking is done at an account level so it will be applied to all profiles within the account. For example, if you have an additional profile that excludes all traffic other than PPC traffic this will also have benchmarking data. Google determines the traffic volume you are receiving and puts you into an appropriate group so you can compare your data with similarly sized websites.
Enpiem Internet Marketing use Google Analytics as part of our website data analysis service. Contact us to discuss your website data analysis requirements and how we can help you make more from your website traffic.
Tags: Data Analysis, Google Analytics