I love online gaming.
I especially love participating in online games where you compete with complete strangers who have the same goal as you – beat the highest scorer and become a champion. What’s awesome about online gaming is that at the end of each level, you can track how well the other players in the game are playing.
How can you tell if you are playing well or not? By comparing your score to others. As it turns out, you can easily measure your website’s performance the same way. How can you tell whether your traffic numbers are good or not? By using the newly-improved Google Benchmarking.
Benchmarking has been a valuable tool for any business strategy looking to ramp up their TQM (Total Quality Management). This tool has quickly moved out to the Google Analytics. An upgrade to the GA tool has rolled out to approximately 1,600 industry categories, 1,250 geographic markets and 7 size buckets. Now, companies can narrow down to very specific industry comparison data.
Benchmarking provides actionable insights to guide a company’s future efforts in competing within its industry. With the data provided by the new benchmarking feature, you will easily be able to tell if your company is keeping up with the industry standard.
Features of Google Analytics Benchmarking Tool
Google Analytics uses aggregate industry data for select metrics in each benchmarking reports including:
- Visit Location
- Bounce Rate
- Pages Per Session
- Device (desktop, smartphone, or tablet)
- Percentage of New Visitors
- Data From Specific Channel (direct, organic or social)
*Initially, the benchmarking feature on Google Analytics does not share conversion data.
Although your benchmarking report will not include specific information regarding competitors, using aggregate information can provide new ideas of how you can improve in areas where you are lacking. From there, you can optimize what you see to increase performance, productivity and profit.
Getting Started With Google Benchmarking
Get Ready To Benchmark! Check out these easy steps to get started with Google Benchmarking:
- Go to “Account Settings” tab of “Account Admin” page
- Check the “Share Anonymously with Google and others” box
- Begin sharing and tracking!
- Begin improving website performance!
Google has stated that they plan to expand the benchmarking capabilities in the next few months by adding support for mobile apps and incorporating conversion metrics. Keep up to date with the latest news at NetElixir.com.
