Benchmarks are reference metrics that help you compare your business performance against the performance of other businesses in your industry. Benchmarks unlock the data you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business, so you can take action to improve results.
With an extensive customer base on our platform, Google Analytics has the ability to surface benchmarks for businesses that are also using Google Analytics that are similar to yours.
Google Analytics offers benchmarks in percentiles (median, 25th, and 75th) based on peer groups of businesses for a wide range of industry categories. The businesses that form the peer groups are determined by an industry category assigned to each property. This industry category is determined by a combination of factors including the broad industry category provided in setup and signals from things like a property’s URLs and App attributes.
When you use benchmarking, your data is encrypted and protected, ensuring your data remains private and aggregated. Additionally, thresholds are in place to ensure that a minimum number of properties are included before benchmarks become available to a peer group. Properties must also have a minimum volume of users and be generating a minimum volume of meaningful data in order to be included in a peer group and contribute to its benchmarking metrics. This allows you to safely compare your business's performance against high quality industry standards, while also ensuring that your data is protected. Also, benchmarking data is refreshed every 24 hours.
Benchmarking: How to compare your site/app to your peers
The following guided tour opens the last Analytics property you accessed and guides you to the Home page to walk you through benchmarking. The tour only works for Google Analytics 4, the current version of Google Analytics.
Prerequisites
To be eligible for benchmarking data in Google Analytics, your property must have the Modeling contributions & business insights setting enabled in Admin > Account Settings.
Access benchmarking metrics
To access benchmarking data:
- In the overview card on the Home page, select the metric you want to change.
- Expand the Benchmarking category.
- Select one of these metrics for which you want to view benchmarking data:
- Acquisition
- Engagement
- Retention
- Monetization
- Add to carts per user
- Average revenue per user (ARPU)
- Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU)
- Average purchase revenue per user
- Checkouts per user
- First-time purchaser rate (FTP rate)
- First-time purchasers per new user
- Paying monthly active users / Daily active users (PMAU / DAU)
- Paying weekly active users / Daily active users (PWAU / DAU)
- Total ad revenue per user
- Transactions per purchaser
- Transactions per user
Turn on benchmarking data
If benchmarking data is turned on for the currently selected metric, you will see "On" next to the benchmarking badge in the top right of the overview card.
You can click the badge in the top right of the overview card to turn benchmarking data on or off. When benchmarking data is turned on, the benchmark will appear in the overview card for any metric for which it’s available.
When you turn on benchmarking data, the overview card shows:
- Your property's trendline (solid line)
- Median in your peer group (dotted line)
- Range in your peer group (shaded area)
The benchmark range in Google Analytics is within the 25th and 75th percentile levels to help you make better decisions based on your relative performance.
You can hover over the trendline to view more details.
Note that benchmarking data is not available when the date range is set to 'today'. Also benchmarking data is available starting May 30, 2024 onwards.
Change your peer group
A peer group is a cohort of businesses that are similar to yours, categorized based on shared industry characteristics. The grouping helps you access more meaningful and accurate comparisons.
For example, if your business operates within the apparel sector, you would select a Shopping > Apparel peer group.
To change your peer group, click on the peer group button underneath where it says "Benchmarking peer group" when you expand the benchmarking data badge.
Your default peer group is assigned to your property based on the Industry Category you chose during setup and other attributes like your default URL and the app ID specified in your property's data streams.
You can choose a peer group from one of these categories:
- Arts & Entertainment
- Autos & Vehicles
- Beauty & Fitness
- Books & Literature
- Business & Industrial
- Computers & Electronics
- Finance
- Food & Drink
- Games
- Health
- Hobbies & Leisure
- Home & Garden
- Internet & Telecom
- Jobs & Education
- Law & Government
- News
- Online Communities
- People & Society
- Pets & Animals
- Real Estate
- Reference
- Science
- Shopping
- Sports
- Travel & Transportation
Note that you can select sub categories within each of the top level categories listed above. For example, Shopping>Apparel>Footwear>Athletic shoes.
Sample scenarios
Benchmarking data can provide actionable insights into your business's performance relative to your industry peers. Let's explore a few examples:
1. Acquisition: New User Rate
- Peer Group: Shopping > Apparel
- Scenario: Your 'New User Rate' is consistently below the 25th percentile of your peer group.
- Insight: This suggests that, relative to similar apparel businesses, you're acquiring new users at a lower rate.
- Potential Action: Consider increasing your investment in user acquisition strategies, such as targeted advertising, social media campaigns, or content marketing.
2. Engagement: Average Engagement Time per Session
- Peer Group: Arts & Entertainment
- Scenario: Your 'Average Engagement Time per Session' is significantly higher than the 75th percentile of your peer group.
- Insight: This indicates that users are spending more time interacting with your content compared to most of your peers.
- Potential Action: Capitalize on this high engagement by introducing strategies to increase conversions, such as strategically placed calls-to-action or personalized recommendations.
3. Retention: Bounce Rate
- Peer Group: Travel & Transportation
- Scenario: Your 'Bounce Rate' is notably higher than the median of your peer group.
- Insight: This suggests that a larger proportion of users are leaving your site after viewing only one page, compared to similar businesses in the travel industry.
- Potential Action: Investigate the reasons for this high bounce rate. Consider improving your site's user experience, ensuring relevant content is easily accessible, or optimizing your landing pages.
4. Monetization: ARPU (Average Revenue per User)
- Peer Group: Food & Drink
- Scenario: Your 'ARPU' is trending below the 25th percentile of your peer group.
- Insight: This indicates that, on average, you're generating less revenue per user than most similar businesses in the food & drink industry.
- Potential Action: Explore strategies to increase ARPU, such as upselling, cross-selling, loyalty programs, or personalized offers.
Remember, these are just examples. Benchmarking data can be leveraged in numerous ways to inform your business strategies and drive growth. By understanding how your performance compares to your industry peers, you can identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement, ultimately helping you achieve your business objectives.
Provide feedback
If we surface a benchmark that you find helpful, you can indicate that it was helpful using the thumbs-up feedback button in the benchmarking data card. However, if we surface a benchmark that you didn't find helpful, you can let us know by clicking the thumbs-down feedback button. Based on your input, we can better inform the benchmarks we surface in the future.
