6 Steps to benchmark and compare website traffic against your competitors

July 12, 2022 Adam Wilson Analyser

Lucky growth is temporary. Systematic growth is predictable. To survive amongst your competitor websites and thrive in your industry business, know what must beat.

More specifically, learn to benchmark your website by checking competitor website traffic. In online business, competitive website benchmarking helps you:

Identify your position in the marketplace.
Provide metrics on why you and your competitors stand at your current place.
How to improve your website for better marketing

Now take a quick glimpse at how to benchmark your website against competitors in 6 simple steps:

Determine the key performance indicator
Find the metrics to Benchmark your website.
Recognize the right competitors
Benchmark your website
Track and prepare the report
Create a customer journey map

Determine The Key Performance Indicator

Using user behavior analytics tools, identify the key performance indicators (KPI) by recognizing your website’s trouble spots and highlights. Webmaxy’s session recordings, heatmaps, scroll maps, and funnel analysis help you measure the engagement metrics through individual pages and across your website.

Session recordings give you insights on:

number of sessions per user
how people scroll through the website
session duration
pages viewed per session

An example of the Webmaxy heatmap tool showing visitors clicking pattern. Heatmaps and scroll map visually outline how people interact with an individual page by displaying “hot” and “cold” spots.

In addition, it helps you identify the scrolling and clicking patterns through which you can draw insight into the optimization possibilities.

The funnel analysis report generated using Webmaxy. The funnel analysis feature helps you identify which pages are the most visited and which are causing significant drop-off.

The data obtained on engagement metrics are valuable for understanding what is and isn’t working on your website to identify the KPI.

Find the metrics to Benchmark your website

The engagement metrics you benchmark will change based on your goals. Here are some significant website metrics that are usually benchmarked.

Page load time
Average session duration
Pages per session
Time on page
Bounce rate

Out of all this, identify the right metrics based on the drawbacks and weak points of the website. Then, organize them depending on the urgency. Finally, prioritize one metric at a time to Benchmark your website.

Recognize the right competitors

After finding what metrics to benchmark, the next big question is how to choose the right companies to benchmark your business? There are two choices to find your business’s right competitors: immediate competitors and industry leaders. But it is also advised to look into the individual metrics of competitors that represent similar KPIs.

Immediate competitors

When you want to study industry trends and specific topics, it’s best to select your direct competitors offering equivalent products to the same size audience.

Make sure to analyze and measure their performance against yours often.

Industry leaders:

If you want to set long-term goals based on strategies, target high and benchmark yourself to the sites that lead your industry.

Beginning with the best in class and lining all your competitors to the industry leaders helps you develop a comprehensive market map.

Benchmark your website

The engagement metrics you obtained using website analytical tools do not serve enough until you benchmark them with the industry standards or the best-in-class. The procedure lets you view your overall performance in the industrial market and helps you identify the blind spots.

Take a quick look at the benchmarking tools you can employ to compare website traffic:

Similar Web

Similar Web is a free competitor analysis tool that provides an insider look for creating a solid marketing strategy.

With its premium plan, you can:

Analyze your business against the industry to understand the growth strategy
Conduct company analysis to discover competitor digital strategies
Make audience analysis to learn audience browsing behavior.

Google Analytics

Using Google Analytics’s benchmarking feature, you compare websites data against the average metrics of other industry-specific websites. Narrow down the results by choosing the country and site size based on everyday traffic volume.

The site size ensures that you compare your business with other sites with roughly the same traffic volume.

Semrush

Semrush is a powerful SEO tool that helps you perform competitor investigations to optimize your campaigns. It has both paid and free features.

The free features of Semrush help you:

benchmark your website against competitors
Find your organic search competitors
Organize the paid search
Investigate your competitors’ social media.

Semrush has three premium offers: Pro, Guru, and Business.

Track and prepare the report

To maintain things systematized, make separate benchmarking reports for each metric and each competitor. Establish a routine practice of quarterly benchmarking to ensure the metrics are still relevant. It will stay updated on the industry trends and patterns.

If your business makes any alterations to the existing KPIs, never miss revising the metrics for competitive benchmarking of your website.

Create a customer journey map

If your competitor is better than you in providing what your customers want, identify it as an excellent dimension to experiment with the new strategy.

Using a customer journey map, create a strategical outline for people to navigate your website integrating the data obtained through benchmarking.

Conclusion: Benchmark your website

Benchmarking the website helps you draw a better picture of your growth potential. But be mindful of resisting the competition of who can come up with prettier website features.

Instead, use these features to understand the industry trends and set benchmark metrics. Then, develop your website based on these metrics. The best website benchmarking is the one focused on your goals and helps you achieve them.

FAQ’s

How do I compare traffic between two websites?

You can compare traffic between two websites and benchmark your website by using the following tools:
– Google Analytics Benchmarking
– Similarweb
– Semrush
– Ahrefs
– Alexa

How to check competitor website traffic in Google Analytics?

To check competitor website traffic in Google Analytics, go to the dashboard. Then navigate to Audience> Benchmarking. Then, select your average daily sessions, target country, and industry. Google Analytics will create a benchmark comparison for any data range. You can do it for any channel, location, or device and compare metrics like avg session duration, pages per session, new users, and bounce rate. However, it won’t give you data on specific competitors.

How do I find out a competitors’ website traffic?

You can find your competitors’ website traffic by utilizing tools like Similarweb or Ahrefs. From Similarweb you can see an estimate of the total visitors on any domain and a breakdown of traffic sources. With Ahrefs you can discover how much traffic your competitors get from organic search engines and keywords they’re ranking for.

How do I compare my website to competitors?

You can compare your website to competitors by first determining the key performance indicators and comparing those metrics with your right competitors. There are several tools that can help you to do it such as,
– Similarweb
– Ahrefs
– Semrush
– Alexa

What is the benefits of tracking and comparing website traffic?

Tracking and comparing website traffic can help you uncover a lot of information. There are many benefits of tracking and comparing website traffic that we have mentioned below:
– Identify your position in the marketplace.
– Provide metrics on why you and your competitors stand at your current place.
– Find ways to improve your website.
– Benchmark your website against competitors.

Adam Wilson

Adam Wilson comes with an experience of 12+ years in the IT industry. As a Customer Success Manager, he has been researching and trying to understand the customers’ behavior in different scenarios. He has also studied human psychology to relate it to the purchase journey of the customers. His published books on customer psychology and behavior have received many honors and awards from various enterprises.