Benchmarking has been a long-anticipated feature since the release of the new Google Analytics. Many of my clients were asking for it—and now it’s finally available within your reach.
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
Located only in the first overview card within Home, you can select from a list of metrics to see how your metrics compare to the peer group. Let’s use the Google Merchandise Store property as an example below. When you arrive at the report, the benchmarking icon is gray, indicating that the feature is not activated. Select one of the metric drop-down menus, and you will see “benchmarking” listed as the second choice. The complete metric list is available at the bottom of this article.


Use
Once you have selected a metric from the benchmarking list, notice that the icon turns blue, indicating that the line chart displays three metrics: your metric as the solid blue line, the 50th percentile as the dotted line, and the 25th and 75th percentiles within the shaded area. You can also adjust the time period by changing the dropdown menu in the bottom left.

Some other highlights:
- 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.
- You can switch to another peer group, and this does not affect other users.
- Your data is encrypted and protected.
- Data is refreshed every 24 hours.
- Benchmarking data is available starting May 30, 2024 onwards.
Benchmarking Metrics
- 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
Benchmarking in Google Analytics is a powerful and valuable tool for businesses to gain insights on performance and user behavior. This new feature allows for valuable comparisons that can aid in improving your overall strategy and enhancing your business’s overall outcomes.