Good news for ecommerce brands: ecommerce revenue is growing year after year. The pandemic boom has completely redefined the way people shop and its ripple effects are still felt today.
Now for the bad news: the ecommerce space is a tough place to be in now, especially as new brands are sprouting up left and right.
To differentiate yourself, you have to dig deep and understand your market and your competitors. In the cutthroat realm of DTC ecommerce, knowing your competition as much as you know yourself pays off.
Any brand worth its salt will want to know its rival brands and conduct a competitor analysis, which is why ecommerce benchmarking software is a vital piece of the puzzle.
Unless you want to flit from website to website noting down information, you need benchmarking software. These tools deliver insight that human hands just cannot deliver in the same way.
They speed up your benchmarking efforts so you can get to the good stuff faster and they get rid of tedious tasks, so you can focus on big-picture thinking and planning.
However, amidst a sea of benchmark software options, choosing the right software can be daunting.
If you’re still confused about which benchmarking tool is right for you, this is the perfect article
In this guide, we'll dissect five recommended ecommerce benchmarking software solutions so you can select the best one for your needs and marketing endeavors.
Before we delve into the specifics of each software solution, it's crucial to understand the core functionalities and benefits they offer.
Ecommerce benchmarking software typically provides a range of features designed to gather and analyze data on your competitors' performance across various metrics.
From tracking website traffic and conversion rates to monitoring social media engagement and pricing strategies, these tools offer invaluable insights into the competitive landscape.
Armed with this intelligence, ecommerce brands and marketers can finetune their strategies, identify areas for improvement, and capitalize on emerging opportunities.
- Benefits of Benchmark Software for Ecommerce
- Competitive Analysis
- Performance Evaluation
- Data-Driven Decision Making
- Goal Setting and Monitoring
- Competitive Advantage
- 5 Best Alternatives for Benchmark Software
- Similarweb
- Semrush
- Mangools
- Moz
- Panoramata
- Frequently Asked Questions
- How do you benchmark an ecommerce website?
- How do I choose a company to benchmark?
- How can benchmarking be used to improve performance?
Benefits of Benchmark Software for Ecommerce
Competitive Analysis
If you’re looking to conduct regular competitive tracking and analysis, benchmark software is essential.
It allows you to easily compare metrics with your competitors and the industry. In turn, this means you can quickly identify trends, spot weaknesses, and capitalize on opportunities so you can outclass your rivals.
Performance Evaluation
Benchmark software also assists in evaluating your business’ performance objectively.
As a business owner or marketer, you are less likely to give a fair judgment of how your company is faring. Key performance indicators give you this objectivity, allowing you to see your overall performance and how it compares to your goals.
Tracking KPIs is the forte of benchmark software so it’s a must for evaluating business performance.
Data-Driven Decision Making
If you need to make data-backed decisions, benchmark software is your guy. Intuition can only take you so far in ecommerce.
You need concrete information and analytics as a basis for improving your strategy, products, and operations.
Goal Setting and Monitoring
Benchmark software also guides you when setting goals and tracking your progress towards goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you need to monitor page visits automatically and view the data to decide what to do next.
Competitive Advantage
Ultimately, benchmark software gives you a leg up on your competition. It allows you to stay accountable and continuously track your progress.
It keeps you on your toes, giving you a peek at industry trends, and it helps you optimize your business and deliver a stellar customer experience.
Take all that together and you’ll have a highly competitive ecommerce brand that’s poised for long-term growth.
“When choosing a company to benchmark against, look for competitors or industry leaders with similar target audiences, product offerings, and business models. Consider factors such as market share, brand reputation, and online presence.”
5 Best Alternatives for Benchmark Software
Now, let's explore how each software solution stacks up in delivering these essential capabilities.
Similarweb
Key features:
- Website traffic analysis
- Competitor analysis
- Industry benchmarking
- Market intelligence
SimilarWeb offers robust ecommerce benchmarking and web analytics capabilities, enabling users to monitor competitors' website traffic sources, audience metrics, and keyword performance.
With detailed insights into visitor demographics and traffic sources, including organic, paid, and social, users can delve into the specifics of each feature, such as country or city of origin for website traffic.
Additionally, SimilarWeb provides ranking comparisons to assess website performance against competitors and analyze marketing effectiveness.
For SEO and content marketers, SimilarWeb offers valuable metrics like total visits, bounce rates, pages per visit, and average visit duration, along with industry categorization and global rankings.
However, SimilarWeb has drawbacks, including data accuracy issues—especially for smaller websites—and the absence of real-time data.
It also lacks mobile device tracking, a significant limitation given the prevalence of smartphone usage.
Furthermore, the tool's limited integrations may disrupt workflow for users utilizing multiple competitor analysis tools.
Semrush
Key features:
- Domain analytics
- Competitive intelligence
- Keyword research
- Advertising analysis
You probably already know Semrush. It’s a benchmark software that scarcely needs an introduction. For the uninitiated, Semrush is a well-rounded tool for SEO, SEM, social media monitoring, and competitive analysis for paid ads.
It’s able to audit a site’s SEO and content marketing strategy and give an instant glimpse into the robustness of any website, including keyword rankings and how you stack up against competitors.
With Semrush, you’ll be able to track what keywords your competitors are optimizing for and how they’re ranking for those keywords, and compare the keyword profiles of your top competitors so you can spot gaps and prioritize trending keywords.
In particular, Semrush’s domain overview feature lets you see your competitor’s best-performing pages and keywords and how these content pieces are being promoted.
Mangools
Key features:
- Keyword research
- Competitor analysis
- SERP analysis
- Backlink analysis
Mangools is an affordable alternative to Semrush. If you want to ramp up your SEO strategy and keep tabs on your competitors’ SEO performance, you won’t go wrong with a tool like Mangools.
Its functionalities include tracking your SERP results, on-page SEO strategy, and off-page SEO execution. You can use it to begin shaping your SEO strategy with high-volume yet low-competition keywords.
With Mangools, you can also monitor popular keywords that you’re not ranking for yet, look for high-impact backlinks, and assess your competitors’ website authority.
The only caveat is that Mangools isn’t a full-fledged powerhouse tool like Semrush is but if you’re dipping your toes into ecommerce benchmarking, it’s a good place to start.
Moz
Key features:
- Domain analysis
- Keyword research
- Link analysis
- Competitive analysis
Moz has several features that will benefit your benchmarking efforts immensely: domain authority, link explorer, keyword explorer, on-page grader, and site crawl, to name a few. Moz dubs itself as the “SEO software for smarter marketing” and it lives up to that promise.
Some of the things you can do with Moz are compare your domain authority scores with that of your competitors, analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles, pinpoint link-building opportunities, optimize your keywords for SEO, and create custom reports out of the benchmarking data you’ve gathered.
However, there are downsides. Some users report that the interface of Moz is clunky, the limited number of credits per month for some features is restrictive, and their backlink database leaves a lot to be desired.
Panoramata
Key features:
- Ecommerce benchmarking
- Competitor monitoring and analysis
- Marketing best practices and inspiration
- Funnel tracking (ads, website, landing pages)
Panoramata is a powerful made-for-ecommerce benchmark software that excels in competitor monitoring and analysis.
What separates it from other tools is its ability to track any brand’s funnel from its ads to their email newsletters. It can also monitor price and catalog changes, landing pages, and SMS.
Simply put, Panoramata fills a gap that tools like Semrush do not have.
If you want to benchmark your competitor’s content and find inspiration for your campaigns, Panoramata is your best bet. Best of all, you never have to subscribe to newsletters individually or manually conduct competitor research again.
Panoramata is one of the best advertising and email marketing benchmarking tools that allows you to keep track of emails and ads on a single dashboard.
Similarly, you can monitor your competitor’s website and the changes they make to it, access competitive and actionable insights, and view industry benchmarks for almost every industry you can think of.
Other use cases for Panoramata include advanced competition analysis, competitive growth scoring, advanced monitoring, and marketing campaign inspiration.
Features:
- A dashboard for updates on your competitors’ marketing content
- Benchmarks that compare brands automatically
- Follow competitors
- Emails, flows, SMS, and ads search engine
- A database for Tiktok, Meta, Google and Pinterest ads
- Historical data and statistics of landing pages and their ads
- Save and share inspiration lists
- Recommendations and Inspiration Searches so you never run out of ideas
And the list goes on.
To sharpen your marketing strategy and benchmark against competitors more efficiently, Panoramata is your go-to solution for reaching your goals swiftly.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you benchmark an ecommerce website?
Benchmarking an e-commerce website involves comparing its performance metrics against industry standards or competitors.
Start by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, conversion rates, average order value, and customer engagement metrics. Then, use analytics tools like Google Analytics or e-commerce benchmarking platforms like Panoramata to track and analyze these metrics over time.
By regularly monitoring and benchmarking your website's performance, you can identify areas for improvement and optimize your strategies to stay competitive in the online marketplace.
How do I choose a company to benchmark?
When choosing a company to benchmark against, look for competitors or industry leaders with similar target audiences, product offerings, and business models.
Consider factors such as market share, brand reputation, and online presence. Utilize competitive analysis tools and industry reports to identify top performers in your niche.
Benchmarking against companies that are achieving success in areas where you want to improve can provide valuable insights and inspiration for your own e-commerce strategies.
How can benchmarking be used to improve performance?
Benchmarking provides valuable insights into your e-commerce website's performance relative to competitors or industry standards.
By analyzing benchmarking data, you can identify areas of strength and weakness in your current strategies and operations. This enables you to prioritize areas for improvement and implement targeted initiatives to enhance performance.
Benchmarking can also help set realistic goals, track progress over time, and measure the impact of strategic changes.
Ultimately, by leveraging benchmarking data effectively, e-commerce brands and marketers can optimize their performance, drive growth, and stay ahead of the competition.
