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Hi there! 👋

A competitive benchmark is something we - as e-commerce managers - do way too little.

Now, I’m not saying you should focus too much on your competitors (allocate that energy towards your own business), but taking a peek in your competitors shop once in a while is a great way to identify gaps and spot opportunities for improvement.

In today’s issue, we’re going to talk about competitive benchmarking your business and how it can help you improve your business.

Best thing, this complete benchmark will take you no more than half a day.

You can learn a hell of a lot by looking at your competitors.

Benchmarking can take forever and you can benchmark a million KPIs. But the goal is to get a quick insight into your top 3 competitors on curated areas. To keep it simple and quick, we’ll benchmark 6 areas:

1. Website Performance.

2. SEO & Organic Visibility.

3. Product Offering & Pricing.

4. Customer Service & Support.

5. Marketing Strategies.

6. Pay & Ship.

You’d be surprised how much information you can find through your screen and how it can benefit your business.

Let’s dive in.

For this first phase, the only thing you need to do is gathering data. You won’t be analyzing or making decisions, yet.

1. Website Performance

Now, you don’t have to be a techy or developer to benchmark your website performance. A bit of tooling and common sense gives you enough information.

A basic website performance benchmark takes 3 steps.

1. Page Load Time: Use Google Pagespeed Insights to measure how quickly your site loads compared to competitors. Faster load times means better user experience and higher search engine rankings.

2. Navigation and Usability: Evaluate the ease of navigation and the intuitiveness of your website's design. How easy is it for users to find what they're looking for? Compare it to your competitors and rate on a 1-5 scale.

3. Mobile Responsiveness: Assess how mobile-friendly your website is. Compare it to your competitors and rate on a 1-5 scale.

2. SEO and Online Visibility

1. Search Engine Rankings: Use Semrush to analyze how your website ranks on search engines for the top 10 key industry-related terms compared to competitors.

2. Content Quality: Evaluate the relevance, originality, and value of the content on your website. High-quality content can attract more traffic and engage users effectively. Compare it to your competitors and rate it on a 1-5 scale.

3. Product Offering & Pricing

1. Product Range: Compare the breadth and depth of products you offer with your competitors. Consider diversity, exclusivity, and product categories. Rate it on a 1-5 scale.

2. Pricing Strategy: Analyze your pricing strategy in relation to your competitors'. Are you positioned as a budget, mid-range, or premium provider? Do your competitors sell the same products? If so, pick your top 10 items and compare prices.

3. Product Presentation: Look at how products are presented on your site versus competitors. This includes product images, UGC, descriptions, video, FAQ’s etc. Rate it on a 1-5 scale.

4. Customer Service & Support

1. Support Channels: Compare the variety of customer support channels (e.g., chat, email, phone). Rate it on a 1-5 scale.

2. Customer Reviews and Ratings: Assess the volume and quality of customer reviews and ratings on your website compared to competitors.

3. Return Policy: Compare your return policy to your competitors.

5. Marketing

1. Social Media Presence: Evaluate your presence and engagement on social media platforms against that of your competitors. Look at follower count, post frequency, and engagement rates.

2. Email Marketing: Compare your email marketing strategies, including frequency, content quality, and personalization levels. Subscribe to your competitors newsletter, analyze how much mails they send out with what content.

3. Promotions and Discounts: Analyze the types of promotions, discounts, and loyalty programs you and your competitors offer.

6. Pay & Ship

1. Checkout Process: Evaluate the simplicity and security of the checkout process. Tip: less field = less friction = better conversion.

2. Payment Options: Compare the variety of payment options offered. More options can cater to a wider audience.

3. Shipping Options: Compare the variety and flexibility of shipping methods.

4. Shipping Fees: How much do you and your competitors charge for shipping? What is the free shipping treshold?

Identify gaps

Now having evaluated your site and competitors on these areas, you’re sitting on a goldmine of opportunities.

When you put all the data in a simple Google Sheet, you’ll be able to spot gaps pretty quickly.

Example:

Now, before you jump right in and offer free shipping on all orders, you need to think about what is good for your business.

You want to optimize with profit on your mind. So yes, free shipping on all orders will probably give you more orders. It also is very expensive. So it might work better for you to offer $4.95 or even $5.95.

TL;DR

Pick 3 competitors and get benchmarking. With a bit of elbow grease you’ll be able to find at least a dozen of opportunities to improve your website compared to your competitors. In less than a days work.

That’s it for today. Have a great Sunday.

Erik

Whenever you’re ready, there are three ways I can help you.

1. Interim E-Commerce Management: I run, scale & optimize your e-commerce business.

2. Resource Library. Useful resources for every marketer. Includes an E-Commerce Audit Report, ChatGPT Prompt Guide & Midjourney Masterclass.

3. Book a 1:1 Call. A No Bullshit 20 min Ask Me Anything call. If you’re facing challenges in online business, I’m happy to talk.

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