B2B and Beyond: 6 Industry Benchmarks to Assess Your Site

Remember the king of bongo? This simple song carries a profound message about business benchmarking. 

The song tells the story of a boy who is a celebrity in the jungle where he has no competition. But when he goes to the big city, the crowds don’t go crazy when he’s “banging on his boogie;”  they hear those beats all the time. Had the young bongo player benchmarked the performance level of musicians in the city, he could have prevented his own failure. That’s how important benchmarking is.

In the world of B2B and beyond, website benchmarks can save you effort and money because they function as a guidepost. Relevant industry benchmarks help you make sure you’re on the right track. This article takes a close look at the B2B website trafficmetrics you need to monitor and why. We’ll also provide the most relevant B2B websitebenchmarks for you to get started. Some of these benchmarks are useful for business-to-customer sites, so we will cover some of these sites as well.

How to get started with B2B websitebenchmarking

Business-to-business (also known as B2B) industry benchmarks tell you what’s standard in your niche. Armed with that knowledge, you can realistically assess your website performance and set goals. Industry B2B benchmarks are like red lines on your charts from which you mustn’t deviate too much. 

The moment you start studying relevant website performancebenchmarks for B2B, you’ll realize the significant variations between industries. We recommend looking at the big picture first and then drilling down into more specific areas. 

You may want to compare niche benchmarks in different locations and look at adjacent, related industry sectors to get an accurate picture of the competitive landscape. 

Another thing to keep in mind: check b2b website metrics that provide you with actionable insights. Don’t settle for vanity metrics to present to your stakeholders, even though that’s what they may request. Stay a step ahead and work with the metrics that really matter.

How are B2B websitebenchmarks unique?

We all know B2B and B2C aren’t the same when it comes to marketing. Each has its quirks. But what implications does that have on analytics? How should you look at B2B websitemetrics? 

Let’s recount what B2B companies have in common that makes them different from B2C businesses. Most significantly, the buyer on the other side of the computer screen is equipped with a business mindset. B2B buyer personas focus on the solution you offer and how it fits their business structure and existing technologies. They’re generally looking to make large purchases that often have a broad organizational impact.

Several parties are involved, and the end-user isn’t necessarily the one who makes the final decision. Instead, they rely on the consent of various stakeholders and decision-makers in the company. Naturally, the purchase process takes longer and involves multiple touchpoints.

How content marketing fits into the process

This brings us to content marketing. Most B2B companies engage in this type of inbound marketing. A good Content marketing strategy involves a mix of marketing channels and content types that target different pain points at different funnel stages. A good B2B content marketing strategy allows you to reach various individuals with other priorities in the same company.

While the project manager could be interested in a project management tool to gain efficiency, the IT manager may be concerned about integration and security issues. The purchasing manager, on the other hand, has a budget to keep and several software requests on her table.

Your inboundcontent marketing needs to address all these concerns to close the deal. A CMI report breaks down the main goals content marketers achieved in 2020. The major objectives: educate your audience, raise brand awareness, engage your audience, and create credibility and trust. Lead generation and lead nurturing were also among the top-ranking achievements.  

Using these goals, you can select representative KPIs and start monitoring and benchmarking the relevant website metrics.  

Which B2B websitemetrics should you focus on and why?

1. Unique Visitors 

Unique visitors show the number of people who visit your site during a set period. Within that defined time, each visitor is counted only once. 

The metric is useful in many ways. It helps you:

• Gauge growth in new visitor numbers
• Measure a brand’s reach
• Quantify the impact of a campaign
• Assess the exposure of a piece of content

It also functions as a starting point to dig deeper into user engagement metrics. You want to inspect how visitors behave, how they interact with your site, how many pages they view, and how much time they spend. The unique visitorsmetric lets you identify the percentage of new visitors compared to the number of returning visitors.

A high number of unique visitors shows that you are attracting a large number of users. This is a good sign for your marketing, but is it good enough to expand your market share? That’s where B2B industry benchmarks can help.

Top 10 worldwide B2B websites (by market share)

A look at the stats quickly helps you understand just how industry-specific the metric is. The ten top positions are occupied by either tracking or real-estate-related sites. Visitor intention and behavior here are different from most other industries. Visitors return frequently to get the latest updates, so it makes sense the average monthly visits are higher.

When we compare sectors, the differences between industries become even more evident. 

Below are average unique visitors for Business and Consumer Services sites broken down by sectors across key markets: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan.

2. Pages/Visits

Now you know the number of new visitors, which is a suggestive measure of marketing success. But how interested are they? The average pages per visit (Pages/Visits) metric is a step toward understanding the level of visitor engagement. This metric displays how many pages a visitor views on average in one day. 

This metric is critical when assessing your content marketing. You don’t expect your visitors to convert right away. On the contrary, your site is designed for them to spend time, consume content, get educated, and engage. Your goal is for visitors to view at least two pages, but preferably more. 

A low number of Pages/Visits can indicate that:

• There is a mismatch between visitor expectations and site content
• You are not attracting the right users
• Navigation to the next step is not clear
• The content is not engaging or compelling
• Your site has technical issues

What is a good Pages/Visits ratio?

An exceptionally high number of pages visited in a short time can also be a warning sign. People are zapping through your site in search of something they can’t find. They could also be confused about how to get where they want to go.

To gauge what’s a good number, you’ll want to benchmark against the average in your industry sector.