Benchmarking Your Solutions

What is benchmarking? Benchmarking whether it be in business or sport, is a process of comparing yourself with your competitors. A champion swimmer in the making will only know how far they need to keep progressing, by looking at the best swimmers whom they are competing against.

The importance of benchmarking in business is undeniable. In business, it is vital to be benchmarking and to assess your current situation against your competitors periodically. That is because, to succeed in business, just like in sport, you need to be able to match or exceed the best in your industry. Creating a business benchmark will give you a specific goal and something for your brand something to strive toward. You will need to create benchmarking solutions that will leave you with better practices and procedures. You will possibly need to adopt new systems, that will work better than your existing ones.

Often Businesses make a Fundamental Mistake.

They judge their performance, based on previous performances within the same company. While this inward self-assessment can be helpful, it can lead to complacency, which is why it is important to also take outward assessment into consideration and conduct benchmarking. Companies should be looking at their strongest competitors and aiming to surpass them. This is why benchmarking plays a crucial role, as comparisons between your competitors can help you identify gaps in your operations, and reveal specific weaknesses that need improving.

In the digital world, potential clients often compare your offering, with what a competing brand or website is offering, which is why it’s important to benchmark online. Digital benchmarking, or benchmarking online allows you to view things from a customer’s perspective. It provides you with insight on where things need improving, and it also gives you ideas about many aspects including design, user experience, content or propositions. If you own or operate a website, benchmarking is highly recommended!

If you are serious about optimizing your opportunities from your digital channels, if you want to be the best in your industry and get the most from your online media, benchmarking your website is essential. Digital benchmarking can stipulate a baseline, to evaluate marketing efficacy against your competition.

How Often Should You Benchmark Your Business?

Digital benchmarking is crucial when you are updating a website or launching a brand new site for the first time. However, it can also prove even more beneficial to conduct benchmarking more frequently, to measure your competition and discover how their marketing changes over time. If you choose not to practice benchmarking for your website, you may find your brand falling behind the competition.

If done regularly, digital benchmarking can help keep up with continually changing trends and companies who can identify opportunities within their market, and are fast to adapt, can often capitalize on those opportunities afforded to them by having effective online communication and proposition.

Some Important Tips for Benchmarking.

If you’re going to conduct benchmarking, look outside your industry. Inspiration can come from anywhere, so it is important to not focus solely on your competition for great ideas. You cannot surpass your competitors if you are only looking to them for inspiration. Make sure you implement strategic benchmarking for your brand.

There are many benchmarking tools and processes which you can implement, however online is by far the easiest way to start benchmarking. If you have a website, benchmarking online allows you to you can check out your competition’s website design and functionality and see how it compares with your website in its current state. Online benchmarking can also help you to identify areas on your site that perhaps need improvement, to bring it up, or even better, surpass the standard of other players in your industry and create benchmarking solutions. Feedback from your competitor’s customers can be collected on social media pages, chat sites or forums, where people discuss their favourite brands and letting others know what makes them either good or bad.

After doing some of your own research, it would be wise to consult with experts in the UX field  to assist with digital benchmarking solutions. By reaching out to UX experts, you will be able to obtain critical insights which are specifically designed to increase your website current position in the marketplace.

TestMate can help you gather comprehensive benchmarking data, organise and analyse all of the relevant information, while not getting bogged down with systems or processes that should not be replicated. Extensive and strategic digital benchmarking will make it impossible not to come up with new ideas and construct new and improved systems. When done right the benchmarking process, builds and multiplies ideas and concepts, that any one person could produce. It enables the chance to cooperatively syndicate a wide variety of innovative concepts, and turn them into positive results.