Mixpanel, Inc. released its first Product Benchmarking Report to determine quantitative benchmark metrics for key moments in the user’s web and mobile journey while seeking to answer the question often asked by marketers and developers, “what’s the best performance standard for our industry?” The findings challenge many commonly held product performance benchmarks while providing companies with new insights to improve their user experience.
Mixpanel analyzed billions of anonymous data points to find industry-specific benchmarks in four key areas of product health: usage and user growth, retention, engagement and conversion. The company then narrowed focus to four popular industries for product innovation, including Media and Entertainment, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Financial Services, and E-commerce and Retail.
Mixpanel 2017 Product Benchmarking report findings:
- Media & Entertainment: More people are watching videos, playing games and listening to music on their phones on the weekends, not the weekdays.
- SaaS: SaaS apps, which are used mostly for work, see their highest usage rates early in the week but they steadily decline as the work week progresses. By Friday, most people don’t use SaaS apps at all.
- Financial Services: While web engagement falls off toward end of the week, mobile engagement is steady throughout the week. One notable outlier: Financial Services companies often see a 21% increase in activity on Sunday because users are often conducting trades and making payments.
- E-commerce: Interestingly, E-commerce companies consistently see higher mobile and web engagement numbers during the workweek and not on weekends, with most activity taking place Monday through Thursday.
- Stickiness: The “elite standard” for “Stickiness” is 25%, though 20% is considered good. The average stickiness: Finance (24.4%); SaaS (28.7%); E-Commerce (22.1%); Media & Entertainment (26.1%).
- Average User Growth: Mixpanel found that “elite user growth” for popular verticals was Finance (24.4%); SaaS (28.7%); E-Commerce (22.1%); Media & Entertainment (26.1%).
- Engagement: While web engagement falls off toward end of the week, mobile engagement is steady throughout the week. Of note:
- E-Commerce products see their highest engagement rates during the workweek (not the weekend)
- SaaS apps are rarely used on weekends
- Media and Entertainment products see the least decline overall and marketers should not punt on weekend campaigns and activities.
- Financial Services companies often see a 21% increase in activity on Sunday because users are often conducting trades and making payments.
- Conversion: There is no elite “conversion” metric that developers should aim to achieve because rates vary between industries. At 2 weeks conversion was: Finance (84%); SaaS (87%); E-Commerce 94%); Media & Entertainment (99%). If your company is below these figures, you’re underperforming.
The Report also shares valuable insights product teams can use to benchmark themselves against their respective industries. For example, the “elite standard for stickiness” among all verticals is 25%, though 20% is considered good. Similarly, “elite standard for retention” is also 25%, though the bar is higher for SaaS and
E-commerce at closer to 33%.
“We created the Product Benchmark Report to answer the most common question product managers, marketers and analysts ask today, ‘How do we compare to others in our industry?’” said Jessica Wang, Head of Product Marketing at Mixpanel. “It clearly shows that performance varies from industry to industry and now anyone can confidently set-up performance goals and metrics using the findings highlighted in the Report.”
Mixpanel conducted the analysis over a 60 day period during the months of July and August. The team looked at 50 billion mobile and web events conducted on the Mixpanel platform conducted by 1.3 billion unique users from 572 products using Mixpanel across the world.