Usabilla Benchmarking provides a quick and easy overview of your Usabilla for Websites feedback results versus the Usabilla feedback form results of different industries, adding the context to the feedback results that you receive. In this article you will find some best practices that help you in utilizing Usabilla Benchmarking.
1. Technical information
One of the useful facets of Usabilla Benchmarking is that it allows you to see technical data of users that provide feedback. To continuously evaluate your own online platform, the technical information teaches you which browsers, operating systems and devices your users use compared to other website's users. Through Benchmarking you can for instance see whether you gain significantly more or significantly less feedback through a certain operating system. This can indicate a need for further research into your users' behavior. 
2. Use the Benchmarking data in your website's context
While Usabilla Benchmarking is great for obtaining a high-level overview of your feedback versus your industry's feedback, there are many factors that may explain why your users rate you the way they do. If you operate in a very conservative industry, or an industry in which users normally provide lower ratings, comparing yourself to innovative industries may indicate your company is not performing very well. However, this comparison does not necessarily mean that you are not on the right track. Difference in target audience, industry, culture and many more factors may explain different feedback results.
3. Compare various industries
Naturally industries that are big online players provide interesting insights from more mature websites. For instance look at the travel industry, one of the first to take their business online, can provide insights into the feedback collection and usage of different devices for more mature website. On the other hand, industries that are less suitable for online business, are often in an earlier phase of rolling out their feedback collection strategies. Depending on your own industry and company, it may be interesting to compare yourself to different industries, to gain a high-level overview of where your company is at.
4. Use the emotional trendline with care
The emotional trendline element in the Benchmarking section can help you to gain insights into your performance versus the industry's performance overtime. However, always keep in mind that Usabilla clients are entirely free to formulate the question the user answers. The emotional rating question can for instance range from "How do you rate our website?" to "What do you think of this specific website element?". These nuances, together with the endless possibilities Usabilla clients have to choose between stars, smileys or their custom icons for these rating questions, influence the given rating scores.
The emotional trendline can therefore best be used to see industry changes in relation to your own changes over time.
5. Use Benchmarking for gaining quick and easy insights
While the smart algorithm behind Usabilla Benchmarking ensures that the shown data is reliable and representative, User Feedback Collection only paints a part of the picture. Many factors influence the feedback users provide on certain websites, which entails that Usabilla Benchmarking results are high-level and not meant for scientific research. Usabilla Benchmarking is a great tool to obtain an idea of where you are placed in the market very quickly.