Organizations need digital metrics to track the success of their digital strategy. These metrics articulate intended outcomes and provide a yardstick for measuring progress.  Many organizations use digital success metrics to compare themselves against their peers. But outperforming – or underperforming – these metrics aren’t the end goal. The real value of benchmarks lies in understanding them in context of industry dynamics, and use them to diagnose underlying issues in the organization.

To use digital success metrics benchmarks effectively, digital leaders should:

  • Understand why target metrics vary by industry. Digital maturity, customer intent, expectations, and product complexity differ widely across various industries. For example, strong digital sales targets in retail (digital sales target as a proportion of overall sales at 35.2%) as compared to other sectors reflect structural differences in buying behavior. Digital leaders must look beyond the numbers to understand what drives these variations and whether differences reflect strengths, weaknesses, or simply industry realities.
  • Use benchmarks to set realistic goals. Ambitious targets may sound impressive, but they quickly lose credibility if they are unachievable. For example, even a digital-first organization like Netflix only achieved approximately 29% growth in MAU over seven months from November 2024 to May 2025, so if your organization has a target growth higher than that, you might have to re-evaluate. Benchmark data helps digital leaders recalibrate expectations, and use external performance as an anchor when setting goals.
  • Leverage benchmark data to uncover opportunities. When an organization’s digital metrics fall below the industry benchmark, digital leaders should dig deeper into the underlying customer journeys, friction points, or product-specific barriers that hinder performance. Conversely, digital success benchmarks rarely capture the quality of customer experience or whether evolving customer expectations are met. Digital leaders should avoid complacency and instead use benchmarks as a prompt to continually elevate experiences and create differentiated value.

My latest report outlines target digital success benchmarks for three industries – manufacturing and production, retail and wholesale, and financial services and insurance – across three core metrics: digital sales, conversion rate, and growth in monthly active users (MAUs). Forrester clients can access the full report, and request a guidance session with me to learn more.