Is it you, or the market?

There is a question that comes up constantly in ecommerce meetings. Conversion is down 12%. CPMs are up. ROAS softened. And within five minutes, everyone has a theory.

Maybe traffic quality got worse. Maybe the new landing page isn't working. Maybe competitors are spending more. Maybe consumers are simply buying less this week.

The problem is that most ecommerce analytics can tell you exactly what happened to your business. They can't tell you whether it happened to everyone else too — and that distinction can completely change what you do next.

That's why we built Market Pulse. It is probably the RetentionX screen I've personally wanted for the longest time.

Imagine your conversion rate dropped from 2.0% to 1.7%. On its own, that looks bad. But there are two very different scenarios.

If your industry stayed at 2.0%, something probably changed inside your business. If your entire industry dropped to 1.6%, your relative performance may actually have improved. Same number. Completely different diagnosis.

Market Pulse puts that context directly next to your own performance. You can see your Demand Index, conversion rate, AOV, ad spend, CPM, CPC, blended ROAS and promotional activity against brands operating in your category.

And instead of only showing an average, we show where you actually rank. Are you top 20%? Around the median? Bottom third? That immediately changes the conversation.

Maybe everyone is obsessing over improving AOV while you're already top 10% in your category. Meanwhile, conversion is bottom 30%. Now you know where I'd spend the next week.

Benchmarks aren't interesting because they tell you whether you're “good.” They're interesting because they tell you what deserves your attention.

The second question is bigger: what's happening in ecommerce right now? This is where Market Pulse becomes much more than benchmarking.

Switch over to the market view and you can see demand, conversion, AOV, promotional intensity, ad spend, CPM, CPC and blended ROAS moving across the market and by industry. And sometimes the combinations are far more interesting than the individual numbers.

Imagine demand in your category is falling while ad spend is rising. More money is chasing less demand. I'd want to know that before blaming my performance team for deteriorating efficiency.

Or maybe CPMs are falling, demand is rising and ROAS across the category is improving. That might be a very different moment to push harder.

You can see these movements across Apparel & Fashion, Beauty & Cosmetics, Food & Beverage, Health & Wellness, Supplements and other categories, over yesterday, the last seven days or the last 28 days.

So instead of asking other founders “Are you seeing this too?”, you can actually see it.

We also map categories based on two things: how much demand exists, and how efficiently that demand is being captured. That creates four very different market environments.

High demand + high efficiency is an obvious opportunity. High demand + weak efficiency means consumers are there, but competition may be getting expensive. Low demand + high efficiency can still be attractive if you're disciplined. Low demand + weak efficiency is when I'd start asking harder questions before increasing spend.

It's a simple chart. But it gives you something most dashboards don't: context for how aggressive you should be.

We also show how channel mix is moving between platforms like Meta and Google, so you can see how brands in your category are allocating spend as the environment changes.

Not because you should copy them, but because knowing what the market is doing makes your own decisions much more informed.

I don't want teams using benchmarks as another dashboard they check once a month. I want it open during the weekly operating meeting.

For years, brands have had incredible visibility into themselves and surprisingly little visibility into the environment they're competing in. We wanted to fix that.

There are really only three questions I want Market Pulse to answer:

If you can answer all three, a lot of ecommerce decisions become easier. You know when a red number is actually a company problem. You know when the market is moving against everyone. And you can see opportunities before they become obvious in your own numbers.

That's Market Pulse. It's now live inside RetentionX. And if I were running an ecommerce brand, it would probably be the first screen I'd open before our weekly growth meeting.

If you want to see your own brand benchmarked against the market, book a RetentionX demo. We'll pull up Market Pulse and show you exactly where you stand.