The 5 Best Practices for Competitor Website Analysis
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In order to anticipate trends and ensure that your website stands out from the competition within its industry, doing a Competitor Website Analysis is a crucial aspect of any user experience (UX) design plan. In addition, it is always beneficial to learn how your website may be enhanced and any flaws it may have so they can be fixed.
Access to comprehensive information about one’s rivals, made possible by the internet, may have both positive and negative effects on one’s ability to compete successfully. Companies competing in the same industry may have similar offerings and levels of customer care and support. You need to use all the tools for competitive analysis at your disposal if you want to maintain your competitive edge.
You won’t go very far if you focus just on growing your company, without taking into account the alternatives out there.
Let’s look at the value of a Competitor Website Analysis and the five stages that will get you started.
To answer the question, “Why is a Competitive Analysis Necessary?”
In today’s global market, survival requires a level of competitiveness that few can match. The more clients you see second-guessing your offerings and opting for a rival instead, the more urgent this becomes. Conversion rates may be improved by studying what other businesses are doing successfully and where you fall short.
If you want to succeed and make money, you need to avoid the trap of superficiality set by flashy websites and language. Pick indicators that will let you keep up with the competition. Creating a culture where decisions are based on data is facilitated by this.
A Competitor Website Analysis may aid you in a number of ways:
Realize who you’re trying to reach.
Find issues that you may have overlooked
Analyze your target market’s positive and negative reactions to different aspects of your brand’s identity.
Spot unfilled niches and emerging markets.
To help you get the most of your rival website research, we’ve compiled five tips.
1- Know Who You Are Up Against
To do a Competitor Website Analysis, you must first identify your rivals. Do you have an idea of who you’ll be up against? Do a thorough analysis of the market nevertheless. Assumptions made before doing a thorough investigation of the competition might skew the results.
Ask yourself these questions to figure out whether a company is a rival:
Have we both been looking for the same thing?
Do we want to reach the same people with our efforts?
Is their website upkeep for online stores above reproach?
Have they thought out how they would promote their business and how their clients will interact with them?
Do your shops all seem to be in the same places?
If the answers to most of these questions are “yes,” then that company is most certainly your competition. After that, you need to take a look at how your internet presence stacks up against the competition. After that, you may examine your rivals with the help of a competitor analysis worksheet. It’s a handy tool for both doing the analysis and seeing the outcomes graphically. Put your sites in order using a heat map. In order to better visualize your site’s performance, the cells will change color based on the value.
2- Analyze Their Site Stats in your Competitor Website Analysis
In what volume are your rivals’ websites being viewed? An in-depth study of your backlink profile and search engine optimization efforts will show you how you stack up against the competition.
Search engine optimization (SEO) competitor analysis involves looking at how well an opponent does in organic search results. With the help of marketing automation solutions, you may evaluate your success relative to that of your rivals.
You may gauge how you compare to the competition by looking at these metrics:
Penalties by Google
Credibility in the Domain
Keywords‘ Typical First-Page Rankings
Trends in organic keyword search rankings and their monetary value
Backlinks
Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that get your site to the top of both Google and Bing results pages
This report will help you make informed choices regarding your internet strategy. You may avoid Google penalties yourself, for instance, if you learn that your rivals have experienced them. When you know which keywords your rival is doing well with, you can adjust your approach, produce content that is more compelling to your target audience, and ultimately outrank them.
The information may be quite helpful when making new pieces of writing. Let’s say your company operates a call center. To be successful, you need to rank well for important keywords (such “telephony” or “cloud call center”). If you want to outrank the competition, you need to create fresh material that deals with the same themes and keywords.
3- Figure out what problems your UX design has to solve
Every element of user experience design is a tool for meeting a specific need identified with your target audience. Find out what your visitors need and evaluate your site accordingly. Creating client personas is a great place to begin.
Ideal customer personas may be crafted using information about your existing consumers and the market at large. Ascertaining their requirements becomes possible thereafter. If you offer cosmetics, for instance, a buyer may want to see it on a variety of skin tones before making a purchase. They may have a better time using the site if they are presented with many photos featuring various models rather than just one.
You may learn which of these demands and pain areas are being met by rivals and, more crucially, which aren’t by visiting their websites. In the event that there are unmet demands in the market that your rivals have neglected to answer, you have a fantastic business opportunity.
4- Learn from the experiences of your competitors’ best customers
Consumers in need of your product or service should drive your research. Feedback from your rivals’ customers may teach you how to enhance your own site in the same way that feedback from your own customers teaches you how to improve your own site.
You may gauge how well you do at providing a positive experience for customers by contrasting their thoughts with your own. Take the time to conduct customer surveys to get insight into your service standards, client retention rates, leadership abilities, and how your brand is seen by the general public.
Starting from that point, investigate the following aspects of your rivals:
Why were people buying from them?
Which of their qualities draws the greatest praise?
With what do they seem to be struggling the most?
How do they handle concerns from customers?
What do you think consumers would want you to improve?
In business, no one is better familiar with their clients than the sales and customer success teams. What firms have you lost or gained business from, and why? This is information your team should know. They are essential for learning about the preferences of current and potential clients. It’s probable that they’ve had conversations with clients regarding rival businesses; inquire as to consumer feedback.
In addition, you need to test the level of competition expertise among your sales staff. Once you realize your team may not know as much about the competition as you had thought, it’s time to start training them. A more extensive competitive sales enablement program may be established if necessary. In order to increase your team’s ability to compete, you may choose to invest in training sessions and seminars.
5- Compare Your Website to the Rivals
Apply what you’ve learned to analyze how your site stacks up against the competition and fix any problems you find. Keeping your site up-to-date and improved is recommended whether or not there are any big problems or bugs.
Mobile optimization is an important factor to take into account for a Competitor Website Analysis. It’s very uncommon for websites to look and function well on a desktop or laptop computer, but to be completely unusable on a mobile device. About two-thirds of all Black Friday purchases were made on mobile devices in 2016. If your site isn’t optimized for this audience, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
Consider the following while gauging your competitor:
Time to load on average
Time lost per year due to maintenance and repairs
Convenient payment processing
Capability of the Search Engine
Next, evaluate how well you’re dealing with customers. Without good service, even the most aesthetically pleasing website is useless. If your website offers live chat, this is very crucial. It can be worthwhile to invest in SEO companies that will help you discover where your performance in this area is lacking. Companies like these may help you provide superior service to your customers, giving you an edge over rival businesses.
Rather than just changing your website and UX design, you should utilize your Competitor Website Analysis to craft a plan that makes the most of your site’s strengths while compensating for its faults.
