Competitive analysis

Author: Shiran Hirshberg | Last edit: June 20, 2024

What is competitive analysis and why is it important?

Competitive analysis helps you understand your competitors better. It shows what they're good at and where they're weak. This helps you find ways to grow your own business. By studying your competitors, you can make smarter decisions about how to run your business. It's important to keep an eye on your competition at every stage of your business. This way, you can always offer the best products or services to your customers.

From a UX design perspective, conducting a competitive analysis helps us better understand our competitors' value propositions and marketing strategy. It also allows us to differentiate ourselves by delivering another (hopefully better) solution. Competitive analysis provides valuable insights into a product, including its main features, target audience (such as small/medium-sized companies or enterprises), and user personas. It can be broad, covering overall product information, or focused on specific features.

How to Conduct Competitive Analysis

To conduct a competitive analysis effectively, start by identifying your competitors, both direct and indirect:
• Direct competitors offer similar products or services to the same target market
• Indirect competitors may offer different products or services but target the same customer need

→ Once you've identified your competitors, gather information about their products or services such as target audience, features, pricing. You can take a look here for example (⚠️ internal use only). 

→ Next, analyze the data using techniques like SWOT analysis to identify your competitors' strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In case you want to conduct competitive analysis per feature, you can see an example of it here (⚠️ internal use only).

I prefer using sticky notes on screenshots to highlight interesting features and UI solutions, unique to each competitor. I also note down basic feature use cases that we should consider following, along with any open questions I may have.

Here's how the sticky notes are used in practice:

→ Finally, use these insights to develop differentiation strategies, improve your own product or feature, refine your marketing strategy to have a unique voice, and identify new opportunities for your product or feature. It's important to regularly update your competitive analysis to stay ahead of the competition and adapt to changes in the market.

Get in Touch!

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