Competitive Analysis for your online business

Competitive analysis: By analyzing your competition and then monitoring them on an ongoing basis, you’ll get to know their behavior, enabling you to anticipate their actions and stay one step ahead.

Competitor analysis will enable customers to choose you over your competitors.

Competitor Research and its importance

Competitor research provides your business with the ability to quickly identify trends in the industry and adapt to campaigns or strategies by competitor.

7 Steps for Competitive analysis

1. Categorize your competitor

2. Examine your competitor's website & customer experience.

3. Market positioning of your competitor.

4. Take a peek at pricing

5. Reviews about product\experience

6. Review social media

7. Software and online tools

1. Categorize your competitors

Start by identifying your competitors in your industry, but Google and Amazon will likely be where you do most of your legwork. Start with a simple search for your business name, product ideas and business idea. You will find the different social media channels, organizations and online communities.

Categorize your competitors into various levels, from direct competitors to businesses that don’t currently compete with you. To get more information about your competitor’s online sources provides valuable data, Hoovers, Ahrefs, Keyword Spy, Alexa.

Types of competitors in your industry

Primary Competitor: These are your direct competitors, which mean they’re either targeting the same audience or have a similar product or both.

Secondary Competitor: These competitors may offer a high- or low-end version of your product often referred to Like for like products, or sell something similar to a different set of target audience

Tertiary Competitor: Defined as businesses that are related to yours, it is also a great source when you are looking to expand your product resources. These could be related products and services that are selling at its best or it’s currently in trend; tertiary competitors can be leads for new business that could be beneficial in future.

2. Examine your competitor's website & Customer experience.

The next step is to analyze your competitor’s websites,Carefully access the following:

• Product display in form of photography, all the information in the product landing page, how convincing is the product image and details about the product, it’s worthwhile to note what more can be added and what details are missing in the landing page.

• CTA or call to action, where is this placed in the customer’s online journey.If the website has pop up’s for newsletter sign up and how engaging is it to you and would you sign up for similar sign ups, this is one great way for building the email database and lead generation which can be used for lead nurturing in future.

• Placement of Social icons on the website and how convincing is the placement for you to click and check their social media pages?

• The Blog post section and the topics on blog post and how effectively do they convey information?

• Mobile ready - Does your competitor have a mobile ready\compatible website?

• Contact us - The‘contact us’ section and if it’s 24\7, modes like email, online live chat, call us options, is the normal response time predefined on the page?

• Abandoned shopping cart feature is present on their website? If present what is frequency that they contact in case of an abandoned shopping cart with products in it?

• Marketing banners and the information they try and communicate this provides a heads up to current activity of your competitor and offers they are running.

As a business owner, the above are few of the pointers that needs your attention, every website marketing strategy is unique depending on what they are trying to sell and how they are reaching out to their potential customer, it’s important for a business owner to have dynamic out of the box thinking which will lead to new ideas to tackle competition.

3. Market positioning of your competitor

What positioning strategy are your competitors following? It helps you identify the demand and the expectations. Check for the below information on your competitor web presence

• Is it the competitive pricing or the experience that customers are looking for?

• How F&B - features and benefits page of product highlighted?

• Any unique factor that your competitor is offering?

• It’s good to sign up for their newsletter to stay updated about offers etc.

• Follow their blog page and subscribe if required, it helps in keeping you updated about the content they publish and the frequency the new blogs are posted.

• Monitor their social media accounts to get a understanding about what customers speak of them.

• Register an account and add products to the basket, monitor their frequency of abandoned cart updates or emails

4. Take a peek at pricing

• Check how your competitors have priced their products. It provides an insight of what your target customers are willing to pay and the price that works for a certain product.

• Your audience might want\willing to pay additional cost which will ensure faster and safe shipping of their product; this will in turn give a satisfactory experience on your website.

5. Reviews - Product and experience

Set aside time for reviews about your competitor website experience the customer journey and all the available product reviews, it gives great insight of the good experience for the customers and the areas of improvement.

6. Review the social media

• Review the social media channels and analyze the below.

• Your competitor overall social media presence across all channels is their social media presence like overall?

• Prominent social platform your competitor uses to speak to their audience?

• The frequency of social media interactions, in form of post, images, gifs, videos, offers, contest, and how their average audience engagement with the different formats of posts on social media?

• The percentage of post that speaks about the business – product, social awareness or community message etc.

7. Software and tools online

• Online marketing software’s that offers a variety of information about how your and competitors position on social media channels.

• Google Alerts will provide you updates on the keywords you choose about your competitors and your industry

• Information about how long your competitor website was online, contact and domain information and other related details are available online via different portals like WHOis.net.

• The career page on your competitor website gives information on the job roles available that in turn relates to current health of the competitor and future plans.

Conclusion

Monitoring your competition does not mean a complete spy work on the online presence, but it provides new ideas and what can be done and what should not be done, the ultimate goal is to achieve the best customer journey.