Some of the best lessons I have learned about my customers’ businesses has come from their competition. Just browsing the sites of their competitors has given me insight into my customers’ industry, strengths and weaknesses, and business model. The competitor websites gave me inspiration to find recommended strategies and ways to help them innovate ahead of their competition. Basically, your competition can help provide you with a template to build upon. This is especially true if you are a small business trying to grow. So, in this post, I’m going to talk a little about improving your online strategy by learning from your competition.

Think about it, let’s say you are a computer retailer just getting started online. You can get a master class in online computer retail by visiting larger retailers like CompUSA or Dell.com. The same is true across most industries. You can learn a lot from your competition. You just have to recognize that you do have competition. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard small business owners claim they have no competition, but that is another subject. You do have competition and you can learn a lot from them.

When I develop websites for small to medium sized businesses I use their competition as a starting block. I have 5 basic steps that I use to analyze their competition. Since I deal with a lot of customers on tight budgets, I generally try to go through my list quickly. You can take these steps and make them as simple or complex as you like. To get the most out of this exercise you should repeat the analysis periodically to make sure you are keeping up with your competition.

1. Search for your competition by searching for various search terms:

• Industry (personal computers)
• Product/Service (laptops, computer repair)
• Customer (cheap computers, best computer for games)
• Local (jacksonville computer store)

2. Make a list of top sites found in search.

3. Do research on the sites on you list by comparing them on analytics sites:

• Alexa.com
• Compete.com
• Quantcast.com

4. Analyze competitor sites:

• Design
• Navigation
• Functionality
• Strategy and Goals

5. Find patterns repeated from site to site and add to your online strategy.

Search for Your Competition

So, finding your competition is the first step to a real world education in online success. As a starting point, you can do a search on keywords related to your industry. Then try searching for the service or products you provide. Think about keywords someone may type in a search engine to try and find your business. If you are a local provider, don’t for get to add your city name to your search phrase to also find local competitors.

Make a List of Your Competition

Make a list of the sites you are finding. I use a basic spreadsheet to record the information I find and to record the results of my analysis. In the end, I have a comparison grid that I can use to identify what competitors I should concentrate my efforts on.

Do Research on Your Competition

Do some research on these sites by comparing them on analytics sites like Alexa.com, Compete.com, or Quantcast.com. If you can’t find statistics on the sites on your list don’t worry, this is not scientific research, just a means of getting ideas for improvements to your site. Statistics on your competitors will help you identify what sites may be successful, but these sites don’t always paint an accurate picture, so don’t take them as absolutely definitive.

Analyze Your Competition

Once you have identified your competition and done a little research on them, visit their sites. Take note of the design, how they use color, white space, images, the layout of text. How do they write their copy. Does their text sound professional, conversational, humorous, or factual? Checkout their site map. What do they provide for their visitors. What do you think their goal is for the site? You can get an idea of their goals by looking at the action they are trying to push visitors to take (e.g. Add to Cart, Sign Up, Buy Now…)? How simple or complex is their navigation? What kind of functionality do they provide (e.g. advance search filter, user review system)? How about their checkout process, is it easy or difficult to get through?

Identify Patterns in Your Competition

As you research and analyze these sites, you will begin to notice that certain things are repeated from site to site. The repeated items are probably things you need to try to implement on your website. You can come up with many ways to analyze competitor sites and it will all depend on how experienced you are on the web. The point is, any research you do will help you and will enlighten you to some strengths and weaknesses about your website and your offline business.

Now Don’t You Love Your Competition

The most important thing to remember is, you do have competition, your competition has something to teach you, and your competition may be watching you too. Happy hunting.

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