foonsespits
New Member
(The article is quoted from some forum, as i've seen similar content posting on different places, i'm not sure who's the original writer. However, it is really a good one i'd love to share with you.)
Conducting a competitive analysis is an important part of the job if you're a usability engineer or information architect. A good competitive analysis not only produces usability metrics but also aids decision makers in their strategic goal-setting and planning. Done right, a good competitive analysis can steer a Web development project in the right direction.
Let's start with the basics.
The first thing to realize is that a Web site competitive analysis is usually performed for a team of business specialists who know nothing about design, usability, or information architecture. They don't have a clue about labeling systems, search ergonomics, or affordance. All they want to know is what the competition is doing and how they can do it better. Obviously, your expertise is in usability and user experience design, so you'll be evaluating sites along the lines of your domain expertise, but the data you gather must always point toward making a smart business decision.
Your audience will also expect a presentation and a written report. The presentation can knock the tops off the mountains, but the report better have some detail in it. They expect your findings to be well organized, moving from executive summary to appendixes loaded with relevant details.
The end result of your analysis is a decision -- a business decision that affects the rollout of design and development.
Next we'll discuss who and what you'll be analyzing.
Who's the competition?
It's very likely that you'll be given a list of competitors. Every company that has a handle on their market space knows who the competition is. And just about every company has a list of companies on their "target list" -- that special subset of companies that they want to beat soundly in the marketplace.
Regardless, the list you get will likely be incomplete. That's because the people giving you the list will have their "business" hat on, not their "functionality" hat on. For example, if the company you're doing the analysis for is in the freight cargo business, you're likely to get a list of other sites or portals belonging to companies in the same business. However, it might be smart to add sites like travelocity.com, which specializes in consumer travel, because their site contains functionality that might be universal to all transportation applications (i.e., departure and destination points are common to freight trucks and airline customers).
Along with a list of competitors, you'll likely get a list of items that they want you to focus on, or at least, a list of items they want to do better than the competition. For example, the team might be fixated on the number of content items deployed on their own site. If Competitor X has 500 content items, they'll want to know how many content items Competitor Y and Competitor Z have. The subtext will be, "How fast can we have more content items?"
Resist any impulses to follow subtexts at this point. To follow our example, you might dig deeper and find out that those 500 content items deployed on Competitor X's site are outdated, badly written, and generally not useful to their audience.
What to analyze
Now that you have a list of competitors, you need to draw up a list of items to analyze when you visit their sites. I've developed a categorized list of items over the years, which are
Conducting a competitive analysis is an important part of the job if you're a usability engineer or information architect. A good competitive analysis not only produces usability metrics but also aids decision makers in their strategic goal-setting and planning. Done right, a good competitive analysis can steer a Web development project in the right direction.
Let's start with the basics.
The first thing to realize is that a Web site competitive analysis is usually performed for a team of business specialists who know nothing about design, usability, or information architecture. They don't have a clue about labeling systems, search ergonomics, or affordance. All they want to know is what the competition is doing and how they can do it better. Obviously, your expertise is in usability and user experience design, so you'll be evaluating sites along the lines of your domain expertise, but the data you gather must always point toward making a smart business decision.
Your audience will also expect a presentation and a written report. The presentation can knock the tops off the mountains, but the report better have some detail in it. They expect your findings to be well organized, moving from executive summary to appendixes loaded with relevant details.
The end result of your analysis is a decision -- a business decision that affects the rollout of design and development.
Next we'll discuss who and what you'll be analyzing.
Who's the competition?
It's very likely that you'll be given a list of competitors. Every company that has a handle on their market space knows who the competition is. And just about every company has a list of companies on their "target list" -- that special subset of companies that they want to beat soundly in the marketplace.
Regardless, the list you get will likely be incomplete. That's because the people giving you the list will have their "business" hat on, not their "functionality" hat on. For example, if the company you're doing the analysis for is in the freight cargo business, you're likely to get a list of other sites or portals belonging to companies in the same business. However, it might be smart to add sites like travelocity.com, which specializes in consumer travel, because their site contains functionality that might be universal to all transportation applications (i.e., departure and destination points are common to freight trucks and airline customers).
Along with a list of competitors, you'll likely get a list of items that they want you to focus on, or at least, a list of items they want to do better than the competition. For example, the team might be fixated on the number of content items deployed on their own site. If Competitor X has 500 content items, they'll want to know how many content items Competitor Y and Competitor Z have. The subtext will be, "How fast can we have more content items?"
Resist any impulses to follow subtexts at this point. To follow our example, you might dig deeper and find out that those 500 content items deployed on Competitor X's site are outdated, badly written, and generally not useful to their audience.
What to analyze
Now that you have a list of competitors, you need to draw up a list of items to analyze when you visit their sites. I've developed a categorized list of items over the years, which are