Tweet

How to Analyze a Competitor’s Website

Written by: Mathew Tamin

Article Overview: Competitors' websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. Here is an article on how to analyze a competitor's website. Start off by identifying the major players. A good place to do this is Yahoo’s directory. It is good to view the major players in similar fields to your own so that you have a better view of your web site as perceived by others.

How to Analyze a Competitor’s Website

Competitors' websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. Here is an article on how to analyze a competitor's website. Identifying the Leaders

Start off by identifying the major players. A good place to do this is Yahoo's directory. It is good to view the major players in similar fields to your own so that you have a better view of your web site as perceived by others. You may want to print out the directory to take a closer look. Check some of the bigger companies and find out some of the innovative approaches and new products offered.

Sites like Media Metrix 500 can tell you which companies get the most traffic, and you can learn about the relative traffic by using Alexa. It is a free add-on to your browser that ranks the traffic for each site you visit and informing you whether it is in the top 100 or top 1000 ranking. This gives you a rough idea of where your competitors are in the ranking order.

Scrutinize the Leaders

The next step is to study the top 5 or 10 competitors very closely. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at competitors' web sites and analyzing them. These are the things that you should look for:

1. Make sure you check to see what products or services competitors offer, and note anything that's different from your own offerings.

2. Look for gaps that you could fill.

3. Think about the look, feel and functionality of the competitors' web sites.

4. Check the advertising campaigns and offers they are running.

5. Look at their strengths and weaknesses, from the customer's point of view.

6. See if you can figure out their strategy.

If you are dealing with a public company then you can get detailed information from proper sources and write down the names of their key players. Then it is possible to look for any interviews, articles or speeches they might have made about relating to their web site.

Now summarize the information you have found into few sentences for each competitor, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Note down the strategies to be followed to counter your competitor's offering.

With this research, you can create or modify your marketing plan. Be sure to include how you intend to deal with competition, and what steps you think you would require getting top rankings in the search engines. On the basis of your research on your competitors' websites, you need to make a decision of either to compete with your competitor or walk out of the competition and focus on other areas.

Don't get frightened away prematurely, though - make sure you know what you are getting into before you start, and don't let big companies intimidate you. Remember that you can move faster than your competitors if you have confidence in your abilities. All you need to do is offer your customers things that they cannot find anywhere else.

Related Articles
  Thank God for Competitors and Market Research
  10 Things Franchisees Should Know About Their Competitors
  The Best Free SEO Tools
  Competitive Analysis
  Ten Actions To Take Strategic Advantage Of Business Slowdowns, From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach

Article Tags: advertising campaigns, all sorts, closer look, competitor, functionality, gaps, look feel, offerings, point of view, popularity, proper sources, rough idea, speeches, strengths and weaknesses, traffic, where your competitors, yahoo



Related Forum Posts
Re: Congress To Make eBay A Rat -- Good Idea or Bad Idea?? - Hi GT, I agree with you. Competitors can use this against each other which is not good for business
Analyze the market and competitors - How do I Analyze the market and competitors to see the best way to market my security consulting company? Thanks in advance, Diane Griffin
Re: what position to request? - Hi Michael, Great suggestion from David, or you could try something around a design consultancy, How about Website Design Consultant, Design and Development Manager, Website Support and Development Manager or maybe Internet Business Development Consultant. Ultimately whatever you are comfortable with and good luck for the future, Mal.
Re: SEO... - 1: Find the Best Keywords 2: Discover Your Competitors 3: Optimize Your Title 4: Optimize Your META Tags 5: Use Headings 6: Use Title and ALT Attributes 7: Nomenclatures 8: Create a Site Map Page 9: Include a robots.txt File 10: Install a sitemap.xml for Google MySQL/Oracle:
Re: How can I promote my site? - There are various useful techniques for promoting a website. In SEO the techniques could be "white hat" and "black hat" techniques. White hat techniques includes following techniques to promote website as per the search engine rules. - Search Engine Friendly Tags - Website submission to Search Engines - Website Submission to Social Sites (Like twitter, Facebook) - Articles Promotion & Press Release Promotion - Quality Directories promotion - Contribution to Blogs, Forums Black hat techniques can reduce website strength in the search engine and can treat site as spam that could be following. - Keywords Stuffing. - Hidden Links - Maximum Links of unknown sites.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Importance of Master Data Management (MDM)

How to Ask for a Flexible Work Arrangement

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.