Competitive Analysis Method
A competitive analysis is a formal exploration of the companies or organizations in a given industry sector or market niche, typically those that are competing with your company’s products or services for market share. Competitive analysis can help you identify opportunities, gaps in other services, and potential design patterns to adopt or avoid.
In most cases, you will identify competitors in collaboration with your client or project sponsor. The analysis may be an in-depth exploration of the top five competitors, or a larger survey of a greater number of competitors (typically with less depth in the analysis). In some instances, the client will have identified the target competitors for you.
Preparation
Competitive Analysis is often more effective when it is informed by these complementary methods.
-
Task Analysis
Observe users in action to understand how they perform tasks to achieve goals
-
Contextual Interviewing
Observation of users performing tasks in their own environment
-
User Interviewing
Understand the tasks and motivations of the user group for whom you are designing
Steps
- Identify a list of services that would be either direct or related competitors to your service. Pare the list down to four or five.
- Establish which criteria or heuristics you will use to evaluate each competing service.
- Break down the analysis of each selected competitor into specific focal areas for evaluation. For example, how relevant are search results?
- Use a spreadsheet to capture the evaluation and determine how the targeted services and agencies perform based on the identified heuristics.
- Present the analysis, which should showcase areas of opportunities that you can take advantage of and design patterns you might adopt or avoid.
Outcomes
Competitive Analysis typically produces insight and solutions focused on these areas:
-
Content Quality Standard
Criteria used to judge the level of content quality.
Next Steps
References
Competitive Analysis Method details last edited on 2021-02-01