UX Competitive Analysis: Win by Learning from the Best!
How can you meet the industry standard or build a better digital product than the existing one? Is it just about a great idea or a strategic business plan?
Yes, these are the compulsory elements, but you need something more. Among those, UX competitive analysis is one of the key elements.
It helps you understand:
Industry-standard
Weakness and strength of your competitors
Requirements for a great user experience in your domain
The way out to make your product unique
So, today, I’ll share everything about it to help you create a product that perfectly aligns with your business goals.
What is UX competitive analysis?
A UX competitive analysis is a systematic process of researching and evaluating the user experience of your competitor’s product or service. This is not about copying them or following them. It’s about identifying their gaps and ways for your input.
Every great product takes competitive analysis. It’s not necessary for your competitors to be exactly from your niche. There will be many instances when you won’t find a product that’s completely similar to yours.
If this is the case, choose one that is relevant in terms of features and product type.
How to do UX competitive analysis? (5 Easy steps)
The competitive analysis takes some simple steps, but you need extreme attention to detail to do it effectively. Even a simple color shade or punctuation in the messaging can make a huge difference.
So, if you have the power to point out tiny little details, you can do it just by following 5 easy steps.
1. Define your goal
Before you get your hands dirty with competitor analysis, you must clearly understand its goal. This is why it’s the first and very crucial step of this process.
To define your goal, you need to have a clear answer to the following questions:
What do you exactly want to achieve from the analysis?
Are you trying to find out the area of improvement or looking for inspiration?
Knowing what you want to achieve from the analysis will make it more organised. It’ll help you to focus on what actually matters.
For instance, studying your competitor’s features, design, and approach will be enough if you only look for inspiration for your product.
On the other hand, if you want to discover their shortcomings and come up with a better solution, you need to dive a lot deeper. In this case, you must explore every navigation bar in the user journey.
It is also important to analyse every button, icon, color, element, and font to determine how good or bad they are.
2. Identify your competitors
In the next steps, you need to carefully identify your competitors. The following process can help you do this.
Find out who offers a similar product or service to your targeted audience.
Make a list of them.
Analyse their overall performance, such as their conversion rate, customer retention rate, user reviews, etc.
Based on their overall performance, make a shortlist of top competitors.
Take at least 3 to 5 competitors and analyse them deeply according to your needs.
If you don’t find your direct competitors, you can pick some out of your niche but cater to the audience you want to target.
3. Conduct research
As you already defined your competitors in the previous step, it’s time to conduct research. First, you need a checklist for what you’ll compare and analyse.
Here’s what can basically be included in that -
What’s good about them: First, note everything good about your competitors. This could be basic navigation to their home or product page, the placement of options, and their impact on easing the user journey.
What can be improved: Find the areas for improvement and go as deep as possible. Try to understand where users struggle and why it appears hard to them. Note your findings comprehensively.
Feature list: List all the exclusive features of your competitors. Here, you can use some tools to see which feature works better. Make a complete list of them. Mention why you liked those and why you think they are handy.
What’s missing: After gathering the list above, look for the missing piece. Recommend where you think they missed out. Then, write down what else can be included for a better user experience.
With this, you are done with exploring their product. The next phases are all about analysing your findings and systematically presenting them.
4. Analyze and summarise your findings
The above steps are all about making a broad list of your findings from your competitors. In this step, you need to trim down your list and keep the factors that actually matter.
You can do this with the following process:
Analyse your data to understand trends and patterns.
Find out the commonalities between you and your competitors.
Use tools like SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to categorise your findings.
Make a short list with your necessary data.
5. Present your findings
The final step is to present your findings in a structured template and submit it to the concern. You can use the following template to show your report.
In your report, propose some potential solutions and your view on the whole project. Discuss it with the stakeholders and take their feedback.
And this concludes the entire process of competitive analysis.
Fazit
UX competitive analysis is a very effective method of building a product that ensures a better user experience. In the competitive world of business, it keeps you ahead of your rivals and helps you to build a better brand identity. However, it’s necessary to do it appropriately with the details in mind. Surface level study can’t do as much as you desire.
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