Internet | Competitive Analysis

Introduction

A Competitive Analysis provides information on your websites' usability strengths and weaknesses compared to existing or potential competitors. It can also provide a measure of how your site compares to the overall market.

By examining your competitors' offerings (information architecture, navigation, interaction styles) we can identify the features, functionality and design elements of your competitors' sites that work well for customers. Once identified our recommendations clearly show how these elements can be reapplied to your offering and often present opportunities for further innovation to stay ahead of your competition. More importantly a Competitive Analysis can ascertain which aspects of your competitors sites are not usable and help you to avoid the same pitfalls.

A Competitive Analysis using Usability Evaluation techniques lends a degree of objectivity that could not otherwise be attained.

Back to top

The Process

We recruit a representative sample of your site and your competitors' sites target audience. These participants are asked to perform a series of tasks using your site that are typical of those a user would attempt in the real world (e.g. On a book selling site a task may be: 'Buy the book "Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire" by J.K Rowling). Afterwards the participants perform the same tasks using your competitor's site (site order is changed for each participant). While performing the tasks, at our state of the art usability facilities, the users are observed and recorded. Afterwards participants are interviewed to gather further information about their experience.

We use specialised software to both collect and interpret participant behaviours. In addition to identifying usability problems our approach enables us to make recommendations to rectify them. These recommendations allow action to be taken the very same day.

We provide three key deliverables:

1. Usability report - detailed document outlining our methodology, results and their interpretation plus actionable recommendations.
    
2. Video highlights - edited video clips of the most informative parts of the tests.
    
3. Presentation - an oral presentation communicating the most important findings and recommendations.

If you would like to learn more about how Competitive Analysis can be used as part of your website benchmarking strategy please call or email us and a consultant will be happy to talk with you.

Back to top

 
© The Usability Company 2007