Key Takeaways
💡 Competitor analysis broadly means evaluating your competition’s strengths and weaknesses
📈 UX audit of competitors can help you: stay atop industry standards, identify market gaps and growth opportunities, get insights into how to design a product that meets your users’ expectation
🧑🏽🤝🧑🏿 Competitor analysis can be done in the form of: 1.) an expert review 2.) competitive usability testing with larger sample of real users
📊 Conducting competitive usability testing provides unbiased data compared to an expert review, which can be biased and not reflect your real users’ opinions
🖱️ For competitive usability testing you can use tools such as a specialized tool for competitive usability testing, tree testing, preference test, 5 second test and first click test (all these tools are offered by UXtweak)
🐝Register for a free account on UXtweak now and try it out!
What is competitive analysis?
Competitive analysis (sometimes referred to as competitive usability evaluation) is a method of researching your direct and indirect competitors and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. The aim is to gain more in-depth knowledge of your competitors’ strategies and their market position, especially in relation to your business. It can help you get valuable insights into how to run your business (and how not to), identify opportunities in the market, and what design decisions you should or shouldn’t make.
Don’t forget
Competitive analysis has its place in every area of business, and user experience is no exception. On the contrary, it is, or at least it should be, a crucial part of the design and UX research journey.
Why is competitive analysis important in UX design?
Competitive UX analysis helps to inform and guide the design process. It is important because it provides UX designers valuable insights into user needs, preferences, and expectations, as well as the design trends and standards in the market. Additionally, UX competitive analysis research helps to identify market gaps and opportunities for differentiation and innovation.
Competitive analysis in UX research can take the form of expert reviews, where an experienced usability practitioner reviews the designs using heuristic evaluation and their expertise and knowledge of usability, or competitive usability evaluations,where users complete a set of tasks using 2 or more competing sites. In this article, we will talk about both of those approaches.
💡 Pro Tip
The Nielsen Norman Group’s “User Experience Careers” survey revealed that 61% of UX professionals prioritize competitive analysis in their projects.
Looking for a good tool to conduct competitive analysis?
UXtweak’s got you covered! We developed a whole new Competitive Analysis tool to help you understand what users love or where they struggle and create a winning product strategy using competitor sites in usability testing. And guess what’s even better? It’s free!
Competitive analysis UX advantages
Before we get into the step-by-step process of how to do a UX competitor analysis, let’s first look at what are its biggest advantages.
After you conduct your research, you will:
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your digital products in relation to your competitors
- Gain a deeper understanding of the market, its users, and their needs
- Learn about the industry trends and market insights
- Discover usability issues to fix and features to improve to create user-friendly products
- Define a course for long-term growth
When to do a UX competitive analysis?
It is best to conduct a UX competitive analysis when you are in the early stages of the design process of your digital product (website, app, etc.). That being said, don’t despair if you haven’t executed any yet. You will benefit from a competitor analysis even if you already are an established business.
Following your first analysis, it is beneficial to get back to it in different stages of your business and update it regularly at least once a year. Naturally, your competition and your market evolve and so should you. Think of it as an iterative process that will keep you alert and on top of your competitive advantage.
💡 Pro Tip
Learn about Competitive Audits and how to do them efficiently.
How to do a competitor analysis in UX design?
1. Specify your goals
First, you should decide what you aim to learn with your UX competitive analysis. Coming up with a UX strategy to define this can be a great approach. The outcome of this will determine if you will conduct a high-level analysis or if you will focus on specific aspects of your website or app.
You should also consider what your company’s position is when conducting a UX competitive analysis. This not only changes your perspective but also sets the stage for tools and the opportunities coming with them.
What different positions do we have in mind?
- You are in the early stages of a new product development and you are looking at your competitors to inspire yourself. A list of strengths to replicate and mistakes to avoid might be the core of your findings.
- You are thinking about entering a new market or industry, trying to find a place for new products or innovations
- You are monitoring the changes in the competitive landscape, with the goal of not falling behind as the market evolves
- You are planning a marketing campaign. Your goal is to understand what your competition is doing and outperform them with your strategy.
2. Create a list of your competitors
When creating a list of your competitors for the analysis, keep in mind you don’t need a large number. Usually, three to five are enough to compare yourself with. Decide if you want to include both direct and indirect competitors.
- Direct competitors: These are companies that offer the same or very similar products as you and can provide potentially more easily accessible insights for analysis.
- Indirect competitors: These are companies that offer a different product than yours, but their product allows users to meet the same need as your product.
💡 Pro Tip
Feel free to use smaller businesses but also bigger players in your field. If your customers can meet their needs there, you should include the business in your analysis.
3. Identify key features and flows
Before you start gathering the actionable insights, do yourself a favor and prepare a matrix document where you will log and organize your findings.
Now, looking at your competitor’s website/app, define the most significant flows and identify features that users interact with. It can look something like this:
- Sign up and login
- Purchase of a product
- Subscription to a service
- Searching on a website
- Making an appointment
Or any other task within the competitive landscape that applies to your business.
When you’re done with the list, imagine you are the user and perform each action on your list.
💡 Pro Tip
Don’t forget to write down everything in your matrix document. Include notes about what you liked and disliked, what worked, or what surprised you. If you are comparing websites, be sure to visit them using both desktop and mobile devices.
4. Analyze the data
Looking at the data and user feedback you’ve collected, it’s time to name the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and yours as well. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is perfect for this. Ask yourself questions such as: What business value does your competition bring? How was your user experience using their website? Are the user journeys effective?
During the analysis, you will surely stumble upon something your competitor does differently. Do not feel the urge to replicate each feature straight away. Just because your competitor has something you don’t, it doesn’t mean it is the best approach. Sometimes, however, you might not be sure. If such a situation occurs and you are not sure what to do, read below how you can resolve it using one of the UXtweak tools.
5. Define actionable next steps
When your analysis is done it should be clear what are the biggest usability issues of your website/ mobile app. It is now the time to define actionable steps you will take to make improvements.
Divide the tasks into short-term and long-term and plan the redesign and/or implementation.
Competitive analysis using UXtweak (What do your users think?)
Now we know what competitor analysis is, why it is important, and how to conduct one. Above we have described general steps you should take when you compare the usability of your website or app with your competitors.
However, there is a crucial aspect to consider. You as a business owner or a website/app designer are biased and the data you will collect will never be 100% accurate to what an actual user may find important. Therefore you should also be interested in what your users have to say.
Let’s take a look at several specific ways you can test elements or features of your website/app using UXtweak tools.
💡 Pro Tip
We have also prepared a tailor-made template in which you can record the data that will come up from your analyses. You can download it here.
1. Run Competitive Usability Testing
Run real user tests on your competitors’ websites and find out what works for them and what doesn’t! Mimic competitor’s strengths and avoid found mistakes in the early stages of development.
With UXtweak’s Competitive Usability Testing tool, you can give testers some tasks to accomplish on your and your competitor’s website, compare how they perform, find out what confuses them, and improve your UX based on the findings. A good UX competitive analysis tool, such as UXtweak’s will help you with the analysis by providing metrics and graphs to better understand the data you collected.
💡 Pro Tip
Learn more about usability testing in our usability testing guide.
How does it work?
- Create a new website testing study and specify the URL of the competitor’s website you want to test
- Give users tasks to complete. Before the testing starts, participants will be asked to install UXtweak Chrome Extension to track user activity on any website.
- Watch the recordings, find out what works and what doesn’t, and improve your UX!
Here’s a short video tutorial to help you understand the process better! 👇
2. Compare your navigation with Tree Testing
Ask your users to find the same product in your website’s navigation and in the navigation of your competitor. This is even more useful if your website is content-heavy and your business depends on users being able to find the right product or service.
Take a look at the examples below. Both navigations represent an electronic e-commerce website but the organization slightly differs. Where should the user click if they’re looking for a pair of headphones for running? And in which navigation will they find the item faster?
Picture 1: 2 versions of a tree structure of website navigation transferred to the UXtweak Tree Testing tool.
3. Find out which design users prefer using a Preference Test
A Preference Test is helpful when you want to find out how your and your competitor’s design or presentation is perceived by your target audience. In some aspects, you might be the users’ choice and in others, they might prefer your competition. It is priceless to learn what you can do better and what elements to highlight.
For this Preference Test, we have altered the product page pictures, so they each contain the same product photo. This will enable users to focus on the user interface on the right side so they can choose their preferred option.
Picture 2: Screen of a task in the UXtweak Preference Test tool.
4. Who communicates the message better in the first 5 seconds?
How quickly can your users grasp the main information of your page and what are their very first impressions? You can easily find it out using a Five Second Test for your and your competitor’s website.
Comparing the results for both websites/apps can uncover what’s missing or which areas of your homepage you should tweak to deliver your message more clearly. All you need to do is set up a Five Second Test study using a screenshot of your homepage and do the same with the homepage picture of your competitor/s. As you can see in the example pictures below, there are various approaches to delivering the same or a very similar message. Let your users tell you which one is most effective.
Picture 3: Competitor homepage A for Five Second Test, GetYourGuide.com, an online travel agency and marketplace for tour guides, excursions, and other activities.
Picture 4: Competitor homepage B for Five Second Test, WithLocals.com, an experiential travel company that connects travelers with local hosts.
5. Who is more user-friendly? Find out with First Click Test
All of the above – navigation, design, and communication of a website, lead the users to perform an action. Whether it is a primary or a secondary task, users need to know where to click in order to become your customers.
Test your website/app using the First Click Test to see if you make it easy for your users or if they struggle. Repeat the same test using your competitor’s website and see who performs better.
To introduce a First Click Test example for your UX competitive analysis, imagine you would like to sign up for a Spanish course with one of the language schools below. Where would you click first?
Picture 6: Competitor homepage A for First Click Test, International House London language school homepage
Picture 7: Competitor homepage B for First Click Test, TELC UK language school homepage
UX competitive analysis template
We have prepared for you a template specifically designed for comparison with your competitors using UXtweak tools as described above. Don’t wait and create your first UXtweak competitive analysis study to collect the insights that will change your business.
Download UXtweak Competitive Analysis Template
UX competitive audit vs UX competitive analysis
A UX competitive audit analyzes the user experience (UX) of your competitors’ products or services. It evaluates their design, usability, navigation, content, and overall user satisfaction to identify what works, what doesn’t, and how your offering compares. This audit helps uncover gaps, set benchmarks, and inspire improvements in your own UX design to better meet user needs.
UX audit diagnoses problems in an existing product, while UX analysis uncovers user insights to guide design and strategy, often before development begins.
Competitive analysis alternative
As an alternative to competitive analysis, competitive reviews are a budget-friendly option. Here, a usability expert examines similar products to identify strengths, weaknesses, and patterns. While it provides useful insights, it’s subjective and reflects only the expert’s perspective, making it less precise than methods involving user input. Reviews can focus on entire sites or specific features, with key areas prioritized for actionable findings.
UX competitive analysis example
Now, congratulations on reading this far! Hopefully, you’ve gained new insights into what competitive analysis can mean for you and what conducting it can look like. We are however aware that words only convey so much and it is best to learn by doing, or observing someone.
That is why we advise you to check out these demo studies we have prepared and see what a competitive analysis done on a real-life example looks like.
You can also check out an example of a competitive audit on our blog.
Conclusion: Staying Ahead of the Game
The main purpose of a competitive analysis is not just about implementing new features or streamlining the flow of your website. It’s really about keeping you on your toes. No matter if your business is big or small, you can still benefit greatly from knowing your competition and the approaches that have already worked for someone else.
