Website competitor analysis

Part of the website planning stage is to conduct website competitor analysis. Whether you are redesigning your website, or designing a new website, it is important to understand who you are going to be competing against. When the search engine returns the top results, you will need to differentiate your website from the competition. The best way to do this to conduct web competition analysis.

What to look for

There are number of ways of identifying your online competition. Depending on who carries out the analysis (or research) will influence what is looked at. It is important to get a rounded view on your competition so that all areas are looked at. This can include;

• Marketing
  What messages are your competitors sending? What graphics and imagery are your competitors using? How are the pages presented to the user?
• Search engine optimisation
  How many links do your competitors have? Where are the links coming from? How many pages of content are there?
• Website accessibility
  How are the pages developed? What techniques have been used to make the web pages accessible? What colours are used on the page and are there any possible issues?
• Functionality
  What features do your competitors websites have which are useful? How could these features be improved or refined?
• Content
  How are the web pages put together? How is the navigation structured and labelled? Is it clear to the user how to navigate around the pages?

The specific analysis which will be carried out will vary depending on a variety of factors such as the sector the company works in, the target market and other areas deemed important.

How we work

Before we start work on any project, we will carry out a website requirement gathering process to identify what needs to be included in the web project. As part of this process, we carry out website competitor analysis to make sure we identify every possible way to make your website a success.

If you would like to contact us to find out more about how we work, please contact us on 0845 260 2343 or send us an email.