Evaluating the Competition

[Livenomadic]

How do you go about evaluating the competition's site?

What do you look for and how do you use that info to improve your own site?

[webmastertexas]

Maybe why they're popular, and what they offer that you don't that makes them popular? Things along that line. I've found that website design (i.e. the look of a site) means absolutely nothing, at least in my chosen area. It's what you provide that matters. Maybe see what your competitor provides that you don't, or provides what you also provide but better, and try to improve?

[sem4u]

I look at all sorts of things - graphics, photos, navigation, FAQs, glossaries, new products, meta data, title, text, internal anchor text, backlinks... - just about everything so that I can make my sites better :)

[grandpa]

to improve your own site?

In what ways are you looking to improve? Obviously, you are looking at some factor(s) now.

For a site with good traffic and conversion, I'd look for ways to increase the conversions - ie, more sales. Does your competitor offer better deals, maybe? What does (he) have that you don't, that you could use to a benefit. It could be something as simple as a toll-free number difference between two sites.

Without a doubt, look at the overall quality of the competitions site. A visitor looks at any one page very briefly. Any page has to get its point across quickly. Does his? Does yours? This gets into everything that sem4u mentioned, and more.

To be honest, I don't look at my competitors sites when I'm evaluating my own. I tend to start reading and researching what does and doesn't work for any given metric - sales, search, ads, <fill in the blank> - here at WW and other reliable sources.

[trillianjedi]

How do you go about evaluating the competition's site?

That's an excellent question.

I look at evaluation in this way:-

SEO

Position in the SERPS for key terms in that sector.

Design/Branding

1. Quality and style of writing
2. Quality of presentation
3. If eCommerce, the price of product or service

I consider that in terms of the overall "brand value" of that site. I think it's 90% gut instinct.

...how do you use that info to improve your own site?

Once I've built a site, I tend to stick to the overall flavour of it and concentrate on filling it with content.

But when starting a new site this is always my stage one process - evaluate the competition.

Depending on the strength of the brands I'm up against, I would use that evaluation to decide, for example, whether to get in a corporate identity designer to do logo/style-guides etc.

In a less competitive sector I tend to DIY, if I feel that I can DIY it better than anything else that's around.

I would only re-brand if "several" sites I had evaluated were substantially better than what I was offering.

The SEO side of it is easy, and there's a million threads here you can read about improving that. I do look for backlinks though - that can serve as a useful guide sometimes.

99% of the time though, in terms of SEO, I just do my thing and let the SE's catch up with me. If you follow the basic principles (good page titles, good valid mark-up, good content etc), combine it with a load of inbound links and you'll usually end up a long way ahead of the competition.

The design and brand aspects are the hard part - that's what takes the creative skill.

I would worry far more about a really well branded site that was my competition, than I would about a really well SEO'd site.

TJ