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Delving into the intricacies of UX competitor analysis is crucial for gaining a comprehensive understanding of your market, product, and objectives. This process not only enhances your awareness of the competitive landscape but also provides actionable insights to elevate your brand. With a multitude of competitors vying for attention, it becomes imperative to discern the strengths and weaknesses of your approach in creating a seamless user experience. Similar to how sports teams scrutinize opponents to identify weaknesses, businesses can benefit from competitor analysis to refine their SEO strategy, discerning effective practices and areas for improvement.

Let's explore the significance of competitor analysis in more detail.

🔎 What is a competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis, alternatively known as competitive analysis or competition analysis, involves scrutinizing comparable brands within your industry to acquire valuable insights into their products, branding strategies, sales tactics, and marketing methodologies. Understanding your business competitors is essential for business owners, marketers, startup founders, or product developers engaged in business analysis.

🤓 Why is competitive analysis important in UX design?

Primarily, conducting competitive research offers crucial insights into the industry landscape, illuminating trends in mobile app marketing, evolving consumer preferences, and dynamic market shifts. Analyzing competitors allows marketers to pinpoint gaps and opportunities, enabling them to tailor strategies that better align with the needs and expectations of their mobile app target audience.

Moreover, competitor research plays a vital role in benchmarking, setting realistic performance goals for monitoring progress. It empowers app developers and marketers to make informed decisions, refine their value propositions, and distinguish themselves in a saturated marketplace. Ultimately, comprehending the competitive landscape is a strategic necessity for achieving sustained success and maintaining a competitive edge in the continually changing realm of app marketing.

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🔓 Best practices to conduct app competitor analysis

Creating a thriving business necessitates differentiation from competitors. This entails understanding your competition and their contributions to the market. A comprehensive competitive analysis involves four essential steps:

1. Recognize your competitors

Although it may seem straightforward, the identification of competitors involves considering various types. These include:

• Direct Competitors: Businesses offering similar products and services, targeting the same customer base within the geographical area served by your business.
• Secondary/Indirect Competitors: Businesses providing different products and services, catering to a distinct clientele, yet falling within the same general category (e.g., a winery and a brewery as secondary competitors, both involved in alcohol sales).
• Substitute Competitors: Enterprises offering different products and services but focusing on the same customer base within your geographic location.

2. Acquire information about your competitors

After pinpointing your competitors, assess them through the lens of the "four Ps" of the marketing mix:

• Product: Conduct a comparative analysis of their products against your own, preferably through personal purchase and usage. Evaluate quality, identifying features you appreciate or find unfavorable.
• Pricing: Examine the pricing of their products and services. Do they have varied pricing for channel partners and customers? Understand their discount policies and attempt to estimate their cost structure.
• Place: Scrutinize their geographic reach or service area in comparison to your business.
• Promotion: Analyze the marketing tactics they employ to interact with customers and their presence on social media.

While the "four Ps" framework has evolved, consider additional factors such as:

• Positioning: Review their websites, social media, product documents, brochures, and catalogues to identify target markets and unique selling propositions.
• Reputation: Explore online reviews and social media discussions regarding their products and services. Evaluate how these compare to reviews for your business.
• People: Assess the size of their organization and the general profile of their employees.
• Partnerships: Investigate their suppliers and the duration of their working relationships.

If you haven't engaged in this activity previously, it is advisable to dedicate a few weeks collaborating with your sales, marketing, and customer service teams to gather data and conduct research. Subsequently, convene with your team for a concentrated two-hour session to review the findings and chart out the outcomes.

In addition to the comprehensive annual analysis, it is beneficial to allocate time every couple of months for a brief data update. This ensures a proactive approach is consistently maintained, rather than reacting to situations as they arise.

3. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors

During the two-hour team session, it is crucial to facilitate a straightforward comparison of your competitors' performance with your own. Commence by assigning rankings to your competitors based on the outlined criteria, using a scale from 1 to 10, employing a simple grid or table format.

Subsequently, craft a written assessment delineating the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor. Consider aspects such as their popularity due to location, visibility, and the quality of their staff. Examine whether their pricing is perceived as too high and if their product lacks essential features demanded by customers. Summarize all factors influencing a consumer's decision to choose or not choose each competitor.

4. Identify your competitive edge

With all the information readily available, it's time to interpret the findings in terms of your business strategy. Ask yourself: in what areas do we excel compared to our competitors, and where should we concentrate our efforts? This question somewhat resembles a reflection on your business aspirations.

By analyzing the competitive landscape, you can pinpoint your competitive advantage. This might be a unique strength that resonates with your target market, serving as a foundation for building your brand image and messaging. Alternatively, if you identify a weakness in the competition, you can adjust your pricing and introduce new promotions to capitalize on the opportunity.

Nevertheless, while it's crucial to stay informed about your competitors and enhance your business accordingly, you should not let concerns about their actions completely dictate or overshadow your overall strategy.

3 other UX competitive analysis research methods

Having gathered your insights, it's now the moment to formulate your strategy. Develop an exclusive value proposition for your application that corresponds to the market gaps you've identified. Ensure your pricing, positioning, and mobile app marketing strategy mirror this distinctive path. Here are three approaches for scrutinizing your competition that are truly your own.

1. SWOT analysis

SWOT Analysis, an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, serves as an analytical tool that companies can apply internally or in relation to competitors. This analysis can be extended to evaluate an entire industry, market, competitor, product range, or a specific product. A SWOT analysis examines four crucial aspects:

• Strengths: Identifying where a competitor excels, highlighting areas where they pose a significant challenge.
• Weaknesses: Recognizing areas where your competition falls short, understanding what they fail to provide or perform poorly. A helpful tip is to glean insights from your competitor's 1-star reviews.
• Opportunities: Exploring potential avenues available to your competition that they have yet to capitalize on. This could range from simple features, such as one-click checkouts, to enhance conversions for an eCommerce brand.
• Threats: Assessing external factors that could potentially impact your competitor's business, including competition, legislation, politics, technology, and more.

2. Examining competitor reviews

Exploring reviews across various platforms such as mobile app stores, social media (including Facebook pages and Twitter mentions), marketplaces, and App Stores provides valuable insights for competitor analysis, as well as understanding your product's user experience (UX). These customer reviews offer a glimpse into what aspects customers appreciate and dislike about your competitors.

Dedicate time to scrutinize reviews, identifying recurring positive and negative themes. By comparing these patterns with your other research, you can gain a comprehensive understanding. Customers often express desires like, "I wish the product could..." within their reviews, enabling designers to pinpoint areas where competitors may fall short.

3. Comparison of user journeys

User journeys delineate the path customers take to accomplish tasks from initiation to completion. Improving this comprehensive process can elevate the user experience and boost conversion rates.

Analyzing your user journeys in relation to those of prosperous competitors may reveal the strategies contributing to their success. For instance, you might ascertain that your competitors achieve higher conversions by employing fewer steps or strategically placing calls-to-action (CTAs).

🔥 What are the benefits of competitor analysis?

Grasping the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors' user experience (UX) enables you to craft a superior UX that surpasses others in the market, fosters brand loyalty, and enhances conversion rates. Below are some specific advantages derived from scrutinizing your competitors' UX.

1. Uncover market needs

In the course of your analysis, you may identify requirements for features absent in your competitors' websites. Recognizing these market gaps can assist you in pinpointing features to incorporate into your UX design. For instance, you might observe that certain user types you aim to target are underserved by existing features, such as filtering options, checkout processes, or accessibility features.

2. Evaluate competitors' strengths and weaknesses

Examining the user experience offered by direct competitors offers insights into their design elements, user journeys, and the emotional responses elicited by their UX designs. Are there competitors showcasing exemplary user experiences? If so, why? It could be due to innovative problem-solving or the introduction of features enhancing intuitiveness or enjoyment. Weaknesses in competitors' UX designs can also be identified, allowing you to understand pitfalls to avoid on your own website.

3. Recognize pros and cons of your UX design

Through a comparison of competing websites with your own, you can discern the advantages and disadvantages of your design decisions. This understanding of your strengths and areas needing improvement, relative to the competition, forms the basis for an action plan to enhance your UX.

4. Gather substantiation for design modifications

The data obtained from your UX competitive analysis provides concrete evidence for your design choices. Rather than taking risks when implementing changes, you can proceed with a evidence-based approach, instilling confidence when presenting to stakeholders.

5. Gain insights to address usability challenges

If you've been grappling with UX issues without a clear solution, analyzing competitors can inspire fresh ideas for resolving problems and enhancing the overall experience for your customers.

🤝 We’ll help you conduct a competitor analysis

Lizard Global boasts a team of UI/UX designers who stand out as some of the company's most seasoned professionals. The remarkable growth and success experienced by Lizard Global in recent years have significantly contributed to the wealth of expertise and knowledge within our design team. Exposure to diverse verticals has enabled us to evolve and adapt, equipping us to confidently navigate any scenario that comes our way.

Our designers not only welcome challenging situations but thrive on them, tackling each with genuine passion and care. Our ongoing evolution involves continuous refinement of our processes, a journey reflected in the positive reviews on platforms like Clutch and Sortlist, underscoring our company's maturity and experience.

If you are in search of a digital partner for UI/UX design or considering collaboration with Lizard Global for the digital conceptualization, design, custom development, and growth strategies for your product or service, we are here to assist. Feel free to reach out to us through our website's contact page, or click the PARTNER UP button below.

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