Website Competitive Analysis - A Visual Approach
May 02 2006, By Maish Nichani, (0) Comment
This article describes a simple visual approach to competive analysis that can be used to quickly gain insights into what’s being used and what’s interesting at your competitor websites.Background
[Note: For an overview of competitive analysis, read Jason Withrow’s wonderful article at Boxes and Arrows: Competitive Analysis: Understanding the Market Context
In a recent website redesign work for a premier educational institution, we approached competitive analysis with the following constraints:
- We wanted to gain insights and ideas; not just deliver a document.
- We didn’t want to do a complete website study but wanted to focus on a few strategic areas.
- We wanted to do it iteratively, at different times during the design process
The ‘insights’ bit was really important; we were on the lookout for how other institutions were communicating, what was working and what seemed to cause problems. I got my inspiration after reading David Straker's wonderful little book, Rapid Problem Solving with Post-It Notes. Here's the approach we used.
Approach
First, we selected the websites to analyze. We made a list of 20 websites we wanted to focus on. As our target industry was a general one we managed to pick our websites easily. Here’s what we consulted:
- Published ranking results (both globally and locally)
- Published reports
- Client’s list of preferences
- Blogsosphere comments
- Common web practices (we found many top ranked websites that were quite crappy and violated even the basic usability principles)
Next, we jotted down the intent of the analysis. More specifically, we listed down the questions we wanted to focus on. For example:
- What's the communications strategy?
- What are the top-level sections?
- What’s on the home page?
- What’s on the header navigation? What’s on the footer navigation?
These were the questions we started out with. But as we progressed with our design work, we found ourselves adding to this question list, and this time the questions became more specific, such as:
- What brand elements and brand gestures are being used?
- How does the main website relate to the sub-sites? What is the ‘glue’?
- Here’s the rest of the process we followed.
Intent: what top-level sections are used and why?
1. Write down first impressions
We printed the screenshots of the homepages we selected. We then pinned down a transparency sheet over each printout, and using a marker, wrote down and highlighted our first impressions of the page.
2. Collect the details
We then took the attachments stuck them on a wide wall. We used Tack-It for this purpose. Using sticky "strips", we then wrote down the sections the websites covered. We used one strip for one section label.
3. Seek out patterns
We then took all the sticky strips and re-organized them based on similarity. If the labels were identical then we stuck them over each other. This grouping revealed 1) the common sections, 2) common terms and synonyms and 3) the “outsiders” – those that were unique.
4. Filter based on needs
Based on what we knew from stakeholder analysis and initial user research, we moved the ones that were not related to us to the “trash” space on the wall. We used a blue dot sticker to mark out those that were interesting and required more analysis. The ones that had no stickers on them represented the base level sections.
5. Debrief
With the exercise over, we now sat down and discussed the findings. The wall served as a reference point for our discussions. Discussions on the ‘outsiders’ were always interesting. Also, I’ve found it useful to have the client sit in and provide comments at this stage. After debriefing, we took snapshots of the labels and wrote a paragraph or two on the debriefing session and any follow-ups that were required.
We repeated the exercise for other important research questions (actual activities changed, but the format remained the same).
Conclusion
The real value of this activity was in discussing the various options that our competitors had chosen. We learnt many different aspects such as using trigger words in addition to section labels to improve the scent of information to providing starting guides for different audiences. Furthermore, the exercise encouraged adoption as there’s was a shared understanding on what's useful for our website.
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