How to do a competitor analysis for my design project?
Introduction
A UX competitor analysis is a technique that can be done to enhance the products features, find opportunities to develop new features or to identify pitfalls to avoid.
Direct and Indirect competitors
A competitor is a person, team, or company that shares your goals and is fighting for the same thing that your product team wants (O’reilly). With competitor analyses, it is good practice to find direct competitors to look into but also indirect competitors as they may be approaching problem slightly different so can be a good source of inspiration.
Direct competitors typically offer the same product or service (need) in a market whereas indirect competitors compete in the same market yet offer a different product (need).
Reasons for doing a competitor analysis
To get an understanding of how others in the market are approaching solving a similar problem to you.
To see where your product/service fits in the market and the similarities/differences to other available products.
To know the strengths and weaknesses of your competition.
To see if there are any gaps in the market which highlight opportunities: Filling a gap from your competitors gives you an edge over the competition
Identify the current trends in the market you are operating in.
Doing the analysis
The approach you take for your competitor analysis will depend on the goal and constraints of your project. You need to think about what you are trying to learn and what information you need to move forward in your project. For example you may be trying to design a specific feature that your competitors also offer, therefore you want to learn best practices, however you only have a few weeks for the entire project. So for this example you may select the table method from below where you tick off features.
Start with 3-5 main competitors else it can become very overwhelming, if you have time you can decide to tackle more competitors.
Different methods for the analysis
Here are some methods you can explore to do your analysis:
Table to list competitors and map their features
You can look through the competitors product/service and start to list out certain features/attributes which stand out to you. You can then tick off how many of your other competitors also offer this feature or have implemented the same approach. Examples of features for a meditation app including sleep meditation, progress tracker, rewards etc.
A mock example
2. Complete a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
You can also do this for your own product/service and compare it to your competitors. Bear in mind that you may end up with a lot of outcomes from a SWOT analysis and you will need to prioritise which of them is the most important.
Image from WordStream
3. Identify themes in the approach they take e.g strong focus on personalisation, using characters to evoke emotion
This is the approach I use the most as it’s a bit more flexible and open. I identify the goals and key themes I want to focus on and then I go through the screens and make comments on those themes (what works well, what doesn’t work well). I then use affinity mapping to find patterns amongst these.
4. Use a heuristic evaluation to analyse the competitor’s product.
This is an option which is based on the execution of the product/service. It is a great way to help guide your analysis especially when you’re not sure what to focus on. Remember to time box each heuristic as you can end up spending a lot of time on this because of the number of heuristics.
Interaction Design Foundation
5. Create your own set of guidelines to compare the competitors which can be based on the goals of your project e.g how well does this competitor reward a user for completion of a task.
Your project/design may have a number of principles or user needs you are trying to address. Use these are the core themes to conducting the competitor analysis.
6. Reviews from app stores, especially the 1 star reviews for your competitors
Customers often leave comments mentioning what they wish the product had or what frustrates them about what is lacking from the product. This highlights opportunity areas which you can take advantage of and get a competitive egde.
Conclusion
Remember to pick the right method based on your project goal and the time constraints you have. It’s always great to do the competitor analysis in a team or with your product manager as they will spot these you may not.
Also a quick tip for portfolio projects is to select method 6 when you don’t have access to any research.
