Competitive analysis is important for any business, including blogs and e-commerce sites. By analyzing your competition, you get to know how your competitors work, anticipate a pattern of behavior, and stay ahead of the game. Having a solid competitive analysis allows you to have valuable information that develops into a competitive advantage in the long run. Here’s how to do a competitive analysis when starting a blog or an online business.
Comparator Group
Just as finding your niche is important for your business so is locating your comparator group when conducting competitive analysis. Your group is composed of the blogs or e-commerce sites that offer the same products or services, with more or less same pricing and organizational size, and cater to the same buyer persona. Identifying your comparator group will save you time and money when trying to analyze thousands of businesses operating within your niche.e-commerce
Website and Customer Experience
Once you have listed the blogs or online stores comparable to yours, you need to examine their website and customers’ experience. Assess their site’s loading speed, user interface, and overall feel. Check their social media channels to know how their customers rate the products or services. In this way, you’ll have a general idea about their operations and how to compete more efficiently, such as beating them through a faster-loading website. As a new entrant, you can also aim to address the underserved needs of the consumers.
SWOT Analysis
Next, you should conduct a strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis for your business and your closest competitors. See if your weakness is their strengths and vice versa. Find a strategic way to compete from your SWOT analysis. Aim to act first regarding the opportunities and mitigate the threats as soon as possible. For example, if you specialize in selling toys, make early-marketing schemes to promote your products aggressively ahead of your competitors before the holiday season.
Update Information
Business nowadays is always fast-paced. With the constantly changing needs of customers and readers, online stores and bloggers make necessary adjustments from time to time. Hence, you should also develop the habit of updating information for the competitive analysis. You should do so for at least thrice a year, or once every quarter, or as often as the seasonality of your products change.
As a start-up, knowing your competitors is crucial to get ahead of the game. Without effective competitive analysis, you end up competing blindly, wasting money, losing customers, and missing opportunities along the way. Be strategic in the way you conduct your business and follow the steps towards making a competitive analysis when starting a business.
