A competitive analysis compares a website, business, product, or process to similar websites, businesses, products, or processes. People do competitive analyses to learn what “best practices” (or the most effective approaches) are in whatever field they are in so that they can make decisions about what do next with their design or idea. Because the goal of competitive analyses is to determine what the standards of design or behavior are, they are also called “benchmarking reports.” You are “marking” where the goals or standards currently are so that you can meet and, hopefully, exceed them.

Competitive analyses of websites typically look at at least three other websites (at least one should be for a very similar business, but it is good to include one that is from another field you could learn from) and focus on:

• Design or functional elements that are working well in the other websites
• Design or functional elements that are not working well in the other websites
• Investigating which elements from competitors might be good to use, which might not be good to use, and which could be changed to work better in the current situation

Examples of the kinds of elements designers compare are:

• Interactive website elements (e.g., how well links and buttons work, if the user is taken down the expected path, if things are broken)
• The paths users go down to do an activity (e.g., how many pages does it take for the user to sign up or buy the product or get to the page you want them to get to)
• Aesthetic appearance (e.g., how attractive the website is and why)
• Speed (e.g., how quickly content loads, how fast users can get their tasks done)
• Content (e.g., the tone and style of the text, the kinds of messages on the site, the mix of text and video or audio, the tactics of persuasion employed to get the user to buy)
• Branding (e.g., what is the vibe of the website and does it match who the company wants the users to think they are)
• Offerings (e.g., which products, information, customizations, options, or ideas are being offered)

A competitive analysis looks objectively at what other websites are doing. You need solid, real information so that you can choose to copy, discard, or slightly change what others are doing to meet your needs. Do not reinvent the wheel with your website unless you see a business reason to do so.

NOTE: Some people get tripped up by the word “competitor.” In this context, “competitor” is any website doing something similar or tangentially related to what you want to do that you could learn from. Realistically, you want your website to ultimately out-perform every other website out there, so any website could be a competitor, technically. This means that even if you are a nonprofit, you still conduct competitive analyses, even though you might not be aggressively trying to win market share.

Assignment Requirements

Competitive analyses may be formal or informal. For this class, you will do a fairly informal analysis of three websites. This is a very common practice to do before designing a new website. You want to see what is out there so you can get ideas.

If you have a good idea of the client you want to make a website for, you will want to find at least two websites for companies that are similar to your client and then another site that is similar or in a slightly different field that you could learn from. If you are still debating who your client will be, find three solid websites doing things that you would be interested in making a similar kind of website for.

You can also Google “sites made in WordPress” to see what other sites made in WordPress look like. This could provide you with a LOT of inspiration.

I will determine if you get credit based on your work including ALL of the following. Use these checklists on all assignment descriptions to make sure you are doing everything necessary for credit every time.