How to do an effective competitive audit and stand out from the competition

Now we’ll explore an important part of the ideation process, how to make a competitive audits. A competitive audit is an overview of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. We know that it’s important to come up with lots of ideas before deciding on one solution. A competitive audit is just one tool to explore ideas for designs, so we can learn from others about what has worked and not worked. Let’s begin by discussing what you can learn from a competitive audit.

This includes: Identifying your key competitors, Reviewing the products that your competitors offer, Understanding how your competitors position themselves in the market, Examining what your competition does well and what they could do better, And considering how your competitors talk about themselves. So, who do you consider to be your competition? To be thorough, you should include both direct and indirect competitors in your audit.

Direct competitors have offerings, meaning products, services, or features, that are similar to your product and focus on the same audience. Essentially, you’re both trying to solve the same problem.

Indirect competitors are a little more nuanced. They either have a similar set of offerings, but focus on a different audience than you, or they have a different set of offerings and focus on the same audience as you.

It’s helpful to audit a wide range of products that compete with yours to get a full picture of the landscape. In UX design, competitive audits are important for a few key reasons. Let’s investigate.

1º they help inform your design process. How did your competitors approach designing their products? Knowing what others have done can help you make better design decisions for your own product.

2º competitive audits help you solve usability problems. Is your competitor’s website difficult to use? If so, you know what to avoid for your own website.

3º competitive audits can reveal gaps in the market. Are there user needs your competitors do not meet? Your product might be able to address these user needs.

4º competitive audits provide reliable evidence. Why is it important to gather evidence? Design ideas are most successful when there’s a deep understanding of business needs and market gaps. Competitive audits are a huge part of gathering that information. Knowing all of these things can help you save time, money, and energy.

it’s important for you to know how to put together a competitive audit, because it’s critical to your work as a UX designer.

Steps to conduct a competitive audit

Step 1. Outline the audit goals

As a UX designer, you know that the ideation process is most effective after you’ve completed an audit on your new client. But before you move into the details of the audit, you have to define your goals.

Using consistent language for rating competitor products can also create more uniform feedback and help you “grade” competitors. You can grade competitors on a scale of:

Bad: The app is not usable, and users aren’t getting what they need from this aspect of the app.

Ok: This aspect has some issues, but with some work, it could meet user needs.

Good: This aspect works well, but doesn’t always provide users with the necessary information easily.

Great: This aspect feels consistent, and it meets or exceeds the user’s needs.

Step 2. List competitors

First, ask the company or team who they consider to be their direct and indirect competitors. As a reminder, direct competitors have offerings that are similar to your product and focus on the same audience. Indirect competitors either have a similar set of offerings but focus on a different audience, or they have a different set of offerings and focus on the same audience. Getting this information early can provide good insight into where the company really fits into their industry.

Step 3. Determine the specific competitor aspects you want to compare

Defining a list of aspects you want to compare makes it easier to compile your results for analysis later on in the process.

• First impressions: Check out the website on both desktop and mobile devices, and make note of your first impressions. Is the website responsive, meaning that it resizes across devices? Does the design complement the product? How do you feel about the website?
• Interaction: Explore the user flow and navigation of the website. What features are available for users? Is the website accessible to all users, including those using screen readers? How inclusive is their website to non-English speakers? Will the user get confused as they click through the website pages, or is the navigation clear?
• Visual design: Review competitor branding and their overall consistency. Does the website appear and feel the same throughout all sections and pages? Does the branding match the intended audience? Is the imagery and color palette memorable?
• Content: Examine the written content included on the website. Does the tone of the content match the company’s branding? Will users be able to find the details they’re interested in?

These are the aspects to list across the top row of the competitor audit.

Step 4. Research each company

You can include notes in bullet point form, links, and screenshots whatever is most helpful for your information gathering process

Step 5. Summarize your findings in a report

After conducting research, gathering data, and analyzing your findings, summarize your work in a report. What you include in your report and how you present your findings will vary depending on the audit goals you outlined at the beginning of the process. For example, if your audit mainly focuses on comparing competitors’ audiences, you might want to include a few informational graphics with numbers and figures. Or, if your audit mainly focuses on visual design, you might want to include screenshots of your competitors’ websites with different areas highlighted.