Competitive Audits: How To and Why?
I explain the process of a competitive audit, why they are important, and what to take away from them.
During my internship with Anonyome Labs, I conducted quite a few competitive audits. As I found out, they are very important to the creative process, and very helpful when deciding what features to add or if your app (or new product) is a good idea in the first place.
WHY AUDIT?
As I mentioned above, competitive audits really help you see what else is out there. If you are coming up with a new product it is good to see what is out there in your same area. First of all, knowing there is nothing else out there exactly like what you have is a good thing to know. And if there is something out there like you, know what makes you unique and push that.
If there is nothing out there like the product you have, it is good to know what other similar competitors are doing, what features they have, what they are doing well, and what they are doing poorly. If something is popular or doing well, copy it/add it in. If something is doing bad, leave it out or find a way to fix it in your product.
Another good thing to conduct a competitive audit for is features. For instance at Anonyome, we wanted to add handles for messaging within their app. I was tasked with researching how other apps use handles and create a presentation about it. Again, by looking at what other apps are doing you can see what people are used to, and what your favorite way of handling it may be. Finding commonalities between features in different apps can provide an insight to what people are used to, and give a template for what you can do in your own product. Seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly is really helpful when you are adding new things to your own product.
I think that Pinterest should have conducted a creative audit when designing their on-boarding. This is what myself and my team did when we evaluated Pinterest’s use of gestures and found holes in their on-boarding. Read my article about it here.
HOW TO CONDUCT AN AUDIT
Now that I’ve explained why audits are important, I’ll explain the best way I’ve found to conduct one yourself, and give my own examples.
STEP ONE: The first thing you need to do is to decide what your product is and what it does so that you can find apps that do similar things and determine who your “competitors” are.
With my experience, this was already determined by my company through their own research. But if you are starting from scratch, I would suggest asking around what other people use, or looking up categories on the app store and see what pulls up.
For Anonyome’s app, MySudo, the competitors are WhatsApp, Signal, Wickr Me, and Hushed.
STEP TWO: Once you have established your competitors, take a deep dive into them. Download them, use them, explore them, and take notes about what you find. This can be from how they are laid out, their graphics, designs, fonts, loading screens, content, features, and so much more. It really is up to you to decide what things you are looking to compete against, and determine what will set your product apart from the rest.
In my general comptitive audit for MySudo, I took in account the navigation other apps used, the ease of their way finding/UX, their design, and their privacy features — because that is what MySudo is really all about, identity protection.
When I was conducting an audit for the handles feature, I looked at apps that were using the handles feature. Not necessarily the apps direct competitors. By looking at popular apps that use that feature I was able to get a better understanding of how they do it, and what ways I think are the best. For my handles audit, I looked at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
STEP THREE: Take notes and screenshots of what you find!!! I mentioned taking notes in my second step, but seriously take notes.
“The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.” — Adam Savage
Screenshots of what you are doing for examples is also very important. You can show exactly what you saw in certain apps and give details about it. This also makes it much easier to present to your team, and show them exactly what you are talking about. Or if you are not presenting it to a team, it gives you good reminders about what you saw. I would also say it is nice to see what is good and copy, or what is bad and avoid it from a screenshot. It’s like having a map infront of you, collected from a whole bunch of other apps all in one place.
STEP FOUR: Audit your own product. Determine how your app stacks up against the others, where the holes are, things you like, things you dislike. Use the product, be the product, JK don’t be the product. But really get into it. This step might be easier if you can find another person who hasn’t been working on it for so long to go through and give you some feedback on things they liked, and disliked. Get a fresh pair of eyes if you feel like you’re too far in to notice anything. Again, ask them to take notes, and screenshots of things they think are important so that you can refer back to it easily.
STEP FIVE: The take away. Summarizing everything you found in a competing app is important, this way you can quickly see the main things that stood out to you, whether they be good or bad.
For me I write down, immediate short comings, ideas for change, usability issues, and things I like/found unique. (This is in reguards to my app audit, not my features audit.)
Then, on a bigger scale determining the main things you found in your audit overall. I would suggest these are things you saw repeated over and over again in other apps, things that your product might be missing that you saw in other apps, and your favorite way a feature was presented or used.
For my handles audit I explained my favorite way handles were used and implemented, and the way that I thought would make the most sense for integration into MySudo.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN
Being able to actually take away good results and knowledge from an audit can be difficult. Finding meaning in research can be difficult, or at least a good meaning. When you do your take aways make sure you are focusing on items that matter. Colors, style, and other branding items aren’t that important when looking at other apps. (unless you’re doing a style audit or something) But things like content, navigation, features, and usability are all good things to really look at and take away from when doing audits. The usability of certain features, where they are found, how they are created, and their popularity are good things to take away when you are doing a features audit. As you conduct your own audits you will become more familiar with what is important and what isn’t. But in the mean time, taking good notes and screenshots will help you make sure you have all the good stuff you need.
Now that you have some insight, it’s time to square up and get your competitive audit on! *ding ding*
If you liked this article give me some love, and check out my other articles!
