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Competitive Analysis

Learn how to conduct a Competitive Analysis in UX to understand the market, identify opportunities, and make strategic, informed design decisions.

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A competitive analysis is a strategic research process that involves identifying your competitors and evaluating their products, strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. In UX, it focuses on understanding how others solve similar problems for the same target audience.

What Is a Competitive Analysis?

Imagine you want to open a new coffee shop in your neighborhood. The first thing you would do is visit all the other coffee shops in the area. You would try their coffee, check their prices, observe the atmosphere, see what kind of customers they have, and listen to what they complain about or love. You are not doing this to copy them exactly, but to understand the landscape: what works, what does not, and where there might be a gap for your coffee shop to offer something unique and better.

A competitive analysis in UX is exactly that, but for digital products. It is ethical “espionage” to inform your own [[Strategy and Vision]].

The deliverable is usually a matrix or a report that compares several aspects:

  • Product/Service: What key features do they offer?
  • User Experience (UX): What does their onboarding flow look like? Is their checkout easy to use? What is their information architecture like?
  • User Interface (UI): What visual style do they have? Do they use a recognizable Design System?
  • Value Proposition: How do they position themselves in the market? Are they the cheap option, the premium one, the easiest to use?
  • Strengths and Weaknesses: What are they really good at and where do they fail?

Why Is It Important?

  • Establishes conventions and expectations: It helps you understand which design patterns and user flows are already familiar to your audience. You do not have to reinvent the wheel if it is not necessary.
  • Identifies differentiation opportunities: By seeing where your competitors fail (their weaknesses), you find opportunities for your product to shine.
  • Avoids known mistakes: You can learn from others’ mistakes without having to make them yourself.
  • Informs design decisions: It gives you a solid evidence base to justify why you are designing a feature in a certain way (“We do it this way because competitors A and B do it in a confusing manner, while competitor C solves it effectively”).

Key Methods

  1. Identify your competitors:
    • Direct: Companies that offer a very similar product to yours (e.g., Uber and Lyft).
    • Indirect: Companies that solve the same user need but with a different solution (e.g., for the need to “have a nice dinner,” an indirect competitor of a restaurant is a grocery delivery app).
  2. Create a comparison matrix: Use a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel) to create a table. Put the competitors in the rows and the features or heuristics you want to evaluate in the columns (e.g., “Ease of registration,” “Search quality,” “Clear pricing,” “Customer support”).
  3. Collect the data: Use your competitors’ products as if you were a real user. Take screenshots, record videos of the flows, and fill in your matrix with your findings.
  4. Analyze and summarize: Once the matrix is complete, look for patterns. What do they all do well? What is the most common mistake? Where is the opportunity to innovate? Write a summary with your key conclusions and recommendations.

Mentor Tips

  • Do not just copy: The goal is not to clone the competition. It is to understand the market standard so you can surpass or differentiate from it intelligently.
  • Be a real user: Do not just look at screens. Sign up, try to buy something, return a product, contact support. Live the complete experience to find the true pain points.
  • Look beyond features: Do not obsess over a simple “feature vs. feature” list. Analyze the holistic experience. A competitor may have fewer features but a much smoother and more pleasant experience.
  • It is a living document: The market changes. Review your competitive analysis periodically (every 6-12 months) to stay up to date with your competitors’ moves.

Resources and Tools

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ux research strategy technique mid-level