How to do competitive analysis of e-commerce sites

How to do competitive analysis of e commerce sites

In e-commerce, no matter how niche you go; there is always a possibility that someone may have probably already done this before you. The industry is becoming more congested as more and more organizations switch their focus to grow their online presence. In online retailing, the accurate and current competitive analysis accesses rival merchant’s strength and weakness relative to the seller own operations and thus provide them the significant benefit or identify the best possible opportunities.

By analyzing your competition and then monitoring them on an ongoing basis, you will get to know their behavior, enabling you to anticipate their actions and stay one step ahead. The e-commerce merchants who take the time to examine what their competition does online are better positioned for improving the performance and search rankings of their own site.

ecommerce competitors

To be successful in the online e-commerce business for future, you must look at what your competitors are doing and what not. This does not mean that you must steal their ideas or jump into their listing or anything unethical. Everyone approaches competition in a different manner, but knowing your field will help you to understand what they are picking between and the choice that they usually face.

This makes it tougher for the brand to build audiences as it is more challenging to nurture the customer's loyalty when the consumers have lots of options to choose from. Ironically, the best way to tackle the issue of increasing competition is to embrace your competitors and learn from them. From small and mid-sized online retailers, basic competitive analysis should include a regular, qualitative review of website, prices, product mix, etc.

Importance of Researching the Competitors

Competitive analysis does not just mean to just Google it, although it is not a bad place, to begin with. Delving more deeply though, when you want to closely analyze your competitor’s website, you should understand their brand storytelling, and then demonstrate the areas in which you are superior and should improve them. This gathering of information that pertains to your competitors is called Competitive research.

ecommerce competitors

The research that you gather about your competitors is often useful as it helps you to remain competitive in the market. This kind of research is important to the success of your business because it arms you with the ability to quickly identify the industry trends and adapt to the competitor campaigns or the strategies in order to maintain the foothold or out-compete them entirely. There are some methods that you use to monitor your ecommerce platform competitors to find out how to get more sales.

Steps to analyze Competitive Research

Let us look at the major step that one should take to analyze the competitive research in their e-commerce business so that they can achieve higher goals & growth in the market as:

Define your e-commerce business

Before you get into the thick of it with your competitors, all you need to define is your own business first. Are you’re an enterprise or startup company? You must look at the three aspects that should be considered at this phase such as:

Inventory- You must list out the skills and capabilities of your business.
Customer needs- With your skill set as a guide; you should identify the customer’s pain point and potential ways that you can provide solutions.
Differentiate- Highlight the major areas that make your brand and business completely different. You must be different from what is already available to you.

Categorize main competitors

Your competitive gathering starts from digging through social media to find more and more information about their brand and style. You should use Google and Amazon to find the organization that has similar business models and products. You can also organize your competitor list on the spreadsheet, including basic information like their store name, website, mission, strengths, weakness, social following, etc. Ideally, you must gather 5-10 competitors which are similar to your in strategy and few market leaders which are little different.

Examine your competitor’s website

The next step is analyzing the website of each competitor so that you can glean some insights about the customer experience that they offer. You should include:

Product- How is the product description mentioned? What info do they provide? What photos are used and how everything is displayed?
Blog- How often do they post? What content is included in it? What voice is used?

ecommerce competitors

Identify market positioning

When you look into the positioning strategy of your nearest competitors, you may get the sense of the market and the expectation of your target audience. By looking at their website, you can review their brand messaging. To really take your analysis to the next level, you must join their mailing list and follow their blog and social media channels as well.

Consider their pricing strategy

This is one of the core components of any e-commerce business and you can leverage it to get an edge on similar competitors. It has been reported that over 60% of online consumer consider the price of products as the top priority in making purchasing decisions. This allows you to craft marketing campaigns which are aligned with the customer perception about your products and prices.

[Also Read: Which one is a better platform: Shopify vs Woocommerce]

Conclusion

With the competitive analysis, you can obtain the information that you can use for improving your business position relative to your competitors. You should review your e-commerce website every three months; monitor the changes in the competition and how well your business performs in comparison to that.