competitor analysis ux research

Competitor Analysis UX Research: Your Ultimate Guide

Updated: October 23, 2023

Published: April 04, 2023

What's one of the best ways to understand how your business can stand out in a saturated marketplace? UX competitive analysis, of course. Regardless of how new or established, large or small, prominent or up-and-coming your company is, completing competitor analysis UX research can help fill significant gaps.

This post will walk you through the competitor analysis that UX researchers complete. You'll learn more about UX competitive analysis, why it's crucial, how to get started, and even see an example to help get the creative juices flowing. 

What is Competitive Analysis in UX?

Why is the competitor analysis ux researchers so essential, how to get started with competitor analysis, ux competitive analysis example, best practices for competitive analysis ux research.

UX competitive analysis is helpful for designers looking to gain insight into what works for the competition — and what doesn't. Competitive analysis is a user experience research method to better understand similar websites your users visit. For instance, if you're working on creating a website for a SaaS startup, you should complete a competitor analysis UX audit on other similar companies.

You might wonder if a UX competitive analysis wastes valuable time, money, and resources. The answer is no. Walking through the process lets you learn what already exists and how it functions. You'll learn the intricacies of the competitors' sites' features, flow, and structure. And no, this doesn't just apply to websites — you can use it for apps or products, too. Most importantly, you'll experience firsthand any experiences using the competitor's site evokes, such as frustration. Then, you can use that information to create a site that delights visitors .

Ultimately, thanks to what you learn through the competitive analysis process, UX designers can apply findings to ensure your website or app is up to par. For instance, you can identify recurring trends or themes through competitive analysis. You can also gain insight into user expectations and needs, shaping how designers build your site.

When should you complete a competitor analysis?

When is the best time to complete a competitor analysis? With this, the sooner, the better. With competitor analysis, UX researchers will better understand what needs to happen (or shouldn't) to make your site or app successful. Therefore, if you wait too long to complete this step, you'll likely have to backtrack.

If you're applying competitor analysis UX research to site creation and starting from scratch, ensure this step is complete before your team starts designing. Or, if you're remodeling your website , you should do this at the early stages of the site refresh.

Of course, new competitors can pop up at any time, so make sure you revisit your findings and open and re-evaluate if it's time to complete another analysis. This will help ensure your site is up to par with others dominating the market.

The competitor analysis UX researchers complete is crucial to your site's success because it provides insights into making your website go above and beyond what's already out there. It might not matter if that competitor is larger and more powerful than your small startup if the competitor's site is finicky and frustrates visitors due to navigation issues.

You'll learn your competitors' weaknesses with UX competitive analysis, and then you can use that insight to finetune your website. As a result, your business can do something the competition can't: Provide visitors with a seamless user experience that leaves them happy to return to your website.

Now that you know competitor analysis is necessary for UX researchers, let's walk through how to begin. First, ask yourself a few questions:

What do I want to achieve with this competitor analysis?

What makes this business unique? Is it — or its target audience — comparable to mine?

Are there specific features I'm investigating? Some popular features include signing in, creating an account, searching on the site, making a purchase, or signing up.

Once you have the answers to those questions, it's time to outline your competition. Keep it simple by sticking with three to five competitors. Anything more than that, and your analysis quickly becomes overwhelming and less comprehensive. 

Now, you'll want to create a place to store your findings. The most efficient way to do this is by creating a spreadsheet where your learnings are easy to find. Once done, you can complete a heuristic evaluation of your competitors' sites. (Have questions about where to start with that heuristic eval? We've got you covered .)

When you're on their site, identify on your spreadsheet the most critical features users engage with. For instance, you might immediately notice the competitor has a prominent search bar , massive navigation menu, and thorough footer . Depending on the competitor's site, feel free to customize the features you're investigating.

Once you've identified what features you're making a note of on your spreadsheet, walk through each and complete it like you're a user. In your spreadsheet, you can note how you feel about the features. For example, mention if the menu disappears too quickly if you move your mouse or think the website navigation isn't accessibility-friendly .

Once you've repeated the steps for the other two to four websites you identified as competition, and your website, if it's already created, you can create a takeaway list regarding what the competitors' strengths and weaknesses are. From there, you will have more insight into must-haves as you bring your site to life.

Let's run through a UX competitive analysis example to help you get a better feel for what to expect. Say we have a small, vegan, cruelty-free makeup line for which we're launching a website. In this example, we'll compare the websites of two makeup companies: Tower 28 and iNNBEAUTY PROJECT .

If we were completing this analysis, we'd follow the steps outlined and create a spreadsheet that looks like this:

We focused on navigation, social media account presence, email sign-up options, and accessibility options. Here's a close-up look at what our analysis looks like:

Now that we have this information, we'd use it to create insights into what's important to us as we build our site. For instance, we didn't like that iNNBEAUTY PROJECT buried its accessibility options in the footer. When creating our site, we'd consider that.

Now that you're armed with knowledge on getting started and examples to help guide you, here are some competitive analysis UX research best practices to remember.

Don't overdo it.

There's no reason to compare yourself to 10 competitors. With this form of research, more isn't necessarily merrier. Instead, stick with your three to five main competitors. And once you get your key takeaways from their site, abandon it. Remember: You're not trying to copy their design. You're trying to get inspiration to ensure your site excels.

Include your site in the analysis — if it's already built.

If your site or app is already built, remember to include it in the analysis. Seeing it compared to the competition will help you look deeper into where your site excels or falls short.

Consider further testing.

Competitive analysis should give you a thorough understanding of competitors' site functionality and how yours stacks up. But sometimes, more testing truly is needed. Consider usability testing or a preference test.

Know what you're looking for.

Are there specific features you're targeting with this research? For instance, do you want to hone in on how competitors' navigation impacts user experience? Or do you want to analyze the placement of their CTAs? Either way, jot down exactly what features you're looking into — the more specific, the better.

Use competitor analysis UX research to inspire your site design.

Now that you've discovered more about this research method and seen a UX competitive analysis example, it's time to begin applying your learnings to your website. Trust us: Your user experience will be better for it!

Don't forget to share this post!

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Competitive Analysis for UX – Top 6 Research Methods

A UX competitive analysis is a crucial part of UX research . It’s an opportunity for designers to leverage what works, avoid what doesn’t, and identify gaps to gain a competitive advantage. 

A UX competitor analysis can also help designers understand their users better. By looking at the competition through customers’ eyes, UX researchers can empathize better to discover what excites and frustrates them.

Get better results from user testing with UXPin’s advanced prototyping and testing tool . Design high-fidelity prototypes with code-like functionality that mimic your product’s user experience. Sign up for a free trial to explore all of UXPin’s advanced features.

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What is a UX Competitive Analysis?

A UX competitive analysis is a technique that UX researchers use to understand the competition, identify opportunities, and find an edge. This analysis provides UX design teams with valuable insights to develop a UX strategy and enhance a product’s user experience as well as business value.

A UX competitive analysis focuses primarily on design and interaction, but UX researchers also consider how business and other facets impact the overall user experience.

Why Should You Do a UX Competitive Analysis?

There are several reasons why you want to conduct a UX competitive analysis.

• Understand your market position and share
• Develop a UX strategy and prioritize the design process
• Discover how competitors solve similar usability issues
• Learn about failures and how to avoid them
• Determine competition strengths and weaknesses
• Learn about trends and innovation
• Support user and market research

What’s the Purpose of a UX Competitive Analysis?

A UX competitive analysis aims to complement other UX research to get a comprehensive picture of the market, competitors, products, and users. Here are several scenarios where designers conduct competitive analysis:

Building a new Product or Feature

UX competitor analysis is a crucial part of discovery-phase research. UX teams use this competitive analysis to understand the competitive landscape and find opportunities.

Identify Market Gaps

UX researchers can use competitive analysis to identify gaps and opportunities. These gaps could be product innovation or simply a better pricing structure.

Finding a gap in the market gives a company an edge over the competition, making their product more desirable.

Companies don’t always look for gaps; they often improve on (or steal) innovative competitor ideas. Facebook is renowned for copying the competition , while Twitter ended Clubhouse’s reign as the social audio platform with Spaces .

Support UX Research

Design teams also use a UX competitive analysis to confirm a hypothesis or support user research. 

When Should You Do a UX Competitive Audit?

UX teams conduct a UX competitive analysis at the start of a new project during the early stages of the design process. As the competitive landscape and market change regularly, designers keep informed by conducting periodic competitor research.

Types of Competitors to Audit for UX

Competition falls into two categories:

• Direct competitors
• Indirect competitors

Understanding direct competitors can help improve your product and pricing to make your brand more desirable, while indirect competition could expose new opportunities.

Who are Direct competitors?

Direct competitors offer the same goods and services to the same or overlapping target market. These competitors generally compete on price because their offerings are so similar.

Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are direct competitors offering similar products to a similar target market.

Who are Indirect competitors?

Indirect competitors operate in the same market space but offer different products. While these are different products, they usually fulfill the same need, so the customer chooses one over another.

Instagram and LinkedIn are indirect competitors. While these platforms fulfill different needs, they both compete for user attention.

For example, many couples go out for dinner and a movie. A cinema with a restaurant in the foyer competes with other local cinemas (direct competitors) and restaurants (indirect competitors).

In tech, we often see indirect competitors with product overlaps. For example, Twitter and YouTube are indirect competitors, but the former offers video hosting for Tweets to keep users on the platform.

Before Twitter offered video hosting, users had to upload video content to their YouTube account and share the link in a Tweet. Nowadays, Twitter users don’t need a YouTube account to share video content, and you can embed Tweet videos in blog posts, resulting in less traffic for YouTube.

6 UX Competitive Analysis Research Methods

Here are six methods for analyzing the competition.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is an analysis technique companies can use internally or against the competition. Companies can conduct a SWOT analysis on an entire industry, market, competitor, product range, or a single product.

A SWOT assesses four key areas:

• Strengths: Where is a competitor strongest? Areas where the competition makes it most difficult to compete.
• Weaknesses: Where is your competition weakest? What don’t they offer or do poorly? Pro tip: You can usually find this answer in your competitor’s 1-star reviews.
• Opportunities: What opportunities are open to your competition that they’re currently not exploiting? This opportunity could be a simple feature like one-click checkouts for an eCommerce brand to increase conversions.
• Threats: What could potentially harm your competitor’s business? These threats are usually external, like competition, legislation, politics, technology, etc.

This article from Investopedia provides a step-by-step guide to conducting a SWOT analysis.

Using a Competitor’s Product

One of the easiest ways to “spy” on your competition and gather data is using their products. For example:

• Firstly, what are your competitor’s touchpoints? What happens when you land on their website, download the app, read a blog article, etc.? How does the competition turn traffic into users and then paying customers?
• How does your competitor present its products and pricing to customers?
• What happens when you sign up for a free trial?
• How easy is it to upgrade? And more importantly, do they make it easy to cancel–what’s that process like?
• Analyze the overall UI design , including layout, microinteractions, colors, typography, etc. 
• Use the product as a customer to complete tasks. Were there any pain points? What does your competitor do well and poorly?

Treat yourself as a usability participant by using an empathy map to record your feelings and emotions using your competitor’s product. Maybe you were confused and frustrated by an unclear pricing structure, or the intuitive UI and microinteractions made it fun to use the product.

Reading Competitors’ Reviews

Reviews from mobile app stores, social media (Facebook pages, Twitter mentions), marketplaces, and websites like TrustPilot are excellent resources for analyzing competitors (and also your product’s UX ). These customer reviews allow you to find out what customers love and hate about your competition.

Spend time analyzing reviews to find positive and negative patterns, and compare these patterns with your other research. Customers often leave comments like, “I wish the product could…” These types of reviews allow designers to identify gaps that competitors aren’t filling.

Comparison Chart

Comparison charts are best for direct competitors that offer similar product features. For example, you might want to compare a paid plan to your competitors to determine which company offers customers the most value.

This article from EdrawMax provides a breakdown of the five kinds of comparison charts and how to conduct one.

User Journey Comparison

User journeys map how customers complete tasks from start to end. Optimizing this end-to-end process can enhance the user experience and increase conversions.

Comparing your user journeys to successful competitors could uncover the keys to their secret to their success. For example, you might discover your competitors use fewer steps or strategic CTA placement to convert more customers.

Usability Test on a Competitor’s Prototype

One way to compare the competition is by building a prototype replica of their product or flow to see how users interact and engage with it. Designers can use these insights to revise their designs and make improvements.

The aim isn’t to copy your competition. Instead, you’re studying participants’ reactions and asking questions about which prototype they find more intuitive, attractive, and engaging.

Prototyping and Testing in UXPin

UXPin’s code-based design tool allows designers to build intuitive and engaging prototypes with user interfaces that look and function like the final product. 

UXPin prototypes get actionable feedback from stakeholders and meaningful results from usability studies to improve the product and create the best user experience.

UXPin also enhances collaboration between design teams and engineers, resulting in less rework and smoother design handoffs . This enhanced workflow reduces time-to-market–an crucial metric in today’s competitive market.

Design systems are another way companies get an edge over the competition with better quality, consistency, and a faster time-to-market. UXPin allows startups and small businesses to build, manage, and scale a design system from scratch .

Designers can also use built-in design systems like Material Design, Bootstrap, iOS, and Foundation to prototype ideas fast!  

Enhance your end-to-end design process and get an edge over the competition with the world’s most advanced code-based design tool. Sign up for a free trial and start designing better user experiences for your customers with UXPin.

Build prototypes that are as interactive as the end product. Try UXPin

by UXPin on 1st June, 2022

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How To Do A UX Competitor Analysis: A Step By Step Guide

By Steven Douglas

Getting to grips with the ins and outs of a UX competitor analysis can help you know your market, product and goals better. You will also understand the competition, get actionable insights and boost your brand. With an almost limitless number of competitors out there all vying for attention, the heat is on to understand exactly what you are doing right (or wrong) to create an effortless user experience and a product that people enjoy using.

What is a UX Competitor Analysis and How do You do One?

UX competitor analysis is one of many UX research methods and if you’d like to get practical skills within a wide range of UX research methods, then we suggest you take the course called “ User Research – Methods and Best Practices ” by the Interaction Design Foundation. This article will only cover one such research method, namely UX competitor analysis.

There is a lot that goes into doing a thorough UX competitor analysis, but at its heart, a competitor analysis consists of two basic phases:

• Knowing how to research properly and understand exactly what information you are looking for.
• Synthesizing that information before acting on your findings.

A competitor analysis means knowing your product or service like the back of your hand and stacking that up against the competition out there. There are standard principles (aka heuristics and heuristic evaluation ) for user interface design which can be used when conducting a competitor analysis. These principles are a general guide and are not set in stone, so you are free to create your own set of standards. These can include anything from specific UI patterns to interaction models.

Daniel Newman at Forbes points out that “if you don’t look at the data showing what you’re doing wrong in CX and UX, customers will leave your site, store, or app. It’s no longer a question. There are simply too many other options available to accept a less-than-stellar experience”

One way to know where you are going wrong is through a competitor analysis.

Why do a UX Competitor Analysis?

There is a multitude of reasons why you would want to carry out a UX competitor analysis. One simple reason is that you have not done one before. It is always beneficial for UX designers to acquaint themselves with research methods to better inform their design practice. Aside from that, however, there are some other important reasons why you would want to do a UX competitor analysis:

• To help you solve usability problems, as per this definition of usability
• To understand where your product or service stands in the market
• To inform the design process
• To know the strengths and weaknesses of your competition
• To have reliable evidence when making product changes
• To focus your efforts in a target market

The Benefits of Carrying out a UX Competitor Analysis

Carrying out a UX competitor analysis will empower your business choices. But how? Through researching the competition, you can glean insights from the data you collect and make informed UX design decisions .

Market Gaps

A competitor analysis allows UX designers to find out if there are any gaps in the market. For example, through your research, you may discover a feature that your competitors’ products do not have. Imagine you identify a feature that would help an underserved market, let us say students in this case. By understanding the gap (that is, students’ likes and dislikes, interests, values, budget etc.) you will be able to plan for this feature better and make sure of its popularity among target users.

Developing Products or Services

As UXers, we iterate products and services countless times. But these iterations must be backed up with evidence and research. When you identify market gaps, like in the previous example, you can fill them by developing your product or service accordingly.

To illustrate, say you offer a monthly and annual subscription for a non-descript music service. After carrying out your competitor research, you have found out that these are the two most common payment methods. But you also discovered through your research that many of your users are students who signed up to the free version and then disappeared. You could use these insights to develop a new subscription at a discounted student price.

That is just one way of using what you learn from competitor analysis to improve your product.

Are there any Limitations to a Competitor Analysis?

Unfortunately, a competitor analysis is not the solution to all your UX woes. While it is preferable to conduct a UX competitor analysis and it makes sound business sense, there are some pitfalls to the method.

James R Lucas in his book Fatal Illusions: Shedding a Dozen Unrealities That Can Keep Your Organization from Success says, “as long as we appear to be doing better than someone else, we can feel that we must be doing well, so we don’t need to change.”

Lucas perfectly highlights one of the limitations of the UX competitor analysis: that you can be on the same level, if not higher than your competitor, but this does not give you information to really innovate and lead. If you spend too much time looking at a competitive analysis, you may be missing the mark when it comes to creating truly innovative solutions. You can use your insights to create a strategy that will generate an asset or skill that competitors do not have, but that is down to your ability, not the competitor analysis.

Likewise, another limitation to the UX competitor analysis is that the insights gleaned from the information are only as good as the person understanding and interpreting them. Jennifer Cardello points out that the biggest issues with analytics is that it can become a “distracting black hole of “interesting” data without actionable insights.” Depending on how well you can evaluate the information will determine how valuable that information is.

How to do a UX Competitor Analysis

1. understand your goals.

Why are you doing this competitor analysis? What do you hope to achieve? Will this research impact UX decisions? Your goals should ideally be as specific as possible and hopefully assessable so consider the issues you’re trying to address with the competitor analysis.

Keep your goals at the front of your mind when carrying out your analysis so you can always refer to them without losing sight.

2. ‘Really’ know your competition

At this point, you might want to open a Google spreadsheet or chart and start creating a table of information. Jaime Levy has a comprehensive outline for creating a competitive analysis matrix . A good number at the beginning stage is around 5-10 direct and indirect competitors, so you can easily maintain and track what your competition is doing.

• Direct competition consists of those people and companies who are doing what you do already. You share the same customers (or better still, you want their customers to become yours) and they offer the same product or service that you do.
• Indirect competition is composed of those who offer something similar to what you offer. Maybe it is not the first part of their product or service but the second or third.

The nature of business means that competition can pop up at any time, anywhere. Keep a note of your competitors as they arise, so you do not forget them.

3. Look for commonalities among competitors

When looking for commonalities, it is a good idea to write down the actions users can perform, as well as the user journey of competitor products and services, and see if they match with what you are offering. Things to consider:

• The tone and copy of the competitor
• Good and bad features
• User reviews
• Wait/load times
• Customer service

Do not forget about the set of standards mentioned earlier which you can refer to. All of this can be put into your spreadsheet for reference.

4. Analyze and summarise

When analysing your UX research , create a small summary of what you have found out as well as what impact the information will have. This stage is perfect for identifying design opportunities because you understand your competitors’ flaws (as well as your own).

Your analysis and summary can be used to convince team members, and stakeholders of any design changes you think would be beneficial or to argue for innovation .

5. Present your UX competitor analysis

After you have compiled your research, analysed it and synthesised the information into actionable insights, it is time to prepare a presentation of your findings for clients or stakeholders. This is your opportunity to act on those findings. You can even calculate the ROI of your UX activities to add weight to your findings.

Create a PowerPoint presentation containing the interesting information, backed up with evidence. It is vital that you discuss the impact of your research, more than the general findings: the impact is what can be transformed into actions which can transform business.

Focus on any surprises that came out of your research as this will be more engaging for your audience. Dharmesh Mistry has a few tips on just how to present your research effectively.

Common UX Research Pitfalls

Susan Farrell over at NNG has created a UX research cheat sheet to save you from falling foul of common UX research pitfalls.

A common error when carrying out a UX competitor analysis is the never-ending list. The last thing you want is to be drowning in information without any insights. That is why knowing your goals from the outset can help prevent this and give you focus.

Since the data is only as good as the person analysing it, to save yourself from misinterpreting the information you have compiled, it is advisable that you share your findings with a few other people (preferably someone who handles and interprets data regularly).

It can be tempting to reach preposterous conclusions from the data, especially when you factor in a generous dose of wishful thinking. Asking for advice means you can make sure the data and findings you present are accurate. UX designers should brush up on their analytical skills before attempting to do any analysis.

We live in a data-driven world , and the age of analytics reigns supreme. With so much data at our fingertips, it can be tempting to get lost among the numbers and percentages.

Carrying out a focused and thoughtful UX competitor analysis can help you get valuable insights that can help in multiple ways: generating more profit for the business, changing significant design elements of your product or service, or persuading key team members to innovate or move in a new direction.

Want to learn more?

If you’d like to improve your skills in User Research , then consider to take the online course User Research – Methods and Best Practices . Alternatively, there is an entire course on Usability Testing which includes templates you can use in your own projects. Lastly, if you want to brush up on the basics of UX and Usability , then consider to take the online course on User Experience . Good luck on your learning journey!

(Lead image: Depositphotos – affiliate link )

About Steven Douglas

Steven Douglas is Marketing Content Editor at Justinmind , a prototyping tool that allows you to prototype web and mobile apps so you can visualize and test your software solution before writing a single line of code. When he’s not in the middle of a deadline, he can be found hiking with his dog Fig or on the badminton court.

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How to do competitor analysis for ux design (2024), saviour egbe, january 5, 2024.

UX competitor analysis is a critical step in the UX design process. By understanding your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can identify areas where you can improve your own designs and create a better experience for your users.

In today's competitive market, it's more important than ever to have a strong user experience (UX). Users have high expectations for the products and services they use, and they're quick to switch to a competitor if they're not satisfied.

Competitor analysis can help you understand what your competitors are doing well, and where they could improve. By identifying your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can develop a UX strategy that will help you stand out from the crowd.

In this guide, we'll take a deep dive into competitor analysis for UXR. We'll cover the following topics:

What is Competitor Analysis in UX?

• Methods of UX Competitor Analysis
• Examples and a case study of competitor analysis
• How to analyze your competitor data
• Template and resources for UX competitor analysis

Competitor analysis is a UX research process that UX designers or researchers use to understand their competitors' strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. This information can then be used to identify areas where they can improve their own designs, such as:

• Features and functionality: What features do your competitors offer that your product or service doesn't? Are there any features that your users are asking for that your competitors don't offer?
• User experience: How easy is it for users to use your competitors' products or services? Are there any pain points that your users are experiencing?
• Marketing and sales strategy: How are your competitors marketing and selling their products or services? What are their strengths and weaknesses in this area?

The goal of competitor analysis is to: 1. Be aware of what’s already available in the market, what others are doing well or badly 2. Find opportunities to differentiate your own product or service from the competition 3. Provide inspiration for how you might want to approach a problem or user flow

‍ What products should you run competitor analysis on? 

To truly understand your competition, you need to look at direct competitors of your product (products built to solve the exact problem you’re working on) and indirect competitors (products not built for your target audience but that are being used regardless).

Direct UX Competitor Analysis

This type of analysis focuses on your direct competitors, which are companies that offer  products or services in the same categories as you do.

By understanding your direct competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can identify areas where you can improve or differentiate your own products or services.  For instance, if your competitors have focused on creating a complex tool with every possible functionality, you could differentiate by providing a simpler, self-serve product that meets the users’ core needs.

Let’s take an example. In the product analytics market, companies like MixPanel and Amplitude offer full-featured solutions that include all the bells and whistles you may need. However, they’re complex to set up and use. Alternatives like June so have emerged as competitors that offer a simple, stream-lined product analytics solution you can set up in one day, even if they don’t offer every feature MixPanel does.

By reviewing competitors in the marketplace and identifying something they do badly (speed to insight, ease of use) that a set of users care a lot about, June was able to create a strong product offering.

Indirect UX Competitor Analysis

This type of analysis focuses on your indirect competitors, which are companies that offer different products or services, but that could potentially compete with you for your customers. 

By understanding your indirect competitors' offerings, you can identify new opportunities to reach your target market or identify unmet user needs. 

Going back to the example of June.so— it is still possible to review product analytics data in an excel sheet. In fact, many teams do just that even though excel isn’t technically a product analytics tool.

By reviewing Excel and how product teams use it for product analytics, June (a product analytics tool) could answer questions like:

• Why do users use excel for analytics at all? What does excel provide that existing tools do not?
• Is there something June can do better than excel—faster, more easily—that would be valuable to users who still rely on excel?

Main types of Competitor Analysis in UX

When it comes to competitor analysis in UX, there are a number of different types of methods that can be used.  Below are some methods we would highly recommend using when you’re trying to deeply understand your competition.

1. Trying your competitors’ products

There’s no better way to learn about a competitor's offering and understand why users use it, than to try it yourself. If you’re analyzing how competitors solved a specific user flow, you may want to test just that flow across products.

For example, if you’re designing a Slack integration, you may want to see how direct competitors and other companies have built a Slack integration.

You may want to answer questions like, how do they help users set up the integration? Is the starting point from Slack or from the product itself? How do they educate users to even discover that this integration exists?

However, if you’re reviewing where your product may strategically lie versus competitors, don’t jump straight into product nitty gritties. Cover your bases by paying attention to the entire user journey: ‍

1. Review the competitor’s website. What does their copy communicate to potential customers? Which features do they highlight most? How are they positioning themselves in the eyes of your customers? ‍

2. Sign up & onboarding. What are the steps to get access to the product? Do customers have to set up a demo to try it out, or is there a self-serve flow? How much friction is there before you can experience the product’s value? ‍

3. Core product features. Review the flow of the product and the specific features you’re competing against. You may want to differentiate yourself by investing more than your competitors have in features that are really meaningful to your users. ‍

4. Sales, marketing & support. A user’s experience is not limited to the time they spend on the product. Every email they get from a company, every support and sales interaction is part of their user experience.

2. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. SWOT is a UX competitor analysis method that can be used to assess a company's or product's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats in its environment.

To do a SWOT analysis, you can follow these steps:

1. Identify the four components . The four components of SWOT analysis are:

• Strengths: These are the positive aspects of a company or product. They can include things like its brand reputation, how well it solves a users’ problem, or any other factor that helps it stand out and win customers.
• Weaknesses: These are the negative aspects of a company or product. They can include things like its prohibitive pricing, lack of innovation, or poor customer service.
• Opportunities: These are the external factors that could benefit a company or product. They can include things like new market trends, new technologies, or changes in customer behavior.
• Threats: These are the external factors that could harm a company or product. They can include things like new competition, changes in regulations, or economic downturns.

2. Gather data. Once you have identified the four components, you need to gather data to support your analysis. This data can be collected through surveys, interviews, market research, and other methods. A quick look at customer reviews of a product on G2 or an App Store is a great place to start. ‍ 3. Analyze the data. Once you have gathered data, you need to analyze it to identify the most important strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Group the data you’ve gathered into themes until you start seeing clear patterns on a competitor's key strengths and weaknesses. Do users love their amazing transcription and AI features ( that’s us! )? Are users complaining about pricing?  4. Develop strategies . Once you have analyzed the data, you need to develop strategies to capitalize on the opportunities and mitigate the threats. These strategies should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

By conducting a SWOT analysis, you can identify areas where you can improve your company's competitive position. For example, if your competitors’ weakness is their poor customer service, you can use this information to differentiate yourself from them and attract new customers.

3. Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of comparing your products or services to those of your competitors. It can be used to identify your strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities for improvement. By benchmarking your UX, you can learn from the best practices of your competitors and make your own products or services more user-friendly and engaging.

Here are some tips on how to use benchmarking for competitor analysis in UX:

• Identify your competitors. Identify 3-4 competitors (direct or indirect ones) you compete against and would like to win market share from. For a product analytics tool like June, this list may include MixPanel, Amplitude, and excel. 
• Choose the right criteria. In your target market, users will care most about 3-4 core criteria. These may be cost, ease of use, customer service, or certain features. Informed by user interviews, list the key criteria your users care about that you can differentiate on. If you don’t know what these are, speak to your users first! Use a product like Looppanel to make it 10x faster to discover insights from these interviews . 
• Collect data. Collect data on these key themes from your competitors by visiting their websites, using their products or services, and reading their customer reviews.
• Analyze the data. Once you have collected data on your competitors' UX, you need to analyze it. List all your data on an excel sheet or Miro board so you can compare across competitors in a single view. 
• Make improvements. Once you have identified areas for improvement, you need to make changes to your own UX. This could involve making changes to the design, functionality, or content of your product or service.

To make it easier for you to run competitive benchmarking analysis, we have created a template you can copy and use .

4. Customer Journey Mapping

This type of UX competitor analysis maps out the customer's experience with your company, from the moment they become aware of your brand to the moment they make a purchase. 

Let's say you are a UX designer for an online retailer. You want to improve the customer journey for your website, so you start by mapping out the customer's experience. You identify the following steps in the customer journey:

• The customer becomes aware of your brand through a search engine or social media.
• The customer visits your website and browses your products.
• The customer adds items to their cart and begins the checkout process.
• The customer enters their shipping and payment information.
• The customer confirms their order and completes the purchase.

Once you have mapped out the customer journey, you can start to identify areas where you can improve the experience.

For instance, you may realize that your users drop off in the checkout process, but your competitors’ flow is much simpler. What can you learn from them? What steps can you remove in your own flow?

5. Customer Review Analysis

Customer reviews are a valuable source of information about your competitors' products or services. They can tell you what customers like and dislike, what they find confusing or frustrating, and what they would like to see improved. By reading customer reviews, you can gain insights into your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, their target audience, and how you can improve your own products or services.

Here are some tips on how to use customer reviews for competitor analysis in UX: ‍

1. Find customer reviews for your competitors. Depending on whether your product / service is B2B or B2C, you will find customer reviews in different places.

• B2B: G2, Capterra, GetApp, TrustRadius
• B2C: Google Play Store, Apple Store reviews
• Other sources: social channels where your audience hangs out like communities and Reddit can be meaningful places to find product reviews and feedback.

2. Capture and analyze. Copy as many reviews as you can to an excel sheet or Miro board. Start grouping the reviews based on underlying patterns. Are most users complaining about price? Usability? Or the lack of a feature? 

3. Use the insights to improve your own products or services. Use the insights you gained from the customer reviews to improve your own products or services. This could involve making changes to the design, functionality, or pricing of your product or service.

When using customer reviews for competitor analysis in UX, it is important to keep in mind that:

• Customer reviews can be biased. Some customers may be more likely to leave negative reviews than positive reviews. This is especially true if they have had a negative experience with a product or service.
• Customer reviews can be inaccurate. Some customers may not be fully informed about the product or service they are reviewing. This can lead to inaccurate or misleading reviews.
• Customer reviews can be outdated. Customer reviews can change over time. It is important to read the reviews recently to get the most accurate information.

Customer reviews can be a valuable tool for competitor analysis in UX. However, it is important to use them wisely and to be aware of their limitations.

6. User interviews

User interviews are a qualitative research method that involves talking to users about their experiences with a product or service. They can be a valuable tool for competitor analysis in UX, as they can help you to understand how your competitors' products or services are being used and what their users like and dislike about them. 

Running interviews with people who have used your direct or indirect competitors' products can help you uncover deeper insights than some of the other methods listed. You can even ask to see how they use these tools and understand what the tool is solving for them.

To run user interviews, you’ll need to follow this process:

1. Identify your target users. Who are the people who are using your competitors' products or services? What are their needs and wants? ‍

2. Recruit participants. You can recruit participants for your user interviews through online surveys, social media, or word-of-mouth.

3. Prepare your user interview questions. Your questions should be open-ended and designed to get the participants talking about their experiences with your competitors' products or services.

4. Conduct the interviews. Be sure to listen carefully to what the participants have to say and ask follow-up questions to get more information. Looppanel can help you while conducting user interviews by:

• Recording your live-sessions 
• Transcribing your interviews so you can focus on listening and asking follow-up questions
• Generating AI-powered notes that summarize the key points of your interviews
• Providing insights into the participants' emotions and motivations. This is possible via the sentiment analysis feature on Looppanel.

This can help you to listen more carefully to what the participants have to say and to ask more relevant follow-up questions. It can also help you to identify common themes and patterns in the participants' responses more easily.

5. Analyze the data. Once you have conducted the interviews, you need to analyze the data. Products like Looppanel can help you to analyze your user interview data by:

• Identifying common themes and patterns in the data.
• Generating visualizations of the data that can help you to see the patterns more easily.
• Easily create and share video clips from your user interviews with your team. This clip can be used to highlight the user's feedback about a particular feature or so.

6. Make improvements. Once you have analyzed the data, you need to make improvements to your own product or service based on the feedback you received from the participants.

The Essence of Competitor Analysis in UX

At Looppanel, we believe that competitor analysis is essential for anyone who wants to create a truly great user experience and a powerful product. By understanding your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, you can identify areas where you can improve your own designs and stand out from the crowd.

Here are a few of the key insights we've learned about competitor analysis in UX:

• It's not just about copying your competitors. UX competitor analysis is not about simply copying what your competitors are doing. It's about understanding what they're doing well or not so well, and then using that information to create a better, differentiated experience for your own users.
• It's about finding your own unique value proposition. In today's competitive market, it's not enough to just be "good enough." You need to find a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors and offer something unique that your users will value.
• It's about continuous improvement. The landscape of UX is constantly evolving, so it's important to keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Competitor analysis can help you identify areas where you can improve your designs and stay ahead of the curve.

If you're looking to create a truly great user experience, competitor analysis is a must. By following the insights we've shared, you can gain a deeper understanding of your competitors and use that information to create a better experience for your own users.

Competitor Analysis Template + Example

Let's take a look at a competitor analysis UX case study.

Imagine that you're a UX designer for a new e-commerce website that sells shoes. Your target audience is young adults who are interested in fashion.

Your direct competitors would be other e-commerce websites that sell shoes, such as Zappos, Foot Locker, and Finish Line. You would want to study these websites to see what features they offer, their pricing, their user interface, and their marketing strategies.

For example, you might find that Zappos offers a wider selection of shoes than you do, or that Foot Locker has a better user interface. Also, you might find that Finish Line had a more effective marketing strategy. This information would help you make decisions about the design of your own website, such as:

• Expanding the selection of shoes to compete with Zappos.
• Improving the user interface to match Foot Locker's.
• Developing a more effective marketing strategy to compete with Finish Line.
• Alternatively, you could choose to appeal to a completely different segment by saying, we’ll have better quality shoes than anyone else in the market.

Your indirect competitors would be companies that sell fashion products, such as clothing, accessories, and makeup. You would want to study these companies to see what trends they're following, what their target audience is, and how they're marketing their products.

For example, you might find that accessories companies are growing quickly by capitilizing on  influencer marketing.  If you share a target audience with them, you could adopt the same marketing strategy for your products.

By conducting this UX/UI competitor analysis, you would be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, as well as opportunities for your own product or service. 

Here is a UX Competitor Analysis template that you can use to analyze the information you’ve gathered: Download UX Competitor Analysis Template .

This template is designed to help you analyze the UX design of your competitors. It includes the basics of the company (competitor name, link, description), as well as space for screenshots of key user flows,, and the top strengths and weaknesses of their approach.

Feel free to copy it to your workspace and customize it for your own needs!

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Conducting a UX competitor analysis for improved user experience

Last updated

14 March 2023

Reviewed by

Tanya Williams

By taking the time to evaluate the strategies used by your competitors, you can gain insight into how their users interact with their websites and what tactics they use to drive engagement. By studying the UX of your competitors, you can learn from their successes and mistakes. Ultimately, this can help you identify improvement areas in your product. 

In this blog post, we'll go over the step-by-step process of conducting a UX competitor analysis, so you can make your website even more user-friendly and engaging.

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• What is competitor analysis?

Competitor analysis is a strategy that involves researching major competitors in the industry. This analysis is used by businesses to gain insight into their competitors' products, sales, and marketing tactics.

The insights gained from a competitive analysis can be used to shape a company's marketing plan, implement stronger strategies, and capture market share.

This research of industry trends can ensure that your product consistently meets and exceeds industry standards. 

Competitor analysis templates

• Why is competitor analysis important for UX?

Conducting a competitor analysis in UX design enables designers to see competitors' design decisions and identify the latest trends and potential opportunities to stay ahead of the competition. 

By routinely running a competitor analysis, businesses can stay ahead of market shifts and adjust their product or services accordingly. It is also an effective way to find growth opportunities and identify any potential weaknesses in their competitors' strategies and designs. 

Additionally, a competitor analysis can help brands understand how customers perceive their competitors and identify opportunities to differentiate themselves from them.

• How to conduct a competitor analysis

The first step to conducting a UX competitor analysis is determining the focus and setting up objectives. Although the end aim of the competitor analysis is to get a clearer view of your competitors' design, UX, and business strategies, setting up smaller goals before beginning is vital. Such goals can involve learning which user experience features your competitors are successful in, identifying weak points of their user experience, or understanding which features are most often utilized.

Identifying your competitors is a critical element of conducting a competitor analysis. Look into the other companies in your market that present similar services or products. This can help you understand the size of the market and how your company fits in the overall scheme. 

Having proper test devices is important to precisely review the user experience. Depending on your industry, there may be different types of devices you need to use. 

If you are assessing websites, you should consider using both a desktop computer and a mobile device. In addition to having the most recent version and software updates, it is essential to use the same devices your competitors are targeting to ensure you have an accurate understanding of their user experience.

After identifying the competitors, you can now begin testing key user journeys . To do this, you must first divide the journey into different stages. Start by recognizing the stages of the journey and mapping out each step. Then go through each step as a user would. Be aware of any areas that could be improved, such as usability or loading times, and make sure to take notes. 

You can also complete competitive usability testing , having participants complete the key tasks with your and your competitor’s products or websites to analyze how users navigate through various parts of the competitor's website or app, looking for any patterns and comparing them.

A SWOT analysis is an important step in conducting a UX competitor analysis. The purpose of the SWOT analysis is to identify areas of strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that can be leveraged or improved upon. 

Identify your own strengths. What are you doing better than your competitors? What do you offer that they don't? Identifying your strengths can help you gain an advantage over your competitors. 

Recognize your weaknesses or areas where your competitors are outperforming you. What features or services do your competitors offer that you don't? Knowing your weaknesses helps you pinpoint areas for improvement.

Opportunities

Discover opportunities available in the marketplace. Are there opportunities for new products or services? What underserved market could benefit from your offerings? 

Consider any potential threats posed by your competitors. Do they offer unique services or lower prices? Do they have access to a larger customer base? 

With the  SWOT analysis, you can determine which areas need improvement and which ones can be leveraged to gain an edge over your competition.

Once you've completed these steps, you are ready to share your findings. Put together a report or presentation to present to your team or stakeholders. Include any areas of opportunity where your company can improve, as well as the successes of your competitors that can be replicated by your team.

SWOT analysis template

• What to look for in a competitor analysis

When conducting a competitor analysis for UX, certain elements should be considered. It's important to look for both strengths and weaknesses in the user experience that can be learned from.

Interface design

Examine how the website or app is laid out, considering how the user navigates through it. Consider the visual design , content organization, ease of use, and overall appeal of the interface.

Journey maps

Create a journey map documenting the user's experience interacting with the site. Try to identify any potential sticking points that may lead to users not achieving their desired task.

Consider how content is presented on the website or app. Is it engaging, relevant, and easy to find? Evaluate how the site organizes content and what calls to action exist. 

Performance

Analyze the loading speed and responsiveness of the site or app. Test the site across different browsers and devices. 

Assess the features offered by the competitor's site or app, such as social media integration, customer support, payment options, etc. Identify any unique features that could give them an advantage. 

Analyze how competitors present their brands. How do they communicate with customers? How do they differentiate themselves from other competitors in their space?

Key performance indicators

These are measurable values that help track progress toward a desired goal. UX design includes metrics such as time on site or page views per session. Product or website reviews can also be analyzed—one-star reviews can say a lot about what could be improved. Understanding these metrics is important to understand how they impact the user experience. 

• When should you perform a competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis should be conducted before starting a UX project or creating a new product to understand the strategies employed by competitors. It is also important to regularly review competitor strategies throughout the project and after launching the product to ensure it remains ahead of the competition and provides the best user experience. The frequency of analysis depends on the product and the competition.

• Comparing the advantages and disadvantages of UX competitor analysis

Benefits of UX competitor analysis

Conducting a UX competitor analysis can help you gain valuable insights into your competitors' approaches to UX design and analyze their techniques, successes, and failures. This will help you create better experiences for your own users.

A UX competitor analysis can also help you identify opportunities in the market that you may not have considered. By understanding what your competitors are doing, you can find ways to differentiate yourself and stand out from the competition. This could include unique features or services your competitors don't offer or simply creating a more personalized user experience.

Limitations of UX competitor analysis

While studying competitors can help you make informed decisions, it's important to make sure that resources are focused on creating unique products and experiences. Since competitor analysis requires constant monitoring and data collection, it can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. This means it might not be suitable for smaller businesses that are short on time and resources. 

UX competitor analysis requires resources in terms of time, money, and staff. Companies must pay attention to the competition, review competitor products, and analyze them. This process often requires hiring external services and consultants and dedicating internal resources to monitoring the competition.

Another disadvantage is that it can be difficult to identify meaningful insights from competitor analysis. For example, it can be difficult to understand why certain features or experiences have been successful for a competitor, which means it can be hard to replicate those results. 

Additionally, even if insights are identified, there's no guarantee that they'll work for your own product or experience. It's important to remember that the data collected during a competitor analysis can be subject to bias, as it may not be an accurate representation of your competition. 

For example, if you only look at a small number of competitors' analytics, you could be missing out on important trends or strategies that could help you improve your own UX. Additionally, competitor analysis doesn't always provide insight into the customer's journey, meaning you may miss out on customer feedback and other valuable data points. 

Overall, while a competitor analysis can provide valuable insight into your user experience, there are some limitations to consider before you begin. Ensure you have enough resources and time to dedicate to collecting data and analyzing the results, and be mindful of any potential biases in the data you collect. With the right approach and attention to detail, however, a competitor analysis can be invaluable in improving your UX. 

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• Models and tools for competitive analysis

When conducting a competitor analysis, it's important to have the right tools and models to gather the right data.

Models for analyzing data

There are many different models available to help you analyze your competitors' UX design, including:

The four C's model

This model is based on four key areas—competence, cost, convenience, and communication—that comprise UX design's foundation. Analyzing your competitors' success in these areas can give you an idea of how to improve your UX design. 

Understanding your target audience and their needs is key to creating a great user experience. Creating user personas for your competitors can help you understand how their customers think and behave, which can give you ideas for improving your own UX design . 

Heuristic evaluations

A heuristic evaluation is a type of usability testing in which experts evaluate a product according to established usability criteria. By doing this for your competitors' products, you can identify common usability issues and gain insight into what works well (or doesn't) with their UX design. 

Best tools for competitive analysis

Many tools are available to help gather valuable information when conducting a competitive analysis. 

Analytics tools

Analytics tools like Google Analytics can provide valuable insights into how people interact with your competitors' websites. By understanding user behavior, you can better understand how they interact with their products. 

Usability testing tools

Usability testing tools like UserTesting can help you see how people interact with your competitors' products in real time. You can observe their actions, hear their comments, and gain valuable feedback from the tests. 

There are also tools for locating competitor content on the internet, like Copyscape for checking for plagiarism and Buzzsumo for finding content related to your competitors.

Conducting a UX competitor analysis can be a powerful tool to improve user experience and gain an edge over your competitors. By carefully analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of competing websites, you can ensure that your website stands out and provides customers with the best possible experience.

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How To Conduct a Competitive Analysis as a UX Designer

Want to conduct an awesome competitive ux analysis download this  free template and follow our step-by-step guide below..

UX designers don’t design new user experiences in a vacuum. No matter how unique or special a product is, it will inevitably compete with something already on the market. That is why it’s valuable to conduct a competitive UX analysis at the start of a new project.

Through the analysis you will evaluate the user experiences of your client’s competitors from your expert perspective as a UX designer. This will help orient you, your client and other stakeholders to the competitive landscape and give you an idea of what user experiences are standard for the market you’re designing for.

A competitive UX analysis will also help you think creatively about where you might be able to innovate in your UX design, as well as features you might want to avoid.

When initially dreaming about the possibilities for their new project, many clients will take inspiration from products that already exist.

If you conduct a competitive UX analysis, it will give you evidence that will enable you and your client to get on the same page about what the market really looks like from a user experience perspective and what that means for your project.

In this article, we’ll delve into the details of competitive UX analysis with the following:

• Why is a competitive UX analysis useful?
• The benefits and limitations of a competitive UX analysis
• A guide to conducting a competitive UX analysis (Plus a free template)
• Key takeaways

We’ve also included a free, downloadable template—you’ll find it in section three.

1. Why is a competitive UX analysis useful?

When you start a new project as a UX designer, there are many research methods you can use to determine who your users are and decide what the best user experience for them will be. On the other hand, competitive UX analysis gives you the opportunity to look outside your project and take in the market as a whole.

Writing for UX Planet, UX consultant Matt Isherwood identifies four reasons to conduct a competitive UX analysis:

To determine standard practices in the market

Depending on the product you’re designing, users likely already have expectations for the user experience and features they might encounter.

For example, if you’re designing a website for a car manufacturer, users will expect that when they select a vehicle they will be able to see photos of both the interior and exterior in every color in which it’s available.

On the other hand, if you’re designing a weather app, users will expect to be able to see the current temperature in their location at the top of the screen along with forecast information below it.

To identify noteworthy user experiences

There will often be one or two competitors in your analysis that offer a particularly good user experience. This might be because they’ve figured out an innovative solution to a problem or they’re using a novel feature that enhances what users are able to do.

But this could also be something like an especially well-placed navigation element or smart use of nomenclature. No matter what it is, these noteworthy user experiences are worth learning from and considering for adaptation and inclusion in your project.

To identify features to avoid

While there will always be competitors doing an especially good job, there will also be competitors at the opposite end of the spectrum.

These competitors offer a poor user experience for any number of reasons, including confusing navigation, difficult to understand user interactions or outdated functionality. These examples will teach you what not to do for your project—such as these ten classic UX design fails .

To notice unique features

As you evaluate various competitors, you may find you notice unique features you may never have considered. For example, if you’re creating a grocery delivery app, perhaps while reviewing competitors you notice one has a feature that allows you to select the level of ripeness of bananas by using a series of photos that show bananas with peels ranging in color from green to brown.

While it may not ultimately apply to your project, it’s worth taking note of these unique features so you can understand where and how competitors are innovating.

2. The benefits and limitations of a competitive UX analysis

A competitive UX analysis will help you orient yourself to the competition and understand the market. After all, users are creatures of habit, and a user who has spent time with your competitors will come to your product with certain expectations based on those previous experiences. As a result, before you design something completely new and unique, you need to understand the standards for a product’s user experience, an evaluation that will greatly benefit the design process .

On the other hand, there are some limitations to a competitive UX analysis that you should keep in mind. First, there may be the temptation to copy the competition. This is not the purpose of competitive UX analysis, however. The purpose is to inform the design process by learning from what your competitors are doing. You should always review several competitors, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of all of them. This will enable you to take inspiration from several sources to create something tailor-made for your product.

Furthermore, a competitive UX analysis can’t tell you where innovation is needed, it can only tell you what already exists. This is why a competitive UX analysis is only one of several research methods you should employ when tackling a UX project.

3. How to do a competitive UX analysis (step by step)

Before we jump in: If you’re conducting your first competitive UX analysis, you may find our downloadable competitive analysis template useful.

1. Identify your objectives

The first thing you need to do when conducting a competitive UX analysis is determine what your objectives are. Make sure you know exactly what you want to learn from this analysis. When you start evaluating competitors you can quickly become overwhelmed by everything involved in a given app, website, or other product. Laying out your objectives beforehand will prevent this from happening.

For example, if you’re creating a new app where users can stream movies and TV shows, one of your objectives might be to understand how competitors draw users’ attention to new entertainment choices.

2. Identify your competitors

Before you get started, you have to settle on the competitors you’ll include in your analysis. One of the first things you should do is ask your client and other stakeholders who they feel are their three or four top competitors. These competitors should automatically be included in your analysis. You should also come up with your own suggestions, especially focusing on competitors that may be less obvious.

Make sure your analysis includes both direct competitors—those that are operating in exactly the same market space—and indirect competitors—those that draw a different audience, like a social network geared exclusively towards young children if you’re working on a social network for adults, or include a similar feature, like a shopping cart tool for a different product than the kind you’re working on.

Ideally you’ll want to include five to ten competitors, but this may be constrained by time or budget issues.

3. Screenshot, take notes, repeat

Now that you know your objectives and have your list of competitors, you’ll visit each competitors’ product and navigate the relevant parts like any user would. As you go, take screenshots and record notes about everything you observe.

The easiest way to do this is to create a folder for all of the screenshots and a spreadsheet for your notes.

The spreadsheet should list all the competitors as well as all the parts of the product you’re evaluating so you’re sure to capture notes for everything you need from every competitor.

Alternatively, you can use an awesome tool like Airtable , a tool that allows you to gather screebshots, notes, links and more, all in one place and ready for you as you start to design your product (or as you conduct a redesign )

4. Compile your findings into a presentation

After you’ve finished going through the competitors, use your screenshots and notes to put together a presentation. You won’t mention every single thing you observed in the presentation, but you should mention the most relevant and noteworthy things.

Most importantly, at the end of the presentation, you should be sure to present a list of recommendations in which you boil down what you learned and explain how it will be put into practice in your project’s UX design.

4. Key takeaways

You should now have a basic understanding of why you should conduct a competitive UX analysis and the basic steps you would take to do so. To sum up:

• When you begin a new UX project, a competitive analysis is a research method that can help you and your client understand what the market for their product currently looks like.
• A competitive UX analysis will help you understand what user experience standards exist in the market sector, and therefore, what users’ expectations of a product in this space might be. The analysis will also give you information about competitors’ strengths and weaknesses as well as unique features they might be using.
• A competitive analysis has the benefit of informing the design process, but it can only show you what already exists in the market, not where innovation may be needed.
• Make sure you have a clear understanding of your objectives for your competitive UX analysis.
•  A competitive UX analysis should include 5-10 competitors and include both direct and indirect examples.
• Ask your client or other stakeholders for recommendations of competitors to include in the analysis, but also come up with your own suggestions.
• For each competitor, take screenshots and notes as you navigate through the parts of the product you’re evaluating.
• Compile your screenshots and notes into a presentation where you highlight the most important information you learned.
• Make sure you include a list of recommendations at the end of your presentation that explain how your analysis will impact your project’s UX design.

Now that you know how to conduct a competitive UX analysis, you might want to learn more. If so, you’ll find the following articles useful:

• Usability testing: Everything you need to know
• What is a UX audit and why should you conduct one?
• How to be a better UX designer in 2020

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Ultimate guide to UX competitor analysis + FREE template

1 September, 2022

Give you a better understanding of the competitive landscape.

Provide actionable insights to guide your product strategy.

Help you come up with new ideas on how to optimize your app and keep your customers happy.

Here's a quick summary just before you jump in.

How to do a UX Competitor Analysis

Set goals and priorities, identify your competitors, prepare your test devices, test key user journeys, conduct a swot analysis, share your findings.

Read on to know how to perform a UX competitor analysis and grab your FREE copy of our UX competitive analysis template !

What Is a UX Competitor Analysis?

A UX competitor analysis gives you a complete overview of the products, features, and user journeys of your competitors.

For example, let’s say you work for an e-commerce app. You might focus on the main user workflows, like newsletter sign-ups and checkout features like easy re-order or next-day delivery, and special promotions like a free gift when you download the app and place your first order.

Ultimately, the content of the analysis depends on your needs. But the purpose remains the same. By comparing your app with others in your industry, you can identify their respective strengths and weaknesses, see who meets customer needs best and uncover gaps where you need to improve.

Why Do a UX Competitive Analysis?

To put it bluntly, we live in a fast-paced world where new competitors pop up all the time — possibly with hot new features ready to tempt your users away. Figuring out how rival companies meet the customer needs of similar target audiences will give you a ton of insights. But there are many more reasons why it’s beneficial to perform a UX competitor analysis :

To help guide business and product strategy

To solve usability issues

To inform the design process

To understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors

To gain a better understanding of your industry

To recognize how to meet user needs better

To set priorities in your A/B testing and optimization strategy

Are There Any Limitations to a Competitor Analysis?

A competitive analysis is a valuable exercise, but carrying out an analysis on your own app and your competitors’ apps won’t solve all your UX and UI issues.

The main limitation is the lack of competitor data available. A UX analysis will give you a solid understanding of the design, features and overall user experience. But it won’t give you specifics like how many users your competitor has, how they engage with the app, and how often. You can speculate, of course — but you won’t have access to competitor data to know for sure.

What Tools Do You Need To Do a UX Competitor Analysis?

Understanding user behavior will help you ask the right questions and set the right priorities — this is where an analytics tool like UXCam comes in, which provides qualitative data instead of just basic numbers like Google Analytics.

If you are using UXCam to monitor your app performance, you will already have a good idea of your own pain points and areas to be improved on. UXCam records all mobile app sessions and captures user gestures, making it possible to identify and investigate UX issues like crashed sessions, rage taps and UI freezes. This information is a helpful basis for a competitor analysis.

That said, you don’t need any specific software to test different apps and compare yourself to the competition.

How To Do an App UX Competitor Analysis

Let’s go through the process step-by-step, so you know how to approach a UX customer analysis from start to finish.

Every great analysis starts with setting the right objectives and asking the right questions. What are you hoping to achieve? What insights do you need for your overall business and product strategy? Being clear from the start will avoid any confusion later on.

Create a shortlist of your main competitors — three to five is enough. Avoid choosing too many. Otherwise, the analysis may become too complex and confusing to produce any concrete results. If there are not so many direct competitors in your space, you can choose indirect competitors to get inspired by their design and user journey. Alternatively, you can simply analyze a lower number of competitor apps.

Install the apps on your test device. To be extra thorough, you may want to test the apps on several devices, including an Apple iPhone, Android smartphone and a tablet. You might also want to check how the apps are working on Wi-Fi compared to mobile internet. Fancy graphics might be great when using a high-speed connection in your office but slow and painful when out and about.

What information do you want to include? Your analytical framework will make or break your analysis, so take your time with this part of the process to ensure that you collect all of the data needed. Check out our UX competitor analysis template here for an easy-to-follow guide.

Typically, a UX analysis will cover the key features and user flows of the apps, with a focus on onboarding, overall usability and relevance.

A user’s first impression has a direct impact on usage and retention. The onboarding process — or lack of one — is an important part of your analysis.

For a rideshare app, you might want to check relevant user journeys such as:

Entering your location

Permission requests to track your location

Changing the payment method

Taking the same trip again

Asking the driver a question

Once you have gone through the individual features and processes, you need to bring it all together. Conduct a SWOT analysis covering the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of all the apps included in your analysis.

Finished your analysis? Great! Now, it’s time to make sure relevant stakeholders have access to the valuable insights you have found. Put together a presentation of the findings and ensure decision-makers in the senior management, product, development, and marketing teams have access to them. At the end of the day, a UX competitor analysis will only drive business value if you make changes based on the outcome.

Common UX Competitor Analysis Pitfalls

Losing focus.

Testing and optimizing your own app is a never-ending story, as there are always more hypotheses to be made and more data to be tested. This is especially true when you are auditing your own app and five others! However, do try to avoid falling down the rabbit hole. Ultimately, the goal is to produce actionable insights — so try to stay on track.

Failing to Eliminate Bias

If Competitor X has a really cool brand and great marketing, you may be expecting their user experience to be astounding as well. Or, you might have preconceptions based on how your app measures up to the others. Try to stay neutral and analyze all of the apps with fresh eyes, as if you were a customer using them for the first time.

All Insights, No Action

Have you spent hours testing competitor apps and going through the data? That’s great, but make sure the product and development teams are aligned and can start optimizing based on your findings.

Ready To Start Your Own UX Competitor Analysis?

We’ve put together a FREE template that makes it easy to get started with your analysis. Our handy template guides you through a two-step process that starts off with onboarding, usability, and relevance. Then, you can dive into the key features, and user flows for your industry — e-commerce, rideshare, food delivery, and banking are all ready to go.

Download the template now to get started with your analysis right away.

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5 Fantastic Remote Usability Testing Tools You Can Use Now

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Gamification Examples: Introducing Game Elements To Your App

Marilyn Wilkinson

Marilyn Wilkinson is a digital marketing strategist and copywriter who works with a number of B2B tech and SaaS brands, including UXCam. She is passionate about awesome user experience, great content, hiking through the mountains and drinking too much coffee.

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Effective competitive analysis to supercharge your UX strategy

Learn what a UX competitive analysis is, how your organization can lead one, and why it’s essential to your UX and overall business strategy.

Discover the processes and tools behind high-performing websites in this free ebook.

A great UX strategy is about more than just aesthetics — with a competitive UX analysis, your product can soar to success.

Assessing competitors’ UX design requires intentional strategy. In this article, we offer a step-by-step guide to everything there is to know about a UX competitive analysis, including best practices and how you can conduct your own research to inform your organization’s UX and overall business strategy.

What is competitive analysis in UX?

A user experience (UX) competitive analysis is the systematic process of evaluating and comparing the user experiences of your competitors’ products to your own product’s user experience. Unlike other competitor comparisons, the primary goal of a UX competitive analysis is to gain a deeper understanding of how your competitors design and structure their digital products (websites, mobile apps, software) to cater to user needs and preferences. 

While every UX competitive analysis can vary depending on the goals and objectives of a particular organization, UX competitive analyses typically include research into:

• User interface (UI) evaluation — Examining the visual design, layout, and overall aesthetics of competitors' interfaces to assess their appeal and usability.
• User flow and navigation — Analyzing the paths users take to achieve specific tasks or goals within a competitor's product, such as making a purchase or finding information.
• Content and information architecture — Assessing how competitors organize and present content, ensuring it's structured logically and easy for users to access.
• Interaction design — Evaluating the interactive elements like buttons, forms, and menus to determine how user-friendly and intuitive they are.
• Mobile responsiveness — Checking how well competitors' digital products adapt to different devices and screen sizes, including smartphones and tablets.
• Performance and loading speed — Evaluating the speed and responsiveness of the competitor's website or app.
• Accessibility — Assessing how accessible competitors’ products are to users with disabilities and whether they comply with accessibility standards.

What’s the purpose of a UX competitive analysis?

In-house UX designers, researchers, and product teams have a lot on their plate when it comes to creating and implementing great UX practices — given that, UX competitive analyses can often feel like an extra burden. Without conducting these analyses, however, design teams and their collaborators miss out on some incredible opportunities for improvement and innovation.

Mainly, a UX competitive analysis helps organizations:

Understand user expectations

Identify best practices, recognize weaknesses, spot opportunities for innovation, set benchmarks for improvement, validate design decisions, invest in iterative improvement.

Competitors in your industry have likely invested time and resources in understanding their users' needs and preferences. By analyzing their user experiences, you gain valuable insights into what users expect from products like yours. This understanding sets a baseline for user expectations and design products that meet or exceed those expectations.

Competitors who excel in UX design often establish and adhere to industry best practices. By studying these practices, you can identify proven methods for improving usability, engagement, and overall user satisfaction. This process allows you to adopt and adapt successful design patterns, saving time and effort in the design process.

A competitive analysis identifies the shortcomings and pain points in your competitors' products. By understanding what doesn't work well for your target audience, you can avoid making similar mistakes in your own designs. This approach prevents usability issues and user frustration and increases the likelihood of user retention.

Through competitive analysis, you can uncover market gaps or areas where your competitors may be falling short. These gaps represent opportunities for innovation and differentiation in your product design or design system . By addressing unmet user needs or offering a unique solution, you can stand out in the market, gain a competitive advantage, and attract users looking for something new and better.

A competitive analysis provides a benchmark against which you can measure your own product's performance and user experience. This benchmarking allows you to set clear goals for improvement and track your progress over time. It ensures that you're constantly striving to enhance your product's UX.

When you incorporate findings from a competitive analysis into your design process, you're basing your decisions on real-world observations and data. This validation reduces the risk of making design choices that may not resonate with your target audience.

UX competitive analysis is not a one-time task. It's an ongoing process that allows you to monitor and adapt to changes in the competitive landscape continually. This iterative approach ensures your product remains competitive and up-to-date. ‍

How to conduct a UX competitive analysis in 4 steps

Now that we’ve covered what a UX competitive analysis is and why it’s essential, here’s how your team can conduct one.

1. Define your objectives

Like with any organizational initiative, it’s always a best practice to begin by clarifying your goals for the competitive analysis. With the right stakeholders, consider what specific aspects of UX you want to evaluate and why, and what your key research objectives might be. 

2. Identify competitors

A competitive UX analysis, of course, requires that an organization identify exactly what competitors they’ll assess in comparison to their own product. When it comes to UX analysis, many organizations identify both direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are businesses that offer similar products or solutions to the same problems or needs as your own product. They typically target the same audience, share a similar value proposition, and compete for the same market share. In the context of UX competitive analysis, identifying and using direct competitors in your analysis is helpful for a few reasons:

• Direct competitors provide the most relevant insights because they offer the closest alternatives to your product.
• Analyzing direct competitors helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of products that users might directly compare with your own.
• It allows for a more detailed, head-to-head comparison that can identify specific areas for improvement and innovation in your UX.

Indirect competitors are businesses or products that may not offer identical solutions to the same problems but serve the same audience or address related needs. They often have different value propositions or cater to slightly different niches. In UX competitive analysis, identifying and using indirect competitors is also helpful for a variety of reasons:

• Analyzing indirect competitors gives you a broader perspective on user expectations and preferences in the wider industry or market.
• Indirect competitors can introduce alternative approaches and creative solutions that you might not have considered, inspiring innovation.
• Understanding the UX of indirect competitors can identify opportunities to diversify or expand your product offerings.

To find both direct and indirect competitors of your UX analysis, organizations should conduct industry research through reports and market trends, online marketplaces, social media, and even industry events and conferences.

3. Gather data

In order to properly analyze UX competition, organizations need to gather a specific set of qualitative and quantitative data, including data around usability, accessibility, performance, and user feedback.

There are lots of ways that organizations can gather data to conduct their competitive analysis. Depending on your organization’s goals, budgets, and resources, one research technique might be more appropriate than others. Common techniques include:

User testing

Swot analysis, public customer review assessments, heuristic evaluation, competitors’ user journey mapping analysis.

Conduct user testing sessions with actual users to gather direct feedback on your competitors' products. Users perform tasks, and you observe and record their interactions and feedback. This method provides real-world insights into user behavior and pain points.

Or, instead of hiring outside experts to gather user research, encourage your team to use the competitor’s product yourselves, and conduct an analysis . 

A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is a valuable tool in the context of a UX competitive analysis. It systematically evaluates the internal and external factors that impact your user experience and your position in the market.

• Strengths — Identify which aspects of your competitor’s product are successful, and maybe even outperform other competitors.
• Weaknesses — Identify where your competitors fall short in their UX design (poor mobile responsiveness, confusing navigation, or slow performance).
• Opportunities — Consider where your product could excel and provide a better UX. For example, if competitors have poor accessibility, you might see an opportunity to excel by providing a more inclusive and accessible user experience. 
• Threats — Consider the potential challenges to your competitor’s product and how your product might avoid them.

One of the easiest and most straightforward ways to collect data about your competitors, whether direct or indirect, is through public customer reviews. Available on websites like G2 and Capterra as well as other online marketplaces, customer reviews — both positive and negative — can help you identify strengths and pain points.

A heuristic evaluation is a method used in UX design to assess the usability of digital products, such as websites or applications. In this evaluation, usability experts or evaluators review a product based on established usability principles known as heuristics. These heuristics serve as guidelines for good design and cover aspects like navigation, feedback, and error handling.

Competitors' user journey maps in UX are visual representations or diagrams that illustrate the various stages and touchpoints that users go through when interacting with a competitor's offering, from initial awareness to post-interaction support

4. Implementing analysis in the UX design process

Once your team gathers all the right data, it’s time to take your insights and implement them into the iteration and design process . Prototype new designs, test functionality with real users, keep seeking user feedback, analyze data, and make improvements to the design to enhance the user experience over time.

Competitive analysis UX: Best practices & tips

While every team’s objectives, goals, and resources may vary, conducting an efficient and successful UX competitive analysis requires design teams to abide by a few best practices

• Ensure unbiased research — To ensure that all research you collect is unbiased, recruit a diverse group of collaborators, implement blind evaluations, establish evaluation criteria, and use neutral language.
• Continually update analysis with changing trends — UX design is a constantly evolving and changing practice. In order to ensure that your UX design is serving users well and maintains a competitive edge, it’s essential to stay up to date with industry news and trends.
• Leverage insights for overall business strategy — While UX competitive analysis is primarily focused on design, insights you gather from research can also inform broader, more macro business strategies like market differentiation, competitive positioning, and marketing and messaging.
• Prioritize actionable insights — Highlight actionable insights that can directly inform improvements to your own product's UX. Focus on areas where you can excel or differentiate.
• Ethical considerations — Respect competitors' intellectual property and confidentiality. Avoid unethical practices such as plagiarism or unauthorized data scraping.

Best tools for UX competitor analysis

There are several tools for UX designers that can help you conduct a UX competitive analysis. These tools can gather data, track user behavior, and assess the user experiences of your competitors. Here are some popular tools for UX competitor analysis:

User testing 

• UserTesting — Provides access to a panel of real users who give feedback on your competitors' websites or apps.
• TryMyUI — Offers usability testing services with detailed video feedback and insights.

Heatmapping 

• Hotjar — Offers heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback tools to visualize user interactions.
• Crazy Egg — Provides heatmaps, scroll maps, and user behavior analytics.

Accessibility assessments 

• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool — Identifies accessibility issues on competitors' websites.
• axe DevTools — An accessibility testing extension for web browsers that assesses websites against accessibility standards.

Usability assessments

• Optimal Workshop — Offers tools for card sorting, tree testing, and first-click testing to evaluate information architecture.
• Lookback — Allows for remote user testing, interviews, and session recordings.

Put your UX competitive analysis into action

Conducting a UX competitive analysis is not merely a design exercise; it's a strategic imperative that goes beyond the aesthetics of a website or app that allows organizations to delve deep into the very essence of how users interact with their digital products and services.

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How to Conduct a UX Competitive Analysis and Why You Should

7 Easy Steps to Performing a UX Competitive Analysis

In a competitive marketplace, success can hinge on effective web design and good user experience.  UX design can either add to or impede your potential customer or client’s journey across your website. 

To that end, UX competitive analysis can be an important strategy in your design research process, along with getting participants for user research , heuristic evaluations, value propositions, product strategy, and A/B testing, to help you identify design solutions and implement them early in your design process. It’s not about keeping-up-with-the-Jones’, rather comparing the 4-F’s of UX design—flow, features, feeling, and function—of your competitors’ sites and products and making the appropriate tweaks to your own designs to recontextualize your own website or app within the competitive environment of the market.

So what is a UX Competitive Analysis?

A competitive analysis for UX Design is a way for designers and stakeholders to garner strategic understanding of what your competitors are doing with their products so that you can harness that information and use it to make your own design choices more strategic. In turn, this will allow you to offer your users a better experience with your product or website. 

By understanding your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as your own in comparison, you’ll have a better overall knowledge of:

• Next steps to take in the design process
• Any discernible gaps that exist in the field or marketplace
• Possible solutions for usability issues for your own design or product
• Quantitative research to back up your design decisions
• Sources for vision and creativity for your own team
• A way to find and define unique market opportunities

Why do we need a UX competitive analysis? 

There’s an old Russian proverb that goes, “If you don’t have time to do it right, you must have time to do it over.” If only.  In a fast-paced work environment we often need to work smart, work fast, and provide a delightful experience on our first try. A UX competitive analysis is an important step in your research process, before usability testing or design finalization, that can help identify and neutralize mistakes before they become incorporated into the final product. 

Without competitive analysis, it’s easy for mistakes to be made, gaps to go unnoticed, and usability issues to remain unresolved without your team detecting it until the product is near completion, which can cause frustration on the frontend for users and the backend for the product design team stuck fixing problems instead of focusing on new tasks. 

What are other benefits of a competitive analysis for UX design?

Additionally, UX competitive analyses can have far-reaching benefits for your team and organization beyond just insight into how to build your own product or application. 

Bolster subject knowledge

First, in-depth analysis of your competitors can provide your team with insight and knowledge of usability, functionality, and content within your field that they may not have come across otherwise. This is especially beneficial when not all team members have the same background or subject knowledge. For example, some team members might be new or some may have moved from other teams, etc. It gives the team extra insight and information that allows for better, more educated decisions further down the pipeline and on future projects.

Encourage strategic boldness

Anyone working on a team is aware that an idea is only as good as the buy-in it can get from others, be it on your design team, in development, or executives. You can have the world’s best idea, but if you can’t get others to support it, it can often be dead in the water. That’s where a comprehensive UX competitive knowledge can be a boon. When you have dived deep into your competitors’ products and strategy, the data you gather can be invaluable in opening up doors and conversations that can help take your own strategic planning to the next level. 

Identify current best practices

An important benefit of running a competitive analysis early is that it can give valuable insight into what others are doing on the web. It allows you to explore, identify opportunities, and pinpoint what others in your business spheres are doing consistently, therefore what your own consumers might expect from you. 

It can also allow you to identify where competitor websites are making mistakes that disrupt the user experience and hamper user interaction. When you can identify these kinds of mistakes on your competitor’s websites, it better allows you to iterate solutions that improve implementation and functionality. 

When in a product cycle is a UX competitive analysis best to perform?

Ideally, a competitive analysis is run very early in the design and research process, and before any substantive design work is done on the project, since a competitive analysis can help aid as a roadmap for design. However, markets are ever-shifting and the products your competitors—and in fact even who your competitors are—offer changing, so it can be important to periodically revisit how and what competitors  are doing in comparison to your own offerings. 

In general, the sooner you analyze the competitive landscape, the easier it will be for your team to remain agile and iterative. Early analysis will allow you to:

• Create a list of crucial product features
• Set a path for future product updates
• Eliminate unnecessary or impractical features
• Ensure that your product features are up-to-date and fresh

If competitive analysis is a step that you inadvertently skipped in your design process, there is still a lot of value to be had from running one even later in the process. A competitive analysis for UX at any point can help you identify changes in user behavior, introduce newer and better functionality in your product, develop new strategies for product growth, and identify unnecessary features that may be past their prime. 

How do you run a UX competitive analysis? 

Now that we understand the why’s of competitive analysis, let’s take a look at the best steps to take to run an effective and valuable competitive analysis for UX.

Step 1: Identify your competitors

The first step is to identify who your competitors are. Identify between 5-10 direct and/or indirect competitors to analyze and gather the information you’ll need.. If you will be comparing mobile apps, try to find a simulator that will allow you to test the products on your computer screen for better visibility and ease.

Step 2: Identify your goals

For this step, it’s important for you to pinpoint and identify the goals you have for both your product and your business. Without an understanding of what and why you are doing something, you won’t have a clear way to map the results you have. Do you want better conversion rates? Are you looking to become a knowledge leader in your field? Hoping for more app downloads, etc.? By understanding your end goal, you will be able to clearly define the aims of your competitive analysis and fine tune your heuristics. Which brings us to….

Step 3: Allow your business and strategy goals to influence the heuristics you use

Depending on what your ultimate goals for your application or product is, now is the time to decide what you would like to find out about your competitors. These usability principles, more often referred to as usability heuristics , will look at the functionality of your competitors’ products. You may also hear it referred to as a “usability audit” or an “expert review”. This shouldn’t be confused with usability testing , a step that comes further along in the design process. Many of these heuristics are the standard in UX research such as:

• Site or product navigation
• Design consistency
• Organization simplicity and ease
• Calls to action
• Site loading speeds
• Review of implementing and completing the main task

Others might vary depending on your individual product needs and could include heuristics concerning social media signups, mailing lists, informational architecture, interaction models, and so on. Remember that you may be working with both qualitative as well as quantitative data, so consider what that will look like as you run your analysis. 

Step 4: Build a table

This step doesn’t have to be complicated. Simply build a table or spreadsheet with your competitors’ names along the header of your table and your usability principles along the first column. You can also build in extra space for making notes on each website/product as you work. 

Example of a competitive analysis of a language learning application

Step 5: Analyze your competitors (and yourself)

Now is the time to analyze your competitors and, if you have a product that is far enough along in the pipeline, yourself. For each competitor you’re analyzing, go through each of your heuristic criteria and record your insights and findings. This is the meat of your UX competitive analysis, so don’t rush through it. Take your time to really identify all of the good and bad functionality and record your findings in your table. Take thorough notes of everything you loved, you hated, the things that surprised you, etc. Remember you’ll be presenting your findings to your team/stakeholders, so take screenshots and document your research.

Step 6: Prepare a presentation

This step is the fun part. Once you’ve obtained your data, now is the time to analyze it and prepare a report or presentation that can be shared with other stakeholders. Utilize your data, as well as your notes, to prepare a summary of your findings for each competitor as well as a more in-depth dive into what each competitor is doing well and where you found areas for improvement. 

Step 7: Keep your data at hand

After you’ve presented your findings, you want to make sure that your documentation stays at hand and is available for the entire team and other stakeholders who may need to refer back to it as you continue along in the design process. Periodically revisit it and, if the project warrants, consider running additional UX competitive analyses as your product and the market evolves and changes.

In conclusion

Conducting an in-depth competitive analysis that looks at what (and how) your competitors are delivering their product to market will help give you the data and information you need to find solutions and functionality that distinguish you from your competitors and give you the upper hand. With a deeper understanding of your competitive environment, you will be able to find the hidden opportunities that will help to inform your product strategy and design choices as your product develops and grows. 

If you’re ready to delve even deeper into UX research, check out this roundup of the best UX research tools we’ve found to help you along the way.

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A step-by-step guide to Competitive analysis for UX Design

March 9, 2023 | read time : 3 mins.

Table of Contents

Unless you’re doing something incredibly new with the goal of disrupting the market, you’re not the only one in the business. But this isn’t as horrible as it sounds. There is a prevalent misconception that to outpace your market rivals, you must give clients a brand-new distinctive solution filled with cutting-edge technology and modern design. In most circumstances, all you truly need is to meet market demand and outperform the competition. Understanding the environment of existing UX design solutions is crucial for creating a product people need and will be delighted to use. You need to know who the other guys are and what value they provide to the market, and Competition Analysis is an indispensable tool for this. A competitive landscape review can help you get useful insights, determine your product’s strengths and limitations, and design winning product strategies. In this blog article, we’ll discuss how to do UX Competitive Analysis and make the most of it to help your product fly.

What is UX Competitive Analysis?

A UX Competitive Analysis is a step in the research process in which you evaluate all relevant design solutions performed by direct and indirect competitors in your domain. The Competition Analysis involves two critical stages you must complete if you want your research to be more than a formal process and insightful UX research.

You may use heuristics assessment principles to guide your Competitive Analysis, or you can broaden the scope of the study to include everything you believe will be significant to achieving your ultimate goal.

Why should you perform a user experience Competitive Analysis?

Because you are not alone in the market. Unless you’re operating in a blue ocean, your product will have a lot of competition, and some other solutions may be rather good at attracting customers’ attention. To stand out in a competitive SaaS market, you must first evaluate your product’s positioning and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to plan how to win the customer war. In today’s fast-paced environment, individuals don’t want to waste time figuring out how to engage with a product to achieve their goals. If their User Experience exceeds expectations, they will happily switch to a competitor’s offering. The UX Competitive Research helps companies discover what they do better than their competitors (and amplify it) and where they, let’s say, overlook certain critical elements that might be crucial to meet the underserved market’s demands. Additionally, learning more about the market competition will be helpful to:

• Perfect your go-to-market plan
• Detach yourself from the competition by clearly knowing a product’s unique values
• Find proof of concept for your design ideas
• Enhance the product’s usefulness
• Learn more about the demands of your target customers

What is the right time to conduct a Competitive Analysis?

As the market is always changing, there is no such thing as the right time for analysis, and you need always have your radar up to make quick judgments. Then, as the project progresses, it would be reasonable to review the competitive updates frequently to keep on track.

How do you do a UX Competitive Analysis?

General guidance.

Create a short list of significant rivals (three to five companies should be enough) and criteria for establishing specific research frames. Don’t forget to include the product you designed in the list to compare to the alternatives offered by competitors.

• There is always the desire to imitate the design concepts of your market competitors. Before implementing such a technique, ensure they are employing the best practices you will benefit from adopting.
• Consider indirect competitors (for example, those operating in a vertical market that you do not intend to enter soon).
• Be inspired by your rivals’ UX design ideas, but prioritise your users and business goals.

Steps in the process

If you are performing competitive analysis for the first time, you may utilise these stages to guide future research. They are organized logically, starting with the planning phase and ending with presenting outcomes.

The goals should ideally be measurable and as detailed as feasible. It will make it easier for you to analyze the results and determine whether to continue the analysis to get the desired result.

Create a shortlist of competitors

As previously stated, beginning with three to five direct (and indirect, if appropriate) competitors is acceptable. Although some sources recommend having at least 10 competitors on the list to get extra information, ensure you did a good job with the big ones first. You can add to your list anytime; it is not fixed.

Discover what you have in common with your competition

We frequently consider distinguishing our product from similar market offerings and emphasising its unique selling qualities. However, if there are industry-recognized best practices for creating a user experience, you should not disregard them when working on UX design. Check yourself against the UI usability principles and see what your competitors are doing regarding key product features, tone, voice, page loading speed, and user interface.

Compare your products against competitors

It’s time to determine what makes your product stand out from other products on the market because you now have a feature comparison. This exercise is valuable for rapidly determining where you are losing to the competition and where you are performing far better.

Assess what you learned

You’ve done a lot of research, and perhaps it’s given you some ideas for improving your UX design. You may now identify the advantages and disadvantages of your rivals and consider how you might differentiate yourself through your design.

Present your UX Competitive Analysis

If you can’t effectively communicate the insights you uncover throughout your research, no matter how relevant the facts you discovered during your study may be, they will be meaningless. Prepare a short slide deck with the major ideas supported by compelling evidence. Describe the results of your research’s effect and suggest a course of action.

Research methods

Although we’re discussing design, conducting a UX competitive analysis might benefit from using basic marketing research techniques. Here are some marketing strategies you might apply to your research:

A competitive examination of UX pitfalls

You could ask, “What could go wrong with a competitive analysis?” One of the most serious issues is that you can outperform competitors. But that’s fantastic! You may reply. Actually, no. Healthy market competition is a significant motivator of innovation.  In a world where restless creative minds always produce something new, it’s critical to research the competitive environment before starting work on a product’s design. Your complete UX competitive analysis can provide insightful information that will encourage you to develop effective design solutions.

Team OriginUX

OriginUX Studio is a CoE for User Experience providing UI & UX across Product, Service and Customer Experience Design. We are a cross-disciplinary design team that loves to create great experiences and make meaningful connections for businesses and their users through UI & UX.

Founded in 2016, our larger purpose is to help brands understand what they want to do and where they want to go. To do that we have to make understanding customer experience simple, effortless, and affordable for everyone.

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Published on February 21, 2024

UX Competitive Analysis w/Template & Example

In this article, we will talk about the UX analysis of your competitors. What is it, why do you need it, and how to conduct one, and which research methods to use?

Key Takeaways:

👉 Competitor analysis broadly means evaluating your competition’s strengths and weaknesses

👉 UX audit of competitors can help you: stay atop industry standards, identify market gaps and growth opportunities , get insights into how to design a product that meets your users’ expectation

👉 Competitor analysis can be done in the form of: 1.) an expert review 2.) competitive usability testing with larger sample of real users

👉 Conducting competitive usability testing provides unbiased data compared to an expert review , which can be biased and not reflect your real users’ opinions

👉 For competitive usability testing you can use tools such as a specialized tool for competitive usability testing, tree testing, preference test, 5 second test and first click test (all these tools are offered by UXtweak)

🐝 Register for a free account on UXtweak now and try it out!

Table of contents

What is competitive analysis , why is competitive analysis important in ux design, looking for a good tool to conduct competitive analysis, competitive analysis ux advantages, when to do a ux competitive analysis, how to do a competitor analysis in ux design, competitive analysis using uxtweak (what do your users think), ux competitive analysis template, ux competitive analysis example.

• Conclusion: Staying Ahead of the Game

Competitive analysis is a method of researching your direct and indirect competitors and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. The aim is to gain more in-depth knowledge of your competitors’ strategies and their market position, especially in relation to your business. It can help you get valuable insights into how to run your business (and how not to), identify opportunities in the market, and what design decisions you should or shouldn’t make.

Competitive analysis has its place in every area of business, and user experience is no exception.  On the contrary, it is, or at least it should be, a crucial part of the design and UX research journey.

Competitive UX analysis helps to inform and guide the design process. It is important because it provides UX designers valuable insights into user needs , preferences, and expectations, as well as the design trends and standards in the market. Additionally, UX competitive analysis research helps to identify market gaps and opportunities for differentiation and innovation.

Competitive analysis in UX research can take the form of expert reviews , where an experienced usability practitioner reviews the designs using heuristic evaluation and their expertise and knowledge of usability, or competitive usability evaluations, where users complete a set of tasks using 2 or more competing sites. In this article, we will talk about both of those approaches.

UXtweak’s got you covered!  We developed a whole new  Competitive Analysis tool  to help you understand what users love or where they struggle and create a winning product strategy using competitor sites in usability testing. And guess what’s even better? It’s free!

Analyse your Competition with UXtweak!

Identify growth opportunities, stay atop of market trends and meet your users' expectations.

Before we get into the step-by-step process of how to do a UX competitor analysis, let’s first look at what are its biggest advantages. 

After you conduct your research, you will:

• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your digital products in relation to your competitors
• Gain a deeper understanding of the market, its users, and their needs
• Learn about the industry trends and market insights
• Discover usability issues to fix and features to improve to create user-friendly products
• Define a course for long-term growth

It is best to conduct a UX competitive analysis when you are in the early stages of the design process your digital product (website, app, etc.). That being said, don’t despair if you haven’t executed any yet. You will benefit from a competitor analysis even if you already are an established business. 

Following your first analysis, it is beneficial to get back to it in different stages of your business and update it regularly at least once a year. Naturally, your competition and your market evolve and so should you. Think of it as an iterative process that will keep you alert and on top of your competitive advantage.

Learn more about  Competitive Audits  and how to do them efficiently.

1. Specify your goals

First, you should decide what you aim to learn with your UX competitive analysis. Coming up with a UX strategy to define this can be a great approach. The outcome of this will determine if you will conduct a high-level analysis or if you will focus on specific aspects of your website or app. 

You should also consider what your company’s position is when conducting a UX competitive analysis. This not only changes your perspective but also sets the stage for tools and the opportunities coming with them. 

What different positions do we have in mind?

You are in the early stages of a new product development and you are looking at your competitors to inspire yourself. A list of strengths to replicate and mistakes to avoid might be the core of your findings. 

You are thinking about entering a new market or industry, trying to find a place for new products or innovations

You are monitoring the changes in the competitive landscape, with the goal of not falling behind as the market evolves

You are planning a marketing campaign. Your goal is to understand what your competition is doing and outperform them with your strategy.

2. Create a list of your competitors

When creating a list of your competitors for the analysis, keep in mind you don’t need a large number. Usually, three to five are enough to compare yourself with. Decide if you want to include both direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors : These are companies that offer the same or very similar product as you and will provide potentially more easily accessible insights, but analyzing your

Indirect competitors : Companies that offer a different product than you, however, users are able to meet the same need with this product as with yours

Feel free to use smaller businesses but also bigger players in your field. If your customers can meet their needs there, you should include the business in your analysis. 

3. Identify key features and flows

Before you start gathering the actionable insights, do yourself a favor and prepare a matrix document where you will log and organize your findings. 

Now, looking at your competitor’s website/app,  define the most significant flows and identify features that users interact with . It can look something like this:

Sign up and login

Purchase of a product

Subscription to a service

Searching on a website

Making an appointment

Or any other task within the competitive landscape that applies to your business.

When you’re done with the list, imagine you are the user and perform each action on your list. 

Don’t forget to write down everything in your matrix document. Include notes about what you liked and disliked, what worked, or what surprised you. If you are comparing websites, be sure to visit them using both desktop and mobile devices. 

4. Analyze the data

Looking at the data and user feedback you’ve collected, it’s time to name the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and yours as well. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is perfect for this. Ask yourself questions such as: What business value does your competition bring? How was your user experience using their website? Are the user journeys effective?

During the analysis, you will surely stumble upon something your competitor does differently. Do not feel the urge to replicate each feature straight away.  Just because your competitor has something you don’t, it doesn’t mean it is the best approach. Sometimes, however, you might not be sure. If such a situation occurs and you are not sure what to do, read below how you can resolve it using one of the UXtweak tools. 

5. Define actionable next steps

When your analysis is done it should be clear what are the biggest usability issues of your website/ mobile app. It is now the time to define actionable steps you will take to make improvements. 

Divide the tasks into short-term and long-term and plan the redesign and/or implementation.

Now we know what competitor analysis is, why it is important, and how to conduct one. Above we have described general steps you should take when you compare the usability of your website or app with your competitors. 

However, there is a crucial aspect to consider.  You as a business owner or a website/app designer are biased and the data you will collect will never be 100% accurate to what an actual user may find important. Therefore you should also be interested in what your users have to say. 

Let’s take a look at several specific ways you can test elements or features of your website/app using UXtweak tools. 

We have also prepared a tailor-made template in which you can record the data that will come up from your analyses. You can download it at the end of this article.

1. Run Competitive Usability Testing

Run a real user test on the websites of your competitors and find out what works for them and what doesn’t! Mimic competitor’s strengths and avoid found mistakes in the early stages of development. 

With UXtweak’s  Competitive Usability Testing  tool, you can give testers some tasks to accomplish on your and your competitor’s website, compare how they perform, find out what confuses them, and improve your UX based on the findings. A good UX competitive analysis tool, such as UXtweak’s will help you with the analysis by providing metrics and graphs to better understand the data you collected.

Learn more about usability testing in our usability testing guide .

How does it work?

Create a new website testing study and specify the URL of the competitor’s website you want to test

Give users tasks to complete. Before the testing starts, participants will be asked to install UXtweak Chrome Extension to track user activity on any website.

Watch the recordings, find out what works and what doesn’t, and improve your UX!

Here’s a short video tutorial to help you understand the process better!

2. Compare your navigation with Tree Testing

Ask your users to find the same product in your website’s navigation and in the navigation of your competitor. This is even more useful if your website is content-heavy and your business depends on users being able to find the right product or service.  

Take a look at the examples below. Both navigations represent an electronic e-commerce website but the organization slightly differs. Where should the user click if they’re looking for a pair of headphones for running? And in which navigation will they find the item faster?

Picture 1: 2 versions of a tree structure of website navigation transferred to the UXtweak Tree Testing tool . 

3. Find out which design users prefer using a Preference Test

A Preference Test is helpful when you want to find out how your and your competitor’s design or presentation is perceived by your target audience. In some aspects, you might be the users’ choice and in others, they might prefer your competition. It is priceless to learn what you can do better and what elements to highlight. 

For this Preference Test, we have altered the product page pictures, so they each contain the same product photo. This will enable users to focus on the user interface on the right side so they can choose their preferred option.  

Picture 2: Screen of a task in the UXtweak Preference Test tool .

4. Who communicates the message better in the first 5 seconds?

How quickly can your users grasp the main information of your page and what are their very first impressions? You can easily find it out using a Five Second Test for your and your competitor’s website. 

Comparing the results for both websites/apps can uncover what’s missing or which areas of your homepage you should tweak to deliver your message more clearly. 

Picture 3: Competitor homepage A for Five Second Test, GetYourGuide.com, an online travel agency and marketplace for tour guides, excursions, and other activities. 

Picture 4: Competitor homepage B for Five Second Test, WithLocals.com, an experiential travel company that connects travelers with local hosts.

Picture 5: Competitor homepage C for Five Second Test, Bookatrekking.com, a professional trekking company that connects hikers across popular destinations – Mont Blanc, Alta Via, Malerweg, etc.

5. Who is more user-friendly? Find out with First Click Test

All of the above – navigation, design, and communication of a website, lead the users to perform an action. Whether it is a primary or a secondary task, users need to know where to click in order to become your customers. 

Test your website/app using the First Click Test to see if you make it easy for your users or if they struggle. Repeat the same test using your competitor’s website and see who performs better.

To introduce a First Click Test example for your UX competitive analysis, imagine you would like to sign up for a Spanish course with one of the language schools below. Where would you click first?

Picture 6: Competitor homepage A for First Click Test, International House London language school homepage

Picture 7: Competitor homepage B for First Click Test, TELC UK language school homepage

We have prepared for you a template specifically designed for comparison with your competitors using UXtweak tools as described above. Don’t wait and create your first UXtweak competitive analysis study to collect the insights that will change your business. 

Download UXtweak Competitive Analysis Template

Now, congratulations on reading this far! Hopefully, you’ve gained new insights into what competitive analysis can mean for you and what conducting it can look like. We are however aware that words only convey so much and it is best to learn by doing. Or observing someone. 

That is why we advise you to check out these demo studies we have prepared and see what a competitive analysis done on a real-life example looks like.

Do users understand how my website works?

What is my competitor doing better?

You can also check out an example of a competitive audit on our blog.

Conclusion:  Staying Ahead of the Game

The main purpose of a competitive analysis is not just about implementing new features or streamlining the flow of your website. It’s really about keeping you on your toes. No matter if your business is big or small, you can still benefit greatly from knowing your competition and the approaches that have already worked for someone else.

Try Competitor Analysis with UXtweak

Stay atop industry trends, meet your users' expectations and identify growth opportunities.

People also ask (FAQ)

Competitive analysis is important in UX design because it helps you understand how your product fits into the market. It can help identify opportunities to differentiate your product from the competition as well as make informed decisions that can lead to a better user experience .

Competitive UX analysis can be conducted using a UX research tool. These are the steps:

• Define your goals
• Identify the competitors
• Identify key features and flows
• Create a test plan 
• Use a Competitive Usability Testing tool
• Analyze the findings

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats . In UX design , SWOT analysis can be used in competitive analysis to identify competitor strengths and weaknesses, and explore opportunities and threats for your business growth.

UX Researcher with a design and analytical background, she likes to think that even a small change (and a cup of coffee) can make a huge difference.

UXtweak is buzzing with expert UX research, making thousands of products more user friendly every day

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• Card Sorting
• Tree Testing
• Preference Test
• Five Second Test
• Session Recording
• Mobile Testing
• First Click Test
• Prototype Testing
• Website Testing
• Onsite Recruiting
• Own Database
• Documentation
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• UX Glossary
• Comparisons

Product Design

The complete guide to a ux competitive analysis.

Vladislav Gavriluk

CEO & Founder at Arounda

Are you looking for a source to develop new product solutions and make interaction with your customers better? Your competitors can help! Of course, indirectly. That requires looking at them from a professional angle. A tool for that, UX Competitive analysis, will help you define what features to add to your product, what patterns to use for better interaction, and how to benchmark your product. However, this is achievable only if you are ready to spend time and effort on comprehensive research.

Users cannot forgive poor experience with the app and application. 27% of businesses have already improved their customer experience score in 2020. Competitor analysis was one of the techniques used to determine what improvements customers need and how to introduce them most effectively.

Many businesses have already added competitor analysis to the list of processes to perform regularly. Yet, many of them do not conduct it professionally — thus, the analysis results do not help them improve their products.

The matter is that competitive analysis, as well as any other technique, requires a proper approach and expertise.

In this article, we are going to reveal what stands behind this process. Competitors will become your source of inspiration. We will share our own experience of using competitive analysis in our practice and explain how we build the process to achieve the results.

What is UX competitive analysis and its importance in the design process

To some extent, we all have performed competitor research at least once: browsing the websites of our market rivals, using their apps, or reading their mailings. However, to be effective, the research must be systemized and have clearly set goals. 

The UX competitive analysis is based on competitive research, a process of determining competitive product features using the competitors’ experience. We learn their approach to the usability and attractiveness of the product (as well as separate features) and investigate what features are crucial for the business.

All in all, user experience competitor research helps us prevent many problems and understand the market’s real needs.

Among other problems competitor analysis helps to solve, we should mention the following:

a company gets a chance to understand the current position of the product on the market

it gets possible to define the gaps of existing product

all strong and weak sides of other companies become visible

all strong and weak sides of your company become visible as well

if the product has not been released yet, you can develop a go-to-market strategy that will be more suitable for the current situation

With UX research, we can be sure of any decision regarding the feature list. For example, if the analysis shows us that some feature is no longer in demand, we will delete it from the list of options to develop. If the product has already been released, we consider the option of redesigning it and deleting the features that clients no longer use.

For the design processes, the competitive matrix serves to understand what features have a satisfying implementation — and use this information for our product. If we notice that the implementation of some features is controversial, we also use this to understand how to avoid the same mistakes in our product.

The product feature list is built on UX competitive analysis. Therefore, it directly influences product and design processes.

Typically, UX competitive analysis is based on 3-4 key competitors. The more competitors you use for analysis, the more complicated it becomes: you get too much information and it’s harder to focus on the goals.

For example, during a competitor analysis, we have defined that our market rival X has 10 main effective features or functionality elements. Our product has only 5 of them. Therefore, we expand our product list to 10 features, define the priority for each of them, and start the development process.

Otherwise, after conducting a competitive analysis, we may notice that 5 out of 10 features from our list are out-of-date. 3 of them can be updated. We get a list of 8 features: 5 remain the same, and 3 require additional attention.

The competitive analysis process frequently involves competitive reviews, competitive testing, and competitive tests on the design:

competitive reviews

analysis of a series of related products. During the review, an expert defines strong and weak points of the design, trends, patterns, and differences. You can narrow the review by analysing only one feature, or you can broaden it to analysing the whole website. The swot approach is frequently used for competitive reviews.

competitive testing

this is a less popular approach yet very effective. In this case, we invite users to test different products and evaluate the design. A user is given specific tasks, and they have to perform them with the functionality of the product. In competitive testing, you should also include your product in the list.

competitive tests on the design

competitive analysis can also be used in the evaluation of the design variants for one product. There’s no need to create a full design, a prototype is enough for evaluation. Conducting usability tests is important for any product, and when you have a list of things to compare, tests become more valuable.

Advantages that UX competitive analysis gives to the product?

When we conduct competitive analysis, we always keep in mind that customer behavior changes rapidly. For example, during the first year of Covid 19, retail apps noticed an increase of time spent in mobile apps by 20% . For businesses, this is the trigger that shows the necessity to make apps more interactive and engaging. Therefore, we believe that it’s important to analyze regularly. It will help to:

Define UX strengths and weaknesses

When we analyze our direct and indirect competitors, we can define their strong and weak sides. What do they use to make the UX of their product more satisfying to a user? How can we use their experience in our practice? These are the questions that we need to answer.

It also helps us to define effective solutions and functions that we can implement in our product. 

Investigating the patterns

UХ analysis methods can easily define user behavior patterns used for different products. Our task is to select most suitable patterns for our product and implement them in our design process.

Discovering new areas for growths

For example, new features of functions that our competitors have never used. In the future, some of them may become selling points of the product.

It’s important to pay attention to the functions and features with the same idea but can be implemented differently. You can list approaches to feature implementation and experiment with your feature list in the future.

Creating detailed requirements for the new product

If the product has not been launched yet, we can use the analysis results to create detailed documentation for further development.

It will also be useful if you are planning to improve documentation for already existing products.

When is the right time to perform a UX competitive analysis?

It’s never late to start UX competitive analysis. Yet, we believe that the sooner you start to investigate your competitors, the easier it will be for you to implement changes into your product.

Thus, the best time is at the early stage of product development. In this case, you can easily define the must-have features of your product, write a detailed guide for development, and develop a strategy for further updates and changes. 

There is also an importance of UX competitive analysis on other stages. The matter is that your competitor list will change all the time, as well as the market. It will imply the need to add or remove features and upgrade the product.

A guide to competitive analysis for User Experience design

When creating a guide to competitors` analysis, we’ve used our own experience and best practices of different markets. With the combination of these two aspects, the guide reveals what’s behind the stage of the whole process that frequently involves the whole teamwork on it.

Start with the goals

Use business and product goals as the foundation for defining the goals of the competitive analysis. 

This step is obligatory to answer the most important questions: why you do this and what you are planning to get in the result.

Geography of the analysis

If the product is focused on the local market, you should search for local competitors. But if the product will work on the global market, better to choose another strategy and analyze top global competitors.

The geography of the analysis helps us to set the list of companies that we’re interested in. For example, if you want to create an app for food delivery from one restaurant, we will analyze local competitors. But if you are planning to create an app for food delivery from different restaurants in different regions, you will analyze global competitors, like Uber Eats.

Analysis of direct competitors

When analyzing direct competitors, always pay attention to the following:

you must have a common area and functionality. The competitor’s product or service must solve the same problems and satisfy the same needs as your product

you must have the same platform. In the analysis of direct competitors, it's impossible to compare mobile and desktop platforms and offline and online businesses. Thus, if you analyze mobile apps, the competitor must use mobile apps as well.

Analysis of indirect competitors 

For this type of analysis, follow these requirements:

the products must solve the same problems and satisfy the same needs, but they can be presented on a different platform 

indirect competitors can work in another business area

indirect competitors may have another target audience, but still, the functionality of their digital product is close to yours

Sorting the comparison table

A comparison table allows us to work with collected data in various ways: we can color the most and the least important information, define trends and tendencies, point out key information, or determine patterns. Also, we can sort information using available data: traffic level or a number of downloads. We can sort it by describing the order of functionality as well.

We fill in the comparison table to determine and establish competitive features for our product. We conduct detailed analysis for each competitor, which helps us to make successful decisions for our project.

As a result of the UX Competitive analysis, we create a general report and create a feature list.

UX competitive analysis: Klasha Case Study 

Competitor analysis of any company has certain patterns, but the results are always different. The matter is that the markets are different, and some of them have many things to compare. 

For Klasha , a fintech product, UX competitive analysis was a challenge: the business area is huge, the number of competitors is impressive. Klasha is a product that simplifies money transactions for local currencies. 

Before we started the competitor research, we UX audited the existing website. In this case, this was an essential step that helped us define gaps and understand the main problems. Using best practices and our expertise in the market, we created a preliminary list of issues we will deal with.

We collected all necessary information about product usability: features customers use, less popular ones, and features with poor implementation. We used the collected information to determine the priority of the problems to fix. For some of the issues, we offered best practice solutions that could be implemented immediately.

The next step was the conduction of competitors' analysis. We started with the geography and defined Klasha’s main competitors in the region. Later, we analyzed direct and indirect competitors. We listed their features in a comparison table. Detailed information helped us to define the best UX solutions for Klasha’s website problems. Also, we defined a list of features to be implemented in a fintech app working with money transactions in different currencies.

How to conduct UX competitive analysis for your product

UX competitive analysis is more than looking through the list of companies that work in your business area and randomly checking their websites or apps. It requires a profound understanding of UX, user behavior patterns, and business best practices. 

Fortunately, there’s no need to conduct competitive analysis on your own. Arounda is here to help you! We will take everything on us: starting with the UX audit of your product and up to creating a strategy for feature implementation. We will support you at any stage of the design process and explain how our solutions will work for your business.

Our team of dedicated UX experts will analyze your competitors and provide you with a full report. You will finally understand why your consumers do not use app features and what they expect from your product.

If you are not sure what business goals you can solve with design, don’t hesitate to contact us . We will answer your questions and help you with any inquiry!

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A Guide to UX Competitors’ Analysis for User Research

25 Jan. 2021

7 mins read

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What is the UX Competitors’ Analysis for User Research?

UX competitor analysis is a valuable user research method that focuses on understanding your products’ competitors, helping you better understand your market and goals. Idea Theorem™ has worked with  many clients  that required a UX competitor analysis to get actionable insights about their competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and mistakes to avoid and know what they are doing right.

This article explores the benefits of the UX competitor analysis method for user research and how to conduct your research to help make your products’ user experience more effortless and enjoyable.

Want to drive better results from your product? Download the Product Manager’s Guide To UX >>

Benefits of Competitive Analysis 

Again, UX competitors’ analysis evaluates your competitors’ marketing and product design strategies to identify strengths and weaknesses that you can utilize or avoid. Additional benefits include the following:

• Compare your product’s positioning, design, and solution (and more) against competitors. 
• Identify market gaps that your competitors aren’t targeting, such as a new feature. 
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. 
• Help you inform and make better design decisions. 

When to Conduct a UX Competitive Analysis 

Consider conducting a UX competitive analysis during the user research phase (also known as the  empathy phase™ ). The earlier you conduct a competitive analysis before designing your product, the better it is. It helps you understand what initiatives to take (such as the above examples about the benefits). 

However, UX competitive analysis is not a one-time process. Instead, companies should consider continuing their competitive research throughout their product development, as competitors can change their offerings or new competitors may emerge. Stay up-to-date within your market by taking advantage of the UX competitive analysis.

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Identify your Competitors

The first step in the UX competitors’ analysis is identifying your competitors. Your competitors can be grouped into the following categories:

• Direct Competitors:  Companies that solve the same problem as your product or service. Their value proposition is similar to yours, with the same  target audience .
• Indirect Competitors:  Companies with a similar value proposition but targeting a different target audience. Or it can be the same target audience but with a different value proposition.

Collect the Data 

After identifying your competitors, your next task is to collect data about them. Consider organizing your data into a spreadsheet (either  Excel  or  Google Sheets ) to make it more easily manageable. Part of the data collection includes:

• Basic information such as the company name, and URL (direct or indirect).
• Value proposition.
• Target audience (user demographics).
• The advantages of the product, such as useful key features or solutions to the product. 
• Design details that work or do not work. 
• The disadvantages of the product, such as usability issues, and missing features. Consider reading customer reviews to get that insight. 
• Identify the revenue streams (recurring revenue, transaction-based revenue, project revenue, or service revenue) and the marketing channels that they utilize. 
• Consider collecting the number of website visitors (even if these numbers are not accurate, you can still use those numbers as insights), app downloads, social media presence (followers, posts, etc.), and pricing. 
• Testing the companies’ products yourself. When testing, consider taking screenshots or screen recording your journeys.
• The visual design of their product.
• Checking their websites or app store page to see how they promote their products (marketing tactics).
• Wait and load times of their products or website.

Analyze the Data Collected 

After identifying your competitors and collecting all the information you can capture, your next step is to analyze that information. We recommend first to start scanning through all the information to answer the questions:

• Are there any market gaps that the identified competitors have not targeted?
• Are there any solutions that can be combined that are not done yet?
• What are the product strategies? What are the marketing strategies? Why are the other competitors behind those excelling companies? 
• Are there any problems you’ve identified that the competitors have not addressed? 
• Have you identified valuable insights that can be used on your targeted audience? 
• Are there any ideas or solutions that have not been done from the market?

Presenting your Data

Now that you have analyzed your information, your next task is to present your clients’ findings or business. When presenting your findings, include actionable insights so your clients or business can act on those insights

Presenting your findings can be delivered on a PowerPoint presentation. Do not add all your conclusions; instead, focus on the following areas:

• Key insights backed with evidence, avoiding general findings. 
• Provide actionable insights that will impact and transform the business.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls 

Although UX competitors’ analysis is beneficial, it may lead to your user research pitfalls if done incorrectly. Here are some key areas to avoid when conducting your research:

• Avoid copying one competitor. UX competitors’ analysis requires you to look at several competitors, not just one. By studying one competitor, you may potentially copy their entire product and market strategies. Also, you will miss opportunities to learn more from other competitors. 
• Avoid matching with competitors and duplicating existing solutions. Instead, focus on today’s user problems. 
• Avoid not researching your competitors. It’s understandable to avoid copying your competitors, but knowing their strengths and weaknesses is essential when building your product. So that you can be a master plan to position yourself in the market. 
• Avoid studying irrelevant products and websites. Do not study websites because they’re big players or because you like them. Focus on competitors that are the right inspiration for your research, identify the proper competitor, and read the section to avoid identifying your competitors.

Our Takeaways 

UX competitors’ analysis has been essential for our user research method. This method especially proves helpful when working with clients’ products that have not been on the market. Boost your brand awareness and product knowledge by conducting your own UX competitors’ analysis.

What’s Next

Idea Theorem ™ is a Toronto-based  UI UX Agency . We create simple and usable products for web and mobile. Our human-centered design approach lets us understand your customers, identify their pain points & deliver solutions that enhance their experience with your brand.  Contact Us  if you have any questions and we will be happy to help you.

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Competitive analysis: an easy guide to UX research method

Detection of problems and possible solutions, the definition of the market opportunities — all these are the goals of competitive analysis, one of the most essential methods of UX research . Conducting this type of research is crucial at the early stage of design, as it’s a foundation for a product you’re designing. Therefore, in this article, we explain what a competitive analysis is, why it’s important and will guide you through the competitive analysis process. 

What is a UX competitive analysis? 

Competitive analysis is a UX research method that helps you to get strategic insights into the competitor’s design solutions like digital products’ features, functionality, flows, and overall user experience. Competitive analysis is a strategic move when you identify your major competitors (both current and potential), opportunities to fill, and threats in the current marketplace. 

Also, it’s a way to collect and compare data about products on the marketplace and helps you to find out your competitor’s product’s strong (and weak) sides and detect opportunities they’ve missed.  

It maps the competitor’s product’s design comprehensively. This way, you can discover industry standards. Moreover, by understanding your competitor’s product, you can create a strategy to design a product that will perform superiorly. 

Importance of competitive analysis in UX 

Competitive analysis  in UX is an effective research method that will bring a lot of benefits to your digital product design. Here are some points why competitive analysis is important: 

You understand your competition 

By conducting the competitive analysis, you will be able to answer essential questions: what competitors are doing in terms of design solutions? What can their products offer to customers? How can you beat the competition? 

By finding answers to all these burning questions you’ll be able to create effective strategies and be sure of your product’s competitive advantage chances. 

You expand the domain knowledge 

Another benefit from doing a competitive analysis is the possibility to discover design solutions and strategy moves you haven’t considered before. This one is especially beneficial for startups and projects you carry out in the territory unknown for you as this way you expand the understanding of the domain by analyzing your competitor’s moves and decisions. 

Moreover, this data can be important for future projects to implement new strategies you’ve learned from others. 

You identify the best practices 

The advantage of conducting competitive analysis is also the chance to understand what’s working and what’s not in your competitor’s product. There are two positive points: you learn about competitor’s mistakes and offer a better product that won’t have the issues competitor’s customers might experience. 

Moreover, by analyzing well-established practices in the industry you can implement the best ones in your design. You can understand how to meet customers’ expectations as they might already have specific expectations based on their previous experience with the competitors’ products. Therefore, you’ll be able to provide features that are essential for the product in a certain domain. 

You fit the competitive data in your strategy 

Last but not least, competitive analysis allows you to bring your team and stakeholders on the same page regarding your design strategy. The data collected through the research will give you a perspective and will help in the decision-making process. Moreover, it might also stimulate the design-thinking process and help find unexpected but brilliant solutions for your product design. 

UX competitive analysis steps 

When conducting competitive analysis, you of course have to be objective and make sure that in the end, you’ll be able to understand what’s working in the competitor’s product and what’s not, what features your product should have, what are the possibilities you can use, that haven’t been explored by your competitors. Here are the steps of competitive analysis to help you understand the process:  

Define the goals and problem you want to solve  

To begin your research, you need to define your goal and the problems you want to solve with your product. This will make your competitive analysis efficient and will help you to understand what you want to achieve with it. Define what your design should be focused on and keep this in mind during the whole process. 

Understanding the problem you want to solve will help you to identify the competitors whose products are focused on the same issues. You can understand what is unique about their product and its way of solving this problem. Also, you can find out about the failed attempts to achieve this and analyze why it didn’t work out. 

Create a list of your competitors  

After you’ve defined the problem statement which should lead your research, you will be able to understand the market you’re getting into. To conduct a competitor analysis, pick up to ten competitors. Also, take note of the companies whose products use the specific feature or technology that you want to apply to your product. 

This way you’ll be able to divide the competitors into two groups: direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors are the ones who offer a similar product to what you want to create. Indirect competitors are the ones who don’t offer the same product as you but strive to satisfy the same needs and solve the same problem. 

Evaluation of the competitor’s end-to-end user experience  

To analyze and evaluate your competitor’s product performance you should take into account the following criteria: user demographics, lists of product features, evaluation of visual design language, voice, language, and content. 

For your research, it’s important to do a comparison of the competitions’ product features. Create a list of features and UX elements that are the most relevant to your product and can be useful for your customers. You should include in your analysis: 

• User interface 
• Images 
• Load time 
• Responsiveness 

To identify the differences between your product and the competitors’ one you can use a comparison chart. Also, try to detect weak points of competitor’s product design: how the overall user experience can be improved?  

Make sense of your findings (qualitative and quantitative analysis) 

To structure and make sense of your findings you should conduct  qualitative and quantitative analysis . First, you should focus on  qualitative analysis  of your competitor’s product. A high-level inventory of content and functionality of the competitor’s product can be very useful for competitive analysis. In this case, the content consists of all informational pages and covers both visual and textual content. The functionality then is what users can do while using the product and how they achieve their goal. 

Besides this, quantitative analysis covers:

• Visual design 

The visual design of the competitor websites or apps is shaping a customer’s first impression and is extremely important for the user experience. For your competitive analysis, you can include the homepages screenshots, without going into details, just to show the visual design solutions of your competitors. 

• Strong sides and weak points 

To identify strengths and weak points you can apply  a heuristic evaluation  of the competitor’s end-to-end user experience. This step is a great starting point and will help you to structure the data you’ve discovered.  

The quantitative analysis  focuses mostly on numbers. To carry it out you should analyze the following points:  

• Ranking competitors 

The useful method for quantitative analysis is to rate your competitors. You can create criteria and assign a score for each of them. This way, you’ll be able to measure the user experience and compare the performance of your competitors.  

• User data 

To understand how users interact with the competitor’s product and rate how they’re successful in achieving their goals you can assess various points: time users spent on achieving their goal, number of clicks to what they’re looking for, user journey, errors, and success rate.  

• Google ranking 

Finally, to evaluate the success of a competitor’s digital products and understand their marketing strategy you can analyze the ranking in major search engines. You should research and analyze the common keywords for companies in the same industry or market, as top placement in Google rankings, for example, is an advantage when it comes to attracting new users. So, you should note that as well. 

To sum up 

Competitive analysis is an essential UX research method that helps you to build your product’s design and helps you find new opportunities to fill. It helps you to understand the market better and at the end of the analysis, you’ll also be able to understand your potential clients better. Therefore, UX competitive analysis is a great way to start your product design process and a valuable contribution to your design strategy. 

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Competitor Analysis in UX design: get insights in your brand competitors

What is a competitor analysis in UX design?

For us UX designers, a competitor analysis is a very important item of the many UX research methods where we search for competitors in the industry and compare them to each other and to your company. This way we’ll find out their weaknesses and strengths, their products, market trends and tactics, understand your market and competitors, and we can plan benchmarks to help you grow even more.

Within the whole UX design process, you can focus your competitor analysis on a specific aspect of your business, or go all out and consider all other parts as well. It’s just a matter of tailoring the questions to fit your needs.

When and why do we use a competitor analysis in UX design?

A competitor analysis within the UX design process can really help your business. It is always a good idea to conduct multiple analyses throughout the development and growth of your company . If it’s when you’re just starting out, or you’re already a few years in; it’s always valuable to know what the ‘others’ are doing. Your competitors also grow, have different strategies, and think of the things you wouldn’t have. And wouldn’t you like to know what these are? 😉

With a well-executed competitor analysis, you can make sure your unique selling point or value proposition is truly something your competitors don’t have, and you can plan future marketing strategies and sales efforts on that proposition.

How to make a competitor analysis in UX design?

Before you start your competitor analysis in your UX design process, you have to make a list of all the potential competitors that are in your branch or have a similar target audience. These are usually the companies that first come to mind when thinking about competitors that do the same as you. 

Make a list

Direct and indirect competitors.

There are direct and indirect competitors; direct competitors have a similar product or service. Indirect competitors sell their products or services to a target audience that has a lot of similarities with yours or have a product that falls in the same category as yours.

For example; Adidas sells sports attire like shoes and clothes. Their direct competitors are Nike and Puma. Their indirect competitors are Fila, Vans, Kappa and Jordan. The reason their direct competitors are Nike and Puma is because they sell approximately the same variety of products to the same target audience. Fila, Vans, Kappa and Jordan are indirect competitors because they don’t have the same variety but do target the same audience or, where they do have the same products, they sell to a slightly different audience. 

Replacement competitors

Then there are the replacement competitors where customers would go if the direct and indirect competitors are not available or for some reason aren’t an option. In the previous example, a secondary brand like Bristol or H&M could be a replacement competitor.

Create a graph or grid 

Before you dive into comparisons, it’s useful to make a graph of some sort to have all your information in one place and make it easy to compare the different findings.

Here you have to dive a bit deeper into your competitors’ businesses.

The following questions are what you need to think about when setting up your investigation. These questions are also common in other elements of the UX design process, they’re not solely a part of the competitors’ analysis. So chances are, if you have done some research for other parts for your UX design process, these questions are easy to answer.

• What features does this product or service have?
• If it’s a product, what kind of service do they provide?
• What kind of prices do they charge?
• What kind of marketing strategies do they use?
• Do they sell online and/or in physical shops?
• What is their target audience? (This one is very important! Is their target audience the same as yours, or are there differences? This also tells a lot about their communication methods.)
• Which pain points do they resolve for their target audience?
• Which channels do they use?
• What is the company profile?

Competitor analysis UX design template

Put these questions into a grid with on the horizontal axes the competitors and on the vertical axes the questions or points you want answered or information about.

Get searching

Now you can scour the internet to find all the available information you can gather about your competitors. Look on their website, browse for blogs they have written or maybe blogs others have written about them, check their social media channels, read about the companies histories, etc.

Don’t only use the information that is available , but also put your head to work and write down things you know about them; 

• How do they talk to their target audience on social media? 
• What kind of words do they use? 
• Which psychological elements do they use to sell their brand? 
• Do they play into certain pain points or emotions?
• What is the meaning of the colors they use in their branding?

The next step of your competitor analysis in UX design is to put all your information together and search for differences and similarities . Write down what your competitor’s weaknesses and strengths are and, don’t forget, also write down your own. Are there any elements you can use to make your product better? Are there any pain points that you should take notice of and improve? What about methods or strategies that your competitors use that you can learn from? 

Make a clear list of your conclusions , and your competitor analysis in UX design is almost ready! Now you have a perfect overview of what is great (and not so great) about your competitors businesses and how you can set yourself apart. I guarantee you that this whole endeavor won’t be for nothing, there is always a piece of information that is useful to help your business get better. 

The takeaway

A competitor analysis in UX design may sound like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. If you have a clear idea of what kind of information you need, the searching gets a lot easier. You can make it as big or small as you want, as long as you conduct a thorough analysis.

With your findings you have a clear mapped out idea of your competitors that will help you define a unique proposition. You know exactly the difference between you and your competitors and what makes them and you unique. 

If you really don’t know where to start your competitor analysis in UX design, we’re here to help you! Just send us a message, and we’ll have you under one of our palm trees in a matter of minutes! With a nice cup of coffee (or cocktail) of course!

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