What is Competitive Comparison?

What is competitive comparison?

Competitive comparison is when you ask contributors to interact with one or more of your competitor's experiences and, optionally, your experience. This is also sometimes called a competitive analysis or a competitor study.

Why is competitive comparison helpful?

Competitive comparison provides insight into what your competitors are doing well and where there may be opportunities to learn from their successes or mistakes. They also help you learn about the value and usability of their product designs or features.

How do I run a competitive comparison test?

There are a few different ways to approach competitive comparison testing.

• Unmoderated tests: Use any method for collecting feedback, but point contributors to your competitor's site (instead of your own site) using the URL task type.
• Balanced Comparison: If you are comparing your competitor's site to your site, use the Balanced comparison feature when setting up your test.
• Templates: UserTesting provides a Competitive comparison test template in the Template Gallery. The template is suitable for understanding which website or app is most attractive and why and for reviewing contributors' opinions on competitors' offerings. Additionally, UserTesting has created an Insights Report companion template to help synthesize and share the findings of your competitive test. 

Here's a demo of how to use the Competitive comparison template in conjunction with the UserTesting Platform's Metrics tab so as to create a report that you can share with key stakeholders. 

Professional Services

Our Professional Services team can assist with competitive benchmarking and comprehensive competitive analysis so that you understand how your experience stacks up against that of your competitors over time. Connect with Professional Services to learn more. 

When should competitive comparison testing be conducted?

Competitive comparison testing should be conducted regularly on key user flows in your experience, which can be identified as the primary KPI-impacting touchpoints. These quarterly or semi-annual "health checkups" will help to reveal new opportunities or threats in the competitive landscape. For this reason, competitive testing is also critical when considering whether and how to redesign an experience and to determine which features to focus on.

When setting up your competitive test with UserTesting, plan to execute these steps:

1. Identify the competitive experience to compare against your own.
2. Use the Competitive comparison test template to gather comparative feedback on a specific flow on both websites or apps.
3. Use the Competitive comparison report template to synthesize and share your findings.

When should competitive benchmarking be conducted?

As with any benchmark study, you need to start with a baseline. The baseline will be the first test you run to compare the results of future tests and assess what has changed and how much. Competitive benchmarking is helpful when you want to:

• Set a strategy to create a competitive advantage for growth or mitigate risk.
• Determine how a digital product, brand, or service experience compares with others in a similar category.
• Understand a rapidly changing landscape to determine where to invest resources.

If you need assistance setting up and running a competitive benchmark study, contact our Professional Services team.

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