Understand the competitive landscape

Learn about your competitors and how customers perceive them to uncover key strengths and weaknesses that can inform and improve your strategy.

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About competitive testing

  • The UserTesting platform enables you to obtain feedback on any experience visible to contributors, whether on a desktop, mobile device, or through a mobile camera.
  • This includes experiences related to your products or services and those of your competitors.

Examples:

  • Observe contributors interacting with a competitor's website or mobile app.
  • Request contributors to demonstrate how they perform tasks, noting whether they use your site or a competitor's.
  • Have contributors complete tasks on sites your team considers exemplary, even if they aren't direct competitors.

 

 

Why collect feedback on competitors

  • Unbiased perspective: Watching users engage with competitors' offerings provides an objective view of their strengths and weaknesses compared to your own.
  • Building confidence: Seeing users struggle with competitors' solutions can reinforce confidence in your products.
  • Inspiration: Noting user satisfaction with a competitor's solution can motivate your team to match or surpass those features.
  • Identifying competitors: User feedback can reveal unexpected competitors in your market.

 

 

Approaches to collecting feedback

  • Feedback on competitor sites and apps:
    • Develop tests with screening questions to identify users who are customers of specific competitors.
    • Ask these users to perform tasks on competitor sites or apps.
  • Comparison tests:
    • Utilize Balanced Comparison to have users complete tasks on both your site and a competitor’s.
    • Compare usability, design, and functionality directly.
  • Exploratory research:
    • Identify critical tasks your business supports and test how users complete them elsewhere.
    • Gain insight into their preferred methods and tools.

 

 

What to avoid

  • Do not collect personally identifiable information (PII).
  • Ensure ethical and legal compliance in competitive research.
  • Respect competitors' intellectual property rights.

 

 

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