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E-Commerce Competitive Analysis

Part 1 -- Idenitfy & Evaluate The Competition


by Maggi Hall, E-Commerce Adviser staff (rev022708)

No matter how great your website is or your products and services are, you have to deal with competition. In fact, you want to beat the competion, not just deal with them. A successful e-commerce competitive analysis will allow you to distinguish your online business from the competition and be more effective at converting website visitors to website customers. Completing this analysis does take time, but you should consider it one of the best investments you can make in your online business. To guide your competitive analysis download the WORKSHEET - PART I

Identify The Competition

  1. Write down the names and websites of your top 3 competitors that you currently know about.

  2. Using the keywords and keyphrases identified in the Products/Services Analysis of your Business Plan, Google each 2-word keyphrase. The first page of each search will list 10 website links. Write down top 3 links. Then find the 25th link and the 95th link.

    The reason for including and analyzing the 25th and 95th positions is primarily for a learning experience. It is not just important to understand the characteristics of the top listing, but also how the top listings differ from listings in other positions.

  3. If you have an existing e-commerce website, add your website to the "The Competition" list and include it in the following analysis to see how your online business compares to the competitions' websites.

Key Facts



For each competitor identified above, find out:
  1. Age of the website
  2. Link Popularithy of the Home page
There are many tools available on the Internet to collect this information. Here are a couple of links: Use the same tool for all domains you are comparing to be sure the information collection is consistent.

Define Strengths and Weaknesses



Based on the content of each "The Competition" website and any other information you may have about the competition:
  1. List 2 strengths for each top competitor
  2. List 2 weaknesses for each top competitors
  3. Based on all of the strengths identified step 1, list the 3 most valuable strengths
  4. Based on all of the weaknesses identified step 1, list the 3 most dangerous weaknesses

Evaluate Top Competitors' Websites design

  1. List the design features for each website, e.g. animation, video, music, text
  2. List navigation quality and options for each website, e.g. horizontal menu, dropdown menu, links
  3. List product display attributes for each website, e.g. photo display, product features presentation
  4. List any significant aesthetic features for each website -- good or bad
  5. List the 3 best design features from item 1 and the 3 worst
  6. List the 3 best navigation attributes from item 2 and the 3 worst
  7. List a distincitvely unique design feature from items 1, 2 or 3, e.g. something found on only one website
Evaluate Top Competitors' Search Engine Optimization

Using Google's Webmaster Tools identify the top four 2-word keyphrase and associated count and density.