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| Understanding Competitors |
Understanding Competitors
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Competitor Analysis comprises of activities that compare your solution or idea with what is developed by existing or potential competitors. This is a very valuable exercise that helps understand the market situation, the product expectations and may uncover further product ideas. Aside from knowing your competitors, a major reason for Competitor Analysis is to discover your own Unique Selling Points.
Competitor Analysis may include the following practices:
Feature Comparison
One of the most basic and most important parts of Competitor Analysis is Feature Comparison. This exercise will tell you whether you and your competitor offers the same features or more or less of them. You may further look into the importance of these features to see whether you are on par when it comes to the core features. Furthermore, you could look into completeness of your vs your competitor's offering.
Qualitative Comparisons
Here you look into usability of the features and how they are presented. You may see that while your competitor provides the same features as you, their documentation may be far superior, thus making their offering more attractive to customers (if applicable). If you are comparing mobile apps, a distinguishing factor might be the user experience. As an example, think about the note taking application you use on your phone vs the one you do not use. Most note taking applications have comparable functionality but the ease of use makes a handful of them a hit, whie thousands of similar apps do not.
Pricing and Distribution Comparisons
It is important to see how the competitor prices their offering. This doesn't just tell you how might have to price your product, it may also give you valuable insight on what price ranges are acceptable to customers. You may also look further and see whether the competitor offers their app on a free trial or free features with paid features or paid only. Do they go with an invite only option, creating a sense of exclusivity, or is it freely accessible to everyone? Does your competitor go directly to end-customers or do they work via resellers? These are all good pointers towards the market reality.
Summary
In short, Competitor Analysis helps you understand the market and gives you information with which to position your product better.