How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis For Your E-Commerce Business
Competition might be a good thing for a business as long as you keep an eye on your competition. Competitive analysis lets you dive through the extensive knowledge of your competition. The longer you do a competitive analysis, the better you will be able to predict the actions of your competitions. If you do well at competitive analysis, then you can even steal their potential customers away from them.
In this post, we will talk about competitive analysis and how you can conduct a competitive analysis for your eCommerce business.
What is a Competitive Analysis?
Competitive analysis is the process of identifying your competitors and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. This way you can make better marketing strategies to benefit your business.
In the scenario of eCommerce, competitive analysis is no different. In eCommerce, with the help of in-depth competitive analysis, you can get a clear picture of the competitions and what strategies they are implying to generate business. Utilizing this knowledge, you will be able to make effective marketing strategies to promote your product or services.
However, conducting a competitive analysis for eCommerce is a tough process and requires a lot of effort. So is it worth investing your efforts and time in the competitive analysis? Scroll down to learn the answer to this question.
Why Competitive Analysis is Important for eCommerce?
Today eCommerce is full of competition and you can’t afford to lose focus on your potential competitions. If you don’t keep up with your competition, then you will start losing your potential customers in the long run and your competitors will take over your market.
Take the case of the powerful Price Intelligence products offered by Wersel. They offer an in-depth competitive analysis to dig deep into your competitor’s marketing strategies. Besides these, you will also get to know about the weakness and strengths, which can help you beat them and take over their market.
For eCommerce, competitive analysis not only gives information about the competitive market but also essential to stay in the race and generate profits from your business.
How to Conduct Competitive Analysis for Your eCommerce Business?
What are the essential things you might need to conduct a competitive analysis? If you run an eCommerce business, then stress not. Here in this post, I will guide you through every aspect you might need to conduct a competitive analysis for your eCommerce business.
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Determine Your Direct and Indirect Potential Competitors
The first step to conduct a competitive analysis is to determine your potential competitors in the market. Every eCommerce owner is aware of their direct competitors. But with each day more and more players are entering the market, so it becomes a hassle to monitor them. Here is how you can do so.
Google Search Engine
Google is one of the most effective ways to determine your competitors. All you have to do is search for the product or services you’re offering, and Google will display a list of all the local companies that sell similar products or services. The top search results are the established players in the market. You should monitor them regularly.
Social Media
Social media has a vast user base, more and more eCommerce businesses are opting for social media to promote their product and services. Simply open any social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, search for the product name, you’re most likely to see the name of companies who are selling the same product or service as you’re selling.
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Examine Their Website
Once you have the name of your potential competitors, the next step is to examine their website. You should evaluate how they have designed their website, what features they have added to the website, and how they enhance their user’s shopping experience.
You should also examine their blog page to see how they are promoting their product or services. Do they also have an app and how likely they motivate their users to download their application?
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What Product or Services Your Competitors are Offering?
Now, you should check out the product and services they are offering. How are their products better than yours? If their products are better than yours, then what you can do with your products to make them customer-centric.
Apart from this, you should also check what the pricing of their products is. Do they also offer any discounts? This way you will be better able to improve your products and will make them better than your competitors.
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Understand Their Social Media Strategies
Social media is an integral part of eCommerce, you shouldn’t underestimate it. You should follow the social media channels of your competitors. Social media is the place where customers can directly connect with you.
You should also examine their social media marketing strategies, as it is a more efficient way to bring business.
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Read Competitors Reviews
This seems like an obvious step but can help you enough to get an insight into the view of your competitors and how much their customers are happy with their product or services. If you find out that any particular product is reviewed extensively on your competitor’s site, which means there is a high demand for this product and people will also show interest if you offer a similar product to them.
Product reviews and community forums will reveal a lot about your competitors, like what products they offer, how they ship their products, and the overall quality of their products. This information seems enough to make better marketing strategies than your competitions.
Finishing Up
Stay up to date with your competitors is really helpful to expand your eCommerce business reach and make your business profitable. Besides the above competitive analysis steps, you can buy products from your established competitors. This is an effective way to inspect their overall product quality and packaging.Competitive analysis should be done regularly to keep improving your products and services to make them customer-focused.
