How do you perform E-commerce competitor product analysis?

Competitor Analysis is the most crucial external analysis for any brand on any ecommerce platform. Your competitors will have different strengths and weaknesses than your own company. The key to success is identifying these opportunities and threats early on so that you can respond. Whether you're ready or not, competitors are an unavoidable force that has the potential to either support your business or leave you in the dust. Let's be honest: no matter how unique your E-commerce store is, someone will always want to compete with you. Competitor analysis helps companies understand their competitors' strategies so they can build more substantial businesses as a result. As an E-commerce business owner, it's crucial that you continuously reassess your competitors as time progresses to remain one step ahead of them at all times. So – let's get into it! Here is our ultimate checklist for competitor analysis:

Competitor analysis assesses your competitor's strengths and weaknesses to determine how best to compete. It can be applied to any business sector and is integral to strategic planning and business intelligence. It will help you to identify the best and worst aspects of your competitors' products and services, their marketing strategies and the general public perception of their brands. It will enable you to develop a more effective business strategy based on your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. Competitor analysis can be done on either an existing or potential competitor.

Step 1: Define your key business objectives

It is the first step in any business strategy, but it needs to be addressed. Why? Before deciding how to compete against your competitors, you must understand what you're trying to do. What are the strategic goals that you want to achieve with your business? Are you hoping to increase sales? Or do you want to improve customer retention? Whatever your goals, they're the foundation upon which your business strategy will be built. With plans, it will be possible to measure success or failure at the end of the day. It should also be noted that your business objectives should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

This means that your goals are specific enough to be understood by everyone in the business, have a precise measurement method, are achievable, and are relevant to the success of business. Most importantly, they also have a set time frame.

Step 2: Identify your competitors

It is a crucial part of product competitor analysis in the E-commerce marketplace. You cannot expect to compete with a competitor whom you cannot identify. You can do this in two ways: Decide which businesses you will analyze or use an analysis tool to identify your competitors. The first option is great if you want to engage actively with a competitor. This could be an ad campaign targeting one of your competitors or identifying someone as a potential threat. In both cases, it's important to understand your competitors' strengths and weaknesses so that you can either outdo them or come up with a strategy to address their shortcomings.

Step 3: Benchmark your competitors' performance

It is the part of product competitor analysis where you need to start forming hypotheses. What is the relationship between your competitors' strengths and weaknesses? If, for example, your competitors have a solid social media presence but low SEO rankings, you should consider the possibility that SEO traffic is less "brand-loyal". Customers who click on SEO-driven advertisements are less likely to purchase those who click on social media advertisements. That's just one example of what you can do with competitor analysis. You can also look at your competitors' customer retention rates, satisfaction levels, and profit margins. By comparing the performance of your competitors to yours, you can figure out where you can improve and where they are underperforming.

Step 4: Analyze user behavior and digital platforms

Now that you've determined your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, as well as their user behavior and digital platforms, it's time to dig a little deeper. Let's start with analyzing your competitors' digital media. What platforms do they use? How successful are they on these platforms? What trends do you see among customers that prefer one platform over another?

Step 5: Summing up

Once you've completed the competitor analysis, you should understand your competitor's strengths and weaknesses. It's a lot of work, but your insight into your competitors' strategy can be invaluable to your business. Once you've completed the product competitor analysis, you must revisit this process regularly. As your business grows, so do your competitors. New threats will emerge, and existing threats will become clearer.  It would help if you stayed on top of this. It is also important to remember that competitor analysis is a fluid process. You can't possibly know everything about your competitors, and you certainly want to avoid getting too wrapped up in any competitor to the detriment of your own business. However, if you stay consistent with competitor analysis, you'll be able to keep pulse of your industry.

E-commerce products competitor analysis is an integral part of any E-commerce strategy. Knowing what your competitors are doing, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to respond is crucial for a company's success. To succeed in E-commerce's fast-paced world, every company needs to know their competition inside out. It allows E-commerce companies to remain one step ahead of the competition at all times. If you aren't performing competitor analysis for products, you're leaving yourself open to being blindsided by your rivals at any moment. It sounds like quite a lot, but it can be easy and not take up much time once you get into the habit of keeping track of your competitors.

What should be included in your product's competitor analysis? 

As with any business analysis, you'll need to start by researching your competitors. The information you obtain will depend mainly on your goals for conducting the analysis. The main areas you should be looking into are: -

The E-commerce landscapes: - The strengths and weaknesses of your direct competitors. Strengths and weaknesses of other channels that may impact your business. The E-commerce landscape is critical to understand at the industry level. You'll want to know about macroeconomic factors that could impact your business and what other companies in your industry are doing. Zooming into your direct competitors allows you to understand their strengths and weaknesses. It will help you create a competitive analysis that will allow you to understand how you can compete effectively against these companies. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of other channels affecting your business will help you determine whether you need to take action against these channels. This analysis is essential because it helps you determine how your channel's strengths and weaknesses are compared to your competitors' channels.

Steps to perform Competitor Analysis for Products

Step 1 - Understand the E-commerce landscape

The first step in your E-commerce competitor analysis is understanding the E-commerce landscape. It will help you identify key trends within your industry that could have a significant impact on your business. It also helps you understand your direct competitors' strengths and weaknesses. Once you've researched the E-commerce landscape, it's time to move on to step two.

Step 2 - Zoom in on Your Direct Competitors 

With a better understanding of E-commerce landscape better, it's time to focus on your direct competitors. It will help you identify your company's strengths and weaknesses relative to your direct competitors. It will also help to reveal potential threats from other channels that may be affecting your business. Now that you've learned about your competition and its strengths and weaknesses, it's time to move on to step three.

Step 3 - Track Your Competitors' Marketing Efforts

Next, you'll want to track your competitors' marketing efforts. It will help you identify what marketing strategies are working for them and what marketing strategies need to be fixed. It will also help you to determine whether there are any areas where you need to improve to remain competitive. Finally, it's time to look for red-flag behavior. It will help you identify any unusual or out-of-the-ordinary behaviors your competitor is exhibiting. This kind of analysis will help you determine whether there is something significant (such as financial problems) which you need to be aware of and act accordingly.

Conclusion

The E-commerce landscape is ever-changing, and retailers must adapt and respond to new market conditions as they occur. That is why E-commerce Product competitor analysis is so critical. It allows companies to identify and respond to their competitor's strengths and weaknesses as they occur to keep them ahead of the curve at all times. To succeed in E-commerce, you must know what your competitors are doing and how you can respond to their strategies to stay ahead of the game. 

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