Competitive analysis: how to approach it effectively

You can learn a lot from UX competitive analysis

Competitive analysis — I am not talking about competitive market analysis such as market share, revenue, value proposition and number of customers, which are typically done by PM, a product manager. I am talking about a competitive analysis of a user experience of competitor products as a UX designer.

If you do it with the right approach, you can learn a lot of things, which will greatly benefit your UX work.

In this article, I would like to share one of effective approaches to conduct a competitive analysis in a UX project.

1. See a big picture first

The key is to see a big picture first, rather than getting caught up in details.

Many people might be tempted to jump right in to a competitor’s product, and start analyzing every single element of its user interface right away.

But this is not a good idea, as it makes you get caught up on all the interface details without understanding a bigger picture.

The purpose of competitive analysis, or competitive benchmark is to learn from other products so that you can create something better.

The key is to see a big picture first, rather than getting caught up in details.

2. See things in context

A user experience consists of a product, a user, and a context.

A user experience happens when there are:

• Product
• User
• Context

This means that it’s important to always see things in context, put yourself in user’s shoes, and focus on a user experience from a user’s point of view, NOT from a UX expert’s point of view from a distance.

Because we as UX designers are UX experts, we tend to take experts’ point of views almost instantly by default without realizing it unless we pay a close attention not to do so.

3. Define a focus area, then experience products as a user