A competitive audit is an overview of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Analyzing the brands and products of competitors, or the companies who offer similar products as you do, can give you a well-rounded foundation of knowledge about the market your product will enter.
Competitive Audit Steps
- Outline your goals (e.g., “compare the user experience of each competitors website”)
- Create spreadsheet with a list of your competitors (direct and indirect competitors)
- Determine the specific aspects you want to compare (e.g., first impressions, interaction, visual design, content)
- Research each company (e.g., audience, first impressions, interaction, visual design, content)
- Analyze your findings
- Summarize your findings in a report (e.g., charts, graphics)
Competitive audits can offer many benefits throughout your ideation phase, including:
- Giving you an idea of products already in the market and their designs.
- Suggesting ideas to solve early problems that you’re facing with your own designs.
- Revealing the ways that current products in the market are not meeting users’ needs. This is a gap for your product to address!
- Demonstrating the expected life cycle of a product in the same market as yours.
- Informing all the different iterations your product could take and how those performed for your competitors.
