Competitive intelligence has various levels of complexity that requires different resources. You already know the basics of how to conduct competitor research. You’ve followed your competitors on social media, you’ve locked in your SEO research. But you’re still missing one piece. The biggest piece: your competitor’s website.
Whether it’s a new product launch or a change in the roster, the website is the go-to for public information about everything from the company. When done correctly, competitor intelligence offers you opportunities to advance in the market, market share, and a lot more. But in order to find what you’re looking for, you have to know where to look.
When trying to understand a competitor’s website there a few main pages to focus on. These are some of the most common sections.
The press pages are a great way to collect information that a company is looking to push out about changes in leadership, new products, awards, and a lot more. It’s the place where companies normally announce things about themselves. Alerts to a new release in the press pages could alert you to actionable items.
Companies will often put all of their product or service offerings onto one page. Paying attention to these pages will not only alert you to additions to the product line, but could tell you about messaging or changes in call to action. Are they testing out “Start Your Free Trial” v “Book a Demo”? Did they switch to a freemium model? Attention to these tiny details can make a big impact in the way you approach the market.
This one seems pretty straightforward: if a company has changed its pricing (up or down), it could tell you a lot about what to expect from them. Of course you will see changes in pricing, but you will also could see changes to their pricing model. Whether it’s academic papers about pricing or blogs about pricing, there is a lot of great information out there. Though nothing will impact you more directly than $48 decrease that happened this morning from your direct competitor.
Use case pages will help you get a sense of the kinds of solutions that your competition is focusing on. Perhaps they’ve changed their target. Perhaps they’ve started to focus on a different buyer persona. The use case pages would be the best way to understand their target market.
A website is a wellspring of clear and valuable information about your competitor, but Different tools will give you different information. At the end of the day, you are the expert in your business. Only you would know which sections of a website would be most relevant for your strategy to stay ahead. But when you’re well informed, you can make those decisions with ease.