Web Site Competitive Analysis

[office politics]

How to conduct a Web site competitive analysis

Hints and tips for doing it right

Thomas Myer (tom@tripledogdaremedia.com)
Co-founder, Triple Dog Dare Media
01 Oct 2002

Conducting a competitive analysis is an important part of the job if you're a usability engineer or information architect. A good competitive analysis not only produces usability metrics but also aids decision makers in their strategic goal-setting and planning. Done right, a good competitive analysis can steer a Web development project in the right direction.
The day will come when you're sitting happily at your desk and someone from marketing or business development will come into your office and ask you to do a competitive analysis for them. The company is launching a news site or portal, and the decision makers want to be sure that their site will stand up to the competition.

...

What to analyze
Now that you have a list of competitors, you need to draw up a list of items to analyze when you visit their sites. I've developed a categorized list of items over the years, which are included below:

Home page. How informative is the home page? Does it set the proper context for visitors? Is it just an annoying splash page with multimedia? How fast does it load?
Navigation. Is the global navigation consistent from page to page? Do major sections have local navigation? Is it consistent?
Site organization. Is the site organization intuitive and easy to understand?
Links and labels. Are labels on section headers and content groupings easy to understand? Are links easy to distinguish from each other? Or are they ambiguous and uninformative ("click here" or "white paper")? Are links spread out in documents, or gathered conveniently in sidebars or other groupings?
Search and search results. Is the search engine easy to use? Are there basic and advanced search functions? What about search results? Are they organized and easy to understand? Do they give relevance weightings or provide context? Do the search results remind you what you searched for?
Readability. Is the font easy to read? Are line lengths acceptable? Is the site easy to scan, with chunked information, or is it just solid blocks of text?
Performance. Overall, do pages load slowly or quickly? Are graphics and applications like search and multimedia presentations optimized for easy Web viewing?
Content. Is their sufficient depth and breadth of content offerings? Does the content seem to match the mission of the organization and the needs of the audience? Is the site developing its own content or syndicating other sources? Is there a good mix of in-depth material (detailed case studies, articles, and white papers) versus superficial content (press releases, marketing copy)?

 

[Draconian]

I really enjoy doing competitive analysis. It's my chance as a professional trained designer to jump in and really start do dish on the criticisms. So -so- much fun.

 

[Sheepykins]

this is kind of related but something to sate my own curiosity really,

how would you tell if a server is running PHP? I know a hard question to answer, as alot of it can be used server side.

 

[office politics]

i think some servers will show this info on a 404 page. like when apache shows object not found error, it maybe listed with the server version.

server fingerprint scanners should be able to pick this up.

if you have access to the server's hard drive, you can make a new php page including phpinfo();

 

[Sheepykins]

heh, I work for IDS analysis and establishing a PHP print on a web-page can sometimes be tricky. We use a bespoke system that enables us to fine tune our IPS devices to certain vulnerabilities, or in this case BLOCK any php based attacks

But i'm not a coder i know a little html, css and js but some php based websites have virtually no indication that php is in use at all! so figuring out something without having to pen test every system would be amazing

btw so many of your links and tutorials give me nerd wood office