Know your competition - Ecommerce
A lot can be gained from looking at the sites already competing for your niche. If you are lucky they will all be badly written sites that you can compete on price with. If there are good sites in your niche you may be able to learn how they have become successful, and get some inspiration. Even if you have no intention of being like them, it's important to know your competition.
My dad ran his own successful bricks and mortar business for a number of years. He would often order catalogues from his competition to check out what products they stocked, and what prices they offered. Running an ecommerce site is much like a bricks and mortar business, so I have learnt a few things from him.
- Viewing the source code of competition can tell you a few things. The level of optimisation for keywords and what keywords they are targeting, do they have valid code, and what version of markup language are they using.
- Using something like SEO quake you can find out who is linking to your competition. These are likely to be links from related sites in your niche (if your competitors know what they are doing). This can be a useful way of finding people who may also be prepared to link to you.
Know your competition by analysing their marketing strategy
- Do they offer free shipping?
- What special offers do they promote? Often adding items together for a reduction in cost, or upselling can increase profits. You could have related products on the same page.
- How much advertising does you competition do with pay per click adverts like Adsense? Find out how much they are bidding on the keywords and see if it is worth trying to compete. Do they advertise in print or other media?
- What kind of customers do they target (if any)?
- What is their customer service like?
- What kind of payment system / shopping cart do they use? Add some things to a basket and follow the process to checkout. Is it a nightmare or a breeze to buy something from them? The various carts work in different ways and some are easier to order with than others. You could even make a purchase and see what their products and service are like in the flesh. I haven’t had stomach to put money in my competition’s pockets yet but it could be worthwhile.
- What is their site design like? You may be able to offer something more up to date, and increase your trust factor compared with the competition.
To know your competition doesn't mean you need to copy them, it’s just useful to know what is out there already. Do a search for you products and find out who comes up often in search results. Think from a customer perspective, try to be unbiased and think about which ones you would happily purchase from and why.
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Posted by Tom on Thu 15th Jan 2009
