Complete Brief about Competitive Analysis UX Design
In the article, I am introducing the detailing of a Competitive Analysis UX Design which is a method for determining the competitors and their performances. Aim of the analysis is to introduce you to the subject and the concepts of Competitive Analysis. The method is important for starting with any new projects, UX, product design, etc.
5 Stages of designing a website –
If you are into UX Designing, then it is obvious of you to come across Service Design Cycle. The cycle has 4 different stages, viz. Discover, Explore, Test and Listen. The UX Designers often follow the 5 stage design process for the development –
Empathize: Gaining of clear understanding the problem.
Define: Defining the correct statement of problem using the knowledge.
Ideate: Generate the solution for the ideas for the problem.
Prototype: Giving an attempt to give solutions with some sort of form to understand the problem better and clear.
Test: It involves validating and evaluating the solution.
These are different from Service Design cycle. The purpose is to understand the design thinking process, but explained in various styles. The statistic suggests that 61.2% of professionals prefer competitive analysis for their projects.
Necessity of Competitive Analysis –
The main reason of going for a competitive analysis is to understand the right and wrong of products and services a company is providing. Through UX Research Competitive Analysis, you can decide the current working and what the users need from you. Rather than guesses, it gives an analysis of numbers and identifies the risks of products or services for adding value to your services.
Finding the right Competitors –
There are usually two types of competitors, the Direct Ones and Indirect Ones. Direct Competitors are those who offer same services as you are and solving similar problems. Indirect Competitors are the ones who offer similar set of features but for a different customer base without offering exactly same services.
Steps to do a Competitive Analysis –
Doing a competitive analysis for existing or new products requires a series of steps as follows.
Define strategic goals and understand them –It is an integral part of any UX research process which defines accurate goals. Draft all the goals right in the start and define the goals considering the questions of why competitive analysis and what are you expecting. So, list out all your goals, even if they are very simple to sound and specify them as much as possible. Few of the main things to focus will be User Preference of apps, the working mechanism of apps, unique selling feature of the app, the comfort of working with the app, and lastly the visual structure of the app.
Knowing the right competitor –After you know where you are heading to, make a list of all the direct and indirect competitors.Knowing all the competitors is not needed for you; make maximum 4 competitors to check where you stand and how can you improve. As much we research you do, you will understand the right ones for competing. When you research better, you’ll realize, many of the competitors you found are indirect ones, and you don’t need to list them.
Make a summary and analysis – Once you done with Findings, be specific about the summarizing the searches and the results. The summary will help in finding the designs and UX opportunities in the future services.
We are in a data driven world which believe in building products, services and apps that are more into statistics driven and not on assumptions. The Competitive Analysis UX designer needs to search all the data possible for building the real products. The data will help in creating a solid product that will surely run in the market as required and likely to succeed.
