Competitive Audits

Competitive Audits: Comprehensive Guide

Understanding Competitive Audits

A competitive audit is an overview of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. We know that it’s important to come up with lots of ideas before deciding on one solution. A competitive audit is just one tool to explore ideas for designs, so we can learn from others about what has worked and not worked.

What You Can Learn from Competitive Audits

Competitor Identification

Identifying your key competitors in the market space

Product Analysis

Reviewing the products that your competitors offer

Market Positioning

Understanding how competitors position themselves in the market

Performance Assessment

Examining what competition does well and what they could do better

Types of Competitors

Direct Competitors

Direct competitors have offerings (products, services, or features) that are similar to your product and focus on the same audience. Essentially, you’re both trying to solve the same problem.

Indirect Competitors

Indirect competitors are more nuanced. They either:

Have a similar set of offerings but focus on a different audience than you, OR
Have a different set of offerings and focus on the same audience as you

Example: Weight Loss App

Let’s say you’re creating a weight loss app that focuses on people in their 30s:

Direct Competitors: Other companies that make weight loss apps targeted at people in their 30s

Indirect Competitors:

Companies that make health or wellness apps targeted at people in their 30s
Companies that make weight loss apps targeted at people in a different age bracket

It’s helpful to audit a wide range of products that compete with yours to get a full picture of the landscape.

Why Competitive Audits Are Important

1. Inform Your Design Process

How did your competitors approach designing their products? Knowing what others have done can help you make better design decisions for your own product.

2. Solve Usability Problems

Is your competitor’s website difficult to use? If so, you know what to avoid for your own website.

3. Reveal Market Gaps

Are there user needs your competitors do not meet? Your product might be able to address these user needs.

4. Provide Reliable Evidence

Design ideas are most successful when there’s a deep understanding of business needs and market gaps. Competitive audits are a huge part of gathering that information.

Cost Savings

Knowing all of these things can help you save time, money, and energy.

Limitations of Competitive Audits

1. Can Stifle Creativity

If you spend too much time focusing on what others are doing, you might prevent yourself from creating a truly innovative product. Innovation doesn’t happen by copying the competition. The key is to understand what the competition is doing and use that as a starting point to push forward and innovate.

2. Interpretation Challenges

The success of the competitive audit depends on how well you interpret the findings. Analyzing data can be tricky, and it’s a skill that you’ll develop throughout your career as a designer. Working on a team can be helpful here as you’ll have others to interpret the data with.

3. Context Limitations

Not all designs work in all use cases. The features that work well for a competitor might not work well for your product, if you serve different users.

4. Need for Regular Updates

You should do competitive audits on a regular basis, not just once. You want to stay on top of what your competitors are doing and keep an eye out for new competitors that might emerge.

Steps to Conduct a Competitive Audit

Step 1: Outline Your Goals

Make sure your goals are specific. It can help to break down your goals into the different product aspects you want to compare.

Example Goals for E-commerce Websites:

Customer reviews and ratings
Return policy details
Delivery and in-store pickup options

Example Goals for Music Streaming Platforms:

Pricing options
Browse and search functions
Creating and sharing playlists

Step 2: Create a Competitor List

Create a spreadsheet with a list of your competitors. You should aim to include 5-10 competitors in your list. Some should be direct and others should be indirect.

Step 3: Define Specific Aspects to Compare

Call out the specific aspects you want to compare. This list of aspects should align to your goals for the audit.

Spreadsheet Template:

Competitor names listed down the left side
Aspects you want to compare listed across the top

Step 4: Research and Document

Visit each competitor’s website or app and take notes about their aspects. Remember to include details like:

What works well
What could be improved
Whether competitors’ aspects meet the needs of your specific audience
Screenshots and links for your report and presentation

Step 5: Analyze Your Findings

Try to spot trends and themes. Ask yourself:

What are the similarities between you and your competitors?
Is there a certain aspect that your competitors all approach in the same way?

Step 6: Summarize in a Report

Your report might be a slide presentation or a document. It’s helpful to include screenshots and simple charts or graphics.

Using Competitive Audit Insights for Ideation

Bringing Teams Together

Try to bring together a team that can ideate from different perspectives, including designers, researchers, writers, and engineers.

Identifying Opportunities

For example, let’s say that two of your competitors have a difficult signup process. Questions to explore:

Is your product signup process easy?
Can you update your signup process design to make your product stand out compared to competitors?

Discovering New Strengths

As you come up with ideas for how your product can do better, you may even discover new strengths that your competitors haven’t thought of yet.

Sorting and Prioritizing Ideas

Once you’ve come up with lots of ideas, begin sorting them:

Group similar ideas together to uncover patterns
A few ideas will naturally rise to the top
Your goal is to walk away with a list of ideas that help your product stand out from the competition

Presenting Competitive Audit Findings

Report Structure

An effective audit report should answer these key questions:

Audit Goals

What are your audit goals? Import audit goals from your spreadsheet template.

Key Competitors

Who are your key competitors? Describe each in 1-2 sentences including direct/indirect status.

Product Quality

What are the type and quality of competitors’ products? What they do well and could improve.

Market Position

How do competitors position themselves? Describe target audiences and characteristics.

Additional Report Elements

How do competitors talk about themselves? Include each competitor’s unique value proposition in 2-3 sentences
What are competitors’ strengths? List 2-4 things each competitor does particularly well
What are competitors’ weaknesses? List 2-4 things each competitor could do better
What gaps exist in competitors’ products? Identify 2-3 market gaps competitors don’t fill
What opportunities exist for your product? List 2-3 ways your product can stand out

Presentation Best Practices

For Slideshows:

Begin with clear introduction outlining audit goals, research questions, and methodology
Use section divider slides to organize information
Keep design simple and clean to avoid clutter
Include visual elements like screenshots to support findings
Conclude with summary of key points and takeaways
Use rubric system to grade competitors consistently

For Data Presentation:

Use charts/graphs for quantitative data comparisons
Include screen recordings to demonstrate specific functions or issues
Provide grading rubric explanation (e.g., “needs work” to “outstanding”)
Focus on actionable insights rather than exhaustive details

Delivery Tips:

Get feedback from team before presenting
Limit text on slides - save details for speech
Stick to highlights - add details to appendix if needed
Use notes or outline to stay focused and on time
Practice ahead of time for comfort with content
Use relevant graphics that enhance clarity
Keep biases in check during presentation
Be able to defend conclusions with evidence and specific examples

Who Conducts Competitive Audits?

It depends on where you work:

Smaller companies might have a single UX designer conduct the audit
Larger companies might have an entire team to do the work

Either way, it’s important for you to know how to put together a competitive audit, because it’s critical to your work as a UX designer.

Integration with Broader Design Process

Competitive audits provide insights into how competitors are approaching design and market positioning, but they should be balanced with:

Original user research to understand your specific audience needs
Innovation opportunities that go beyond what competitors are doing
Business strategy alignment to ensure competitive positioning supports company goals
Regular updates as the competitive landscape evolves

The goal is to learn from the competition while still creating unique, user-centered solutions that differentiate your product in meaningful ways.