How Can Competition Research Help In Conversion Optimization? I am certain that you must have done or in the way of doing whatever it generally takes to improve the conversion rate of your website. Perhaps, you have not left any of the points from the various CRO tips given by several CRO experts. Don't worry if it's yes. In fact, it's a sign that you have the hunger for making your website the best. But, does it still feels like an empty space in your stomach? Perhaps, a feeling that it could have been better? The tips and tricks from the CRO experts are indeed the best way to learn about doing correct CRO for your website. They act as the foundation of your knowledge base, which can further be enhanced by your own efforts included. Have you thought about an effort to do some competition research now? In addition to your own optimization techniques, conducting a competition research would give you an extra chance to not only improve your conversions but also make it better than you competitors. A healthy competition is always a motivating factor in growing more and more. Here, we will discuss different ways by which you can conduct a competition research and use this research to help you in your conversion optimization strategy.
1. Know who are your competitors Before you can know about the competition factors that can help in your CRO, you will need to know whom you are going to study. Who are your biggest rivals? Who gives you a direct competition and who is your indirect competition? These are the questions answers to which would complete the first step of this research. To understand the concept of direct and indirect competition, just consider this
example: Pizza Hut and Domino's are direct competitors of each other, as they specialize is selling the similar kind of product- Pizza. Also, Mc Donald's and Burger King are in direct competition for Burgers. However, Mc Donald's and Burger King are the indirect competitors of Pizza Hut and Domino's. Similarly, there would be such competitors in your market as well. You just need to identify them. You can use these ideas in your competition identification efforts: Google search pages Google SERPs are the coolest place to identify those businesses who are competing with you. Of course, there are some paid tools as well which can give a more organized and personalized view of who your competitors are, but Google SERPs are always the first step and they are free as well. Generally, the businesses that show up on the first page of the SERP are your top competitors. Just place some search requests on Google Search engine with your target keywords and you would find your competitors on the go. Say, you are an online Flower Retailer in New York, you can conduct search queries on all your relevant and target search strings. The results on the first page including those on the Ads section are your top competitors here. You can conduct the searches in the combinations like: online Flower Retailer in New York New York flowers delivery Flowers online New York City Buy flowers online Fresh flowers New York
2. Experience your competitors After getting an exposure of who you competitors are. It time you get an experience of them as a customer. By approaching them as a customer, you would have a clear idea of: How their products are? How are they better or worse than yours? How is their sales copy?
How is their customer support? Which are the areas where they are better than you? And Where are they committing mistakes? From CRO point of view, you must analyze their website's user experience. It is the user experience that can give you an upper hand if you can understand theirs and make it better than them on your own website. To understand their user experience ask these simple questions to yourself: How easy is it to find a product on their site? How easily could you navigate on their website? Can you not find their product description compelling? Did you face any issue while checking out on their website? Moreover, you should also experience theirs after sales services. Understanding these behaviors of your competition will help you compare it with your own's and would guide you on several aspects like: What you are doing better than your competitors What they are doing better than yours What are the areas you need to improve to become better What mistakes they are doing which you should avoid
3. Understand competitor’s performance and sales strategy With little analytics skills and digging you can discover about your competitor’s current performance status and strategies adopted. There are various aspects analyzing which would give you an insight that can be used to improve your copy to the best possible. Analyze their website traffic and ranking When you are competing with someone online, it’s very important to know how
they rank on the search engines, and what’s your website doing on those some aspects. SERPs is the only arena where you come face to face with your competitor. You can use the free tools like SEMrush for competitor performance analysis. This tool is useful for getting an idea of the competitor's organic and paid search traffic. Moreover you can also discover and compare the level of branded and non-branded traffic that they are getting. There is a lot more information that you canget including some insights into their PPC campaigns as well.
Analyze the Links on their website This analysis is mainly to discover the SEO health of your competitors. However, even from CRO point of view, SEO is the primary determinant of traffic health which brings new customers for conversion. So, we cannot separate SEO from CRO here. Links are one of the most important determinants in a competition research. They can give you an insight into your competitor's top ranking factors. A website with good link profile receives a better ranking, better traffic, and ultimately better conversion. You can use the same SEMrush tool for your competitor's link profile analysis. The same report shown above gives a decent view of the link profile as well. You can use it to find the backlinks, do-follows, no-follows, Top Anchors, Referring domains, and their top advertising links.
This sort of information is well enough to get an insight into your competitors link profile and compare it with yours. Analyze their pricing At last, the only thing that can make or break the conversion chances even after so much of CRO is your pricing strategy. It's always important to understand and compare how your competitors are pricing their product and how can you present a better pricing without hurting your profits on the whole. That’s more of a business strategy than a CRO optimization but is an important consideration in any competition research. You should analyze how they are pricing and what opportunities you can take out to present your business as a better choice in terms of pricing. Understand these aspects: - Are they offering discounts? - How often they offer the discounts? - On an average, how much they offer in discounts? - Do their discounts seem trustworthy? - Are they offering price compare feature? - Are they offering multiple pricing of the same product?
Over to you Now we have a compr ehensive idea of how to conduct an improvised and effective competition research. This research, on the whole, will let you look at various aspects of your competitors. You can point out their biggest strengths and weaknesses in aspects like pricing, customer experience, website UX and much more. This research will also give you a pool of CRO ideas that you can adopt to make your copy better than your competition. Moreover, just remember, don't adopt any strategy or modification without A/B testing. You have the Free MockingFish tool by your side. Use it to A/B test your ideas that you have got from the research before implementing them finally. So that you don't commit any mistake in your way of getting ahead of your competition by improving your conversion rate.