Before you will be able to analyze your major competitors, you will firstly have to identify who they are (Be prepared for some surprises). We will deal with just the two following categories.

1.Highly ranked sites in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, for natural/organic (non sponsored) results using key words that prospects and customers will be using in order to locate the merchants who sell your type of products.

2.Highly ranked sites (as in ‘1′ above), but where the competitor is paying (sponsored sites, or links) for his location on the page.

Here is one approach to identifying your online competition

1. Highly ranked sites for organic search results. Limit yourself to checking out the natural results at Yahoo!, Google and MSN, using the same search terms, or keywords, for each search engine. This will give you approximately 90% of all North American search results.

2.Highly ranked sites for sponsored (or paid) results. Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing should be sufficient reference from which to identify your major sponsored search engine competitors. Obviously you will be using the same key words as you did for your organic search results.

• Google AdWord Sponsored Ads
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Ads

Obviously you will be doing this competitive analysis on your top product lines. You may want to establish the top 3(minimum) to 6 (maximum) sponsored and organic sites for each of your search terms (Key Words).
If you need to do some research on the choice of your key words, then this will be time well spent. You want to use search terms that will attract the greatest number of relevant visitors to your site.

Analyzing your online competition

When you commence analyzing your competitor’s sites you will need to analyze each site the way one of your major prospective customers would. Remember, 75% of experienced online buyers are willing to try another merchant.

A competitive analysis is not done once and that is the ball game. The frequency and thoroughness of such intensive activity is your choice. Much will depend upon the nature of your industry; how quickly your key market indicators change and the aggressive nature of your competition. In this life, and especially in online marketing and ecommerce, everybody will suffer one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The pain of discipline weighs ounces, but the pain of regret weighs tons.

In essence your analysis will result in a highlighting of strengths and weakness of the sites you have researched. Remember, you must include your own site in this side by side comparison.

You will want to put each site under the microscope. In order to do so, you may wish to consider the following:

• What is the initial impact of the site?…..overwhelming or inviting?…..visually appealing or distracting?
• Is the site visitor friendly?…..easy to get around?…..loads quickly and contains excellent content?
• Is there a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and is it effectively communicated?
• Does the site motivate prospects to buy, now if appropriate, or to continue to research the products?
  Defining Selling - By Leo Talbot
  You are online, but are you on target? - By Leo Talbot
  One Clear Compelling Message (The X factor in online selling) - by Leo Talbot
  Maximizing buyer motivation for online marketers - by Leo Talbot
• What will your major customers like about this site?
• What will your major customers dislike about this site?

Depending upon what you find, and what this may mean in terms of redesigning your site, you may want to consider contracting the services of a reliable and competent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, preferably one that has strong online marketing experience. If you do decide that this is an option for you, then make your selection of an SEO firm very carefully. Do your homework!

We have barely examined the tip of the iceberg, but in doing what is suggested you will have begun, what you will soon appreciate to be, one of the most strategic activities and significant contributors to the ongoing viability and profitability of your online marketing or ecommerce enterprise

• Why People Buy (Your product solves a problem) - By Leo Talbot
• Why people buy - The lifestyle factor - By Leo Talbot
• Search Engine Datacenters Complicating SEO

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Ecommerce, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.