

Once you've identified and organized your competitors, assess their online presence by evaluating how functional their websites are, how easy it is to shop on their site and how frequently they’re engaging with their audience. Find as many direct and indirect competitors as possible to better understand who you're up against. To find these businesses, simply do a web search or use websites such as Product Hunt and Crunchbase to help you find similar products and services and conduct market research. Identifying and researching your indirect competition is important, as it gives you a different perspective on your business or customer base. An indirect competitor is one that sells similar products but targets a different customer sector, or sells different products and services but shares your customer base. There are two types of competitors: direct and indirect.Ī direct competitor is one that is offering the same product or service and targeting the same customer base as your business. The first step to doing a competitive analysis is identifying your competitors. Here are six steps for a successful competitive analysis. Learn what mistakes to avoid and discover trends you can implement into your own practice.Īs a new business, this is an important part of your startup process. In order to know how receptive the market is to your business and what works or does not work, you have to understand how similar businesses are functioning. Getty Images/monkeybusinessimagesĪ competitive analysis helps you size up your competition by identifying their strengths and weaknesses. As a startup, there are many ways to size up your competition - from researching their online presence to reading through their customer reviews.
