ux competitive analysis case study

Effective competitive analysis to supercharge your UX strategy

Learn what a UX competitive analysis is, how your organization can lead one, and why it’s essential to your UX and overall business strategy.

Discover the processes and tools behind high-performing websites in this free ebook.

A great UX strategy is about more than just aesthetics — with a competitive UX analysis, your product can soar to success.

Assessing competitors’ UX design requires intentional strategy. In this article, we offer a step-by-step guide to everything there is to know about a UX competitive analysis, including best practices and how you can conduct your own research to inform your organization’s UX and overall business strategy.

What is competitive analysis in UX?

A user experience (UX) competitive analysis is the systematic process of evaluating and comparing the user experiences of your competitors’ products to your own product’s user experience. Unlike other competitor comparisons, the primary goal of a UX competitive analysis is to gain a deeper understanding of how your competitors design and structure their digital products (websites, mobile apps, software) to cater to user needs and preferences. 

While every UX competitive analysis can vary depending on the goals and objectives of a particular organization, UX competitive analyses typically include research into:

• User interface (UI) evaluation — Examining the visual design, layout, and overall aesthetics of competitors' interfaces to assess their appeal and usability.
• User flow and navigation — Analyzing the paths users take to achieve specific tasks or goals within a competitor's product, such as making a purchase or finding information.
• Content and information architecture — Assessing how competitors organize and present content, ensuring it's structured logically and easy for users to access.
• Interaction design — Evaluating the interactive elements like buttons, forms, and menus to determine how user-friendly and intuitive they are.
• Mobile responsiveness — Checking how well competitors' digital products adapt to different devices and screen sizes, including smartphones and tablets.
• Performance and loading speed — Evaluating the speed and responsiveness of the competitor's website or app.
• Accessibility — Assessing how accessible competitors’ products are to users with disabilities and whether they comply with accessibility standards.

What’s the purpose of a UX competitive analysis?

In-house UX designers, researchers, and product teams have a lot on their plate when it comes to creating and implementing great UX practices — given that, UX competitive analyses can often feel like an extra burden. Without conducting these analyses, however, design teams and their collaborators miss out on some incredible opportunities for improvement and innovation.

Mainly, a UX competitive analysis helps organizations:

Understand user expectations

Identify best practices, recognize weaknesses, spot opportunities for innovation, set benchmarks for improvement, validate design decisions, invest in iterative improvement.

Competitors in your industry have likely invested time and resources in understanding their users' needs and preferences. By analyzing their user experiences, you gain valuable insights into what users expect from products like yours. This understanding sets a baseline for user expectations and design products that meet or exceed those expectations.

Competitors who excel in UX design often establish and adhere to industry best practices. By studying these practices, you can identify proven methods for improving usability, engagement, and overall user satisfaction. This process allows you to adopt and adapt successful design patterns, saving time and effort in the design process.

A competitive analysis identifies the shortcomings and pain points in your competitors' products. By understanding what doesn't work well for your target audience, you can avoid making similar mistakes in your own designs. This approach prevents usability issues and user frustration and increases the likelihood of user retention.

Through competitive analysis, you can uncover market gaps or areas where your competitors may be falling short. These gaps represent opportunities for innovation and differentiation in your product design or design system . By addressing unmet user needs or offering a unique solution, you can stand out in the market, gain a competitive advantage, and attract users looking for something new and better.

A competitive analysis provides a benchmark against which you can measure your own product's performance and user experience. This benchmarking allows you to set clear goals for improvement and track your progress over time. It ensures that you're constantly striving to enhance your product's UX.

When you incorporate findings from a competitive analysis into your design process, you're basing your decisions on real-world observations and data. This validation reduces the risk of making design choices that may not resonate with your target audience.

UX competitive analysis is not a one-time task. It's an ongoing process that allows you to monitor and adapt to changes in the competitive landscape continually. This iterative approach ensures your product remains competitive and up-to-date. ‍

How to conduct a UX competitive analysis in 4 steps

Now that we’ve covered what a UX competitive analysis is and why it’s essential, here’s how your team can conduct one.

1. Define your objectives

Like with any organizational initiative, it’s always a best practice to begin by clarifying your goals for the competitive analysis. With the right stakeholders, consider what specific aspects of UX you want to evaluate and why, and what your key research objectives might be. 

2. Identify competitors

A competitive UX analysis, of course, requires that an organization identify exactly what competitors they’ll assess in comparison to their own product. When it comes to UX analysis, many organizations identify both direct and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are businesses that offer similar products or solutions to the same problems or needs as your own product. They typically target the same audience, share a similar value proposition, and compete for the same market share. In the context of UX competitive analysis, identifying and using direct competitors in your analysis is helpful for a few reasons:

• Direct competitors provide the most relevant insights because they offer the closest alternatives to your product.
• Analyzing direct competitors helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of products that users might directly compare with your own.
• It allows for a more detailed, head-to-head comparison that can identify specific areas for improvement and innovation in your UX.

Indirect competitors are businesses or products that may not offer identical solutions to the same problems but serve the same audience or address related needs. They often have different value propositions or cater to slightly different niches. In UX competitive analysis, identifying and using indirect competitors is also helpful for a variety of reasons:

• Analyzing indirect competitors gives you a broader perspective on user expectations and preferences in the wider industry or market.
• Indirect competitors can introduce alternative approaches and creative solutions that you might not have considered, inspiring innovation.
• Understanding the UX of indirect competitors can identify opportunities to diversify or expand your product offerings.

To find both direct and indirect competitors of your UX analysis, organizations should conduct industry research through reports and market trends, online marketplaces, social media, and even industry events and conferences.

3. Gather data

In order to properly analyze UX competition, organizations need to gather a specific set of qualitative and quantitative data, including data around usability, accessibility, performance, and user feedback.

There are lots of ways that organizations can gather data to conduct their competitive analysis. Depending on your organization’s goals, budgets, and resources, one research technique might be more appropriate than others. Common techniques include:

User testing

Swot analysis, public customer review assessments, heuristic evaluation, competitors’ user journey mapping analysis.

Conduct user testing sessions with actual users to gather direct feedback on your competitors' products. Users perform tasks, and you observe and record their interactions and feedback. This method provides real-world insights into user behavior and pain points.

Or, instead of hiring outside experts to gather user research, encourage your team to use the competitor’s product yourselves, and conduct an analysis . 

A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is a valuable tool in the context of a UX competitive analysis. It systematically evaluates the internal and external factors that impact your user experience and your position in the market.

• Strengths — Identify which aspects of your competitor’s product are successful, and maybe even outperform other competitors.
• Weaknesses — Identify where your competitors fall short in their UX design (poor mobile responsiveness, confusing navigation, or slow performance).
• Opportunities — Consider where your product could excel and provide a better UX. For example, if competitors have poor accessibility, you might see an opportunity to excel by providing a more inclusive and accessible user experience. 
• Threats — Consider the potential challenges to your competitor’s product and how your product might avoid them.

One of the easiest and most straightforward ways to collect data about your competitors, whether direct or indirect, is through public customer reviews. Available on websites like G2 and Capterra as well as other online marketplaces, customer reviews — both positive and negative — can help you identify strengths and pain points.

A heuristic evaluation is a method used in UX design to assess the usability of digital products, such as websites or applications. In this evaluation, usability experts or evaluators review a product based on established usability principles known as heuristics. These heuristics serve as guidelines for good design and cover aspects like navigation, feedback, and error handling.

Competitors' user journey maps in UX are visual representations or diagrams that illustrate the various stages and touchpoints that users go through when interacting with a competitor's offering, from initial awareness to post-interaction support

4. Implementing analysis in the UX design process

Once your team gathers all the right data, it’s time to take your insights and implement them into the iteration and design process . Prototype new designs, test functionality with real users, keep seeking user feedback, analyze data, and make improvements to the design to enhance the user experience over time.

Competitive analysis UX: Best practices & tips

While every team’s objectives, goals, and resources may vary, conducting an efficient and successful UX competitive analysis requires design teams to abide by a few best practices

• Ensure unbiased research — To ensure that all research you collect is unbiased, recruit a diverse group of collaborators, implement blind evaluations, establish evaluation criteria, and use neutral language.
• Continually update analysis with changing trends — UX design is a constantly evolving and changing practice. In order to ensure that your UX design is serving users well and maintains a competitive edge, it’s essential to stay up to date with industry news and trends.
• Leverage insights for overall business strategy — While UX competitive analysis is primarily focused on design, insights you gather from research can also inform broader, more macro business strategies like market differentiation, competitive positioning, and marketing and messaging.
• Prioritize actionable insights — Highlight actionable insights that can directly inform improvements to your own product's UX. Focus on areas where you can excel or differentiate.
• Ethical considerations — Respect competitors' intellectual property and confidentiality. Avoid unethical practices such as plagiarism or unauthorized data scraping.

Best tools for UX competitor analysis

There are several tools for UX designers that can help you conduct a UX competitive analysis. These tools can gather data, track user behavior, and assess the user experiences of your competitors. Here are some popular tools for UX competitor analysis:

User testing 

• UserTesting — Provides access to a panel of real users who give feedback on your competitors' websites or apps.
• TryMyUI — Offers usability testing services with detailed video feedback and insights.

Heatmapping 

• Hotjar — Offers heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback tools to visualize user interactions.
• Crazy Egg — Provides heatmaps, scroll maps, and user behavior analytics.

Accessibility assessments 

• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool — Identifies accessibility issues on competitors' websites.
• axe DevTools — An accessibility testing extension for web browsers that assesses websites against accessibility standards.

Usability assessments

• Optimal Workshop — Offers tools for card sorting, tree testing, and first-click testing to evaluate information architecture.
• Lookback — Allows for remote user testing, interviews, and session recordings.

Put your UX competitive analysis into action

Conducting a UX competitive analysis is not merely a design exercise; it's a strategic imperative that goes beyond the aesthetics of a website or app that allows organizations to delve deep into the very essence of how users interact with their digital products and services.

Create a high-performing website — and nail the web design process, including a UX competitive analysis — using Webflow’s modern web design guide.

Subscribe to Webflow Inspo

Get the best, coolest, and latest in design and no-code delivered to your inbox each week.

Related articles

What is UX strategy? The ultimate guide

Whether you're a UX expert or just starting out, a UX strategy is essential for success. This article covers what UX strategy is and how to use it.

The beginner's guide to user research

User research is the reality check every project needs. Here’s our guide to why you should be doing it — and how to get started.

Pro tips for effective website maintenance (+8 items you should update)

Learn exactly what site maintenance is, what kinds of tasks are involved in the process, and how often your organization should be doing it.

How to implement user testing for your website

Without website user testing, you risk losing potential customers. Read on to learn about metrics and methods to check your site’s usability.

10 data visualization tools to supercharge your decision-making

These ten data visualization tools can help you transform complex information into clear insights and compelling stories to grow your business.

The 6 best icon sets for UI design (plus tips for choosing one)

Icon sets offer a packaged and tailored experience for websites and apps. Learn why they’re essential and choose the right icons for UI for your project.

Get started for free

Try Webflow for as long as you like with our free Starter plan. Purchase a paid Site plan to publish, host, and unlock additional features.

Transforming the design process at

• Interactions
• Localization
• Figma to Webflow Labs
• DevLink Labs
• Feature index
• Accessibility
• Webflow vs WordPress
• Webflow vs Squarespace
• Webflow vs Shopify
• Webflow vs Contentful
• Webflow vs Sitecore
• Careers We're Hiring
• Webflow Shop
• Accessibility statement
• Terms of Service
• Privacy policy
• Cookie policy
• Cookie preferences
• Freelancers
• Global alliances
• Marketplace
• Libraries Beta
• Hire an Expert
• Made in Webflow
• Become an Expert
• Become a Template Designer
• Become an Affiliate

Competitor Analysis UX Research: Your Ultimate Guide

Updated: October 23, 2023

Published: April 04, 2023

What's one of the best ways to understand how your business can stand out in a saturated marketplace? UX competitive analysis, of course. Regardless of how new or established, large or small, prominent or up-and-coming your company is, completing competitor analysis UX research can help fill significant gaps.

This post will walk you through the competitor analysis that UX researchers complete. You'll learn more about UX competitive analysis, why it's crucial, how to get started, and even see an example to help get the creative juices flowing. 

What is Competitive Analysis in UX?

Why is the competitor analysis ux researchers so essential, how to get started with competitor analysis, ux competitive analysis example, best practices for competitive analysis ux research.

UX competitive analysis is helpful for designers looking to gain insight into what works for the competition — and what doesn't. Competitive analysis is a user experience research method to better understand similar websites your users visit. For instance, if you're working on creating a website for a SaaS startup, you should complete a competitor analysis UX audit on other similar companies.

You might wonder if a UX competitive analysis wastes valuable time, money, and resources. The answer is no. Walking through the process lets you learn what already exists and how it functions. You'll learn the intricacies of the competitors' sites' features, flow, and structure. And no, this doesn't just apply to websites — you can use it for apps or products, too. Most importantly, you'll experience firsthand any experiences using the competitor's site evokes, such as frustration. Then, you can use that information to create a site that delights visitors .

Ultimately, thanks to what you learn through the competitive analysis process, UX designers can apply findings to ensure your website or app is up to par. For instance, you can identify recurring trends or themes through competitive analysis. You can also gain insight into user expectations and needs, shaping how designers build your site.

When should you complete a competitor analysis?

When is the best time to complete a competitor analysis? With this, the sooner, the better. With competitor analysis, UX researchers will better understand what needs to happen (or shouldn't) to make your site or app successful. Therefore, if you wait too long to complete this step, you'll likely have to backtrack.

If you're applying competitor analysis UX research to site creation and starting from scratch, ensure this step is complete before your team starts designing. Or, if you're remodeling your website , you should do this at the early stages of the site refresh.

Of course, new competitors can pop up at any time, so make sure you revisit your findings and open and re-evaluate if it's time to complete another analysis. This will help ensure your site is up to par with others dominating the market.

The competitor analysis UX researchers complete is crucial to your site's success because it provides insights into making your website go above and beyond what's already out there. It might not matter if that competitor is larger and more powerful than your small startup if the competitor's site is finicky and frustrates visitors due to navigation issues.

You'll learn your competitors' weaknesses with UX competitive analysis, and then you can use that insight to finetune your website. As a result, your business can do something the competition can't: Provide visitors with a seamless user experience that leaves them happy to return to your website.

Now that you know competitor analysis is necessary for UX researchers, let's walk through how to begin. First, ask yourself a few questions:

What do I want to achieve with this competitor analysis?

What makes this business unique? Is it — or its target audience — comparable to mine?

Are there specific features I'm investigating? Some popular features include signing in, creating an account, searching on the site, making a purchase, or signing up.

Once you have the answers to those questions, it's time to outline your competition. Keep it simple by sticking with three to five competitors. Anything more than that, and your analysis quickly becomes overwhelming and less comprehensive. 

Now, you'll want to create a place to store your findings. The most efficient way to do this is by creating a spreadsheet where your learnings are easy to find. Once done, you can complete a heuristic evaluation of your competitors' sites. (Have questions about where to start with that heuristic eval? We've got you covered .)

When you're on their site, identify on your spreadsheet the most critical features users engage with. For instance, you might immediately notice the competitor has a prominent search bar , massive navigation menu, and thorough footer . Depending on the competitor's site, feel free to customize the features you're investigating.

Once you've identified what features you're making a note of on your spreadsheet, walk through each and complete it like you're a user. In your spreadsheet, you can note how you feel about the features. For example, mention if the menu disappears too quickly if you move your mouse or think the website navigation isn't accessibility-friendly .

Once you've repeated the steps for the other two to four websites you identified as competition, and your website, if it's already created, you can create a takeaway list regarding what the competitors' strengths and weaknesses are. From there, you will have more insight into must-haves as you bring your site to life.

Let's run through a UX competitive analysis example to help you get a better feel for what to expect. Say we have a small, vegan, cruelty-free makeup line for which we're launching a website. In this example, we'll compare the websites of two makeup companies: Tower 28 and iNNBEAUTY PROJECT .

If we were completing this analysis, we'd follow the steps outlined and create a spreadsheet that looks like this:

We focused on navigation, social media account presence, email sign-up options, and accessibility options. Here's a close-up look at what our analysis looks like:

Now that we have this information, we'd use it to create insights into what's important to us as we build our site. For instance, we didn't like that iNNBEAUTY PROJECT buried its accessibility options in the footer. When creating our site, we'd consider that.

Now that you're armed with knowledge on getting started and examples to help guide you, here are some competitive analysis UX research best practices to remember.

Don't overdo it.

There's no reason to compare yourself to 10 competitors. With this form of research, more isn't necessarily merrier. Instead, stick with your three to five main competitors. And once you get your key takeaways from their site, abandon it. Remember: You're not trying to copy their design. You're trying to get inspiration to ensure your site excels.

Include your site in the analysis — if it's already built.

If your site or app is already built, remember to include it in the analysis. Seeing it compared to the competition will help you look deeper into where your site excels or falls short.

Consider further testing.

Competitive analysis should give you a thorough understanding of competitors' site functionality and how yours stacks up. But sometimes, more testing truly is needed. Consider usability testing or a preference test.

Know what you're looking for.

Are there specific features you're targeting with this research? For instance, do you want to hone in on how competitors' navigation impacts user experience? Or do you want to analyze the placement of their CTAs? Either way, jot down exactly what features you're looking into — the more specific, the better.

Use competitor analysis UX research to inspire your site design.

Now that you've discovered more about this research method and seen a UX competitive analysis example, it's time to begin applying your learnings to your website. Trust us: Your user experience will be better for it!

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

Website Navigation: The Ultimate Guide [Types & Top Examples]

What Is End-User Experience Monitoring? [+Tips For Implementing It]

What Is GUI? Graphical User Interfaces, Explained

Horizontal Scrolling in Web Design: How to Do It Well

UX Accessibility: Everything You Need to Know

Your Guide to Creating UX Problem Statements

UX Prototyping: Your Complete Guide

The Chrome UX Report: How to Use It to Improve Your Website UX

Building Your First-Time User Experience: How to Get It Right

Perfecting Your Digital UX Design — The Tips You Need to Know

10 free templates to help you understand and beat the competition.

CMS Hub is flexible for marketers, powerful for developers, and gives customers a personalized, secure experience

The Complete Guide to a UX Competitive Analysis

• Design Process
• Hiring designer
• SaaS product
• Web design & Dev
• Product design

Are you looking for a source to develop new product solutions and make interaction with your customers better? Your competitors can help! Of course, indirectly. That requires looking at them from a professional angle. A tool for that, UX Competitive analysis, will help you define what features to add to your product, what patterns to use for better interaction, and how to benchmark your product. However, this is achievable only if you are ready to spend time and effort on comprehensive research.

"UX Competitive analysis will help you define what features to add to your product, what patterns to use for better interaction, and how to benchmark your product."

Users cannot forgive poor experience with the app and application. 27% of businesses have already improved their customer experience score in 2020. Competitor analysis was one of the techniques used to determine what improvements customers need and how to introduce them most effectively.

Many businesses have already added competitor analysis to the list of processes to perform regularly. Yet, many of them do not conduct it professionally — thus, the analysis results do not help them improve their products.

The matter is that competitive analysis, as well as any other technique, requires a proper approach and expertise.

In this article, we are going to reveal what stands behind this process. Competitors will become your source of inspiration. We will share our own experience of using competitive analysis in our practice and explain how we build the process to achieve the results.

What is UX competitive analysis and its importance in the design process

To some extent, we all have performed competitor research at least once: browsing the websites of our market rivals, using their apps, or reading their mailings. However, to be effective, the research must be systemized and have clearly set goals. 

The UX competitive analysis is based on competitive research, a process of determining competitive product features using the competitors’ experience. We learn their approach to the usability and attractiveness of the product (as well as separate features) and investigate what features are crucial for the business.

"The UX competitive analysis is based on competitive research, a process of determining competitive product features using the competitors’ experience."

All in all, user experience competitor research helps us prevent many problems and understand the market’s real needs.

Among other problems competitor analysis helps to solve, we should mention the following:

• a company gets a chance to understand the current position of the product on the market
• it gets possible to define the gaps of existing product
• all strong and weak sides of other companies become visible
• all strong and weak sides of your company become visible as well
• if the product has not been released yet, you can develop a go-to-market strategy that will be more suitable for the current situation

With UX research, we can be sure of any decision regarding the feature list. For example, if the analysis shows us that some feature is no longer in demand, we will delete it from the list of options to develop. If the product has already been released, we consider the option of redesigning it and deleting the features that clients no longer use.

For the design processes, the competitive matrix serves to understand what features have a satisfying implementation — and use this information for our product. If we notice that the implementation of some features is controversial, we also use this to understand how to avoid the same mistakes in our product.

The product feature list is built on UX competitive analysis. Therefore, it directly influences product and design processes.

Typically, UX competitive analysis is based on 3-4 key competitors. The more competitors you use for analysis, the more complicated it becomes: you get too much information and it’s harder to focus on the goals.

For example, during a competitor analysis, we have defined that our market rival X has 10 main effective features or functionality elements. Our product has only 5 of them. Therefore, we expand our product list to 10 features, define the priority for each of them, and start the development process.

Otherwise, after conducting a competitive analysis, we may notice that 5 out of 10 features from our list are out-of-date. 3 of them can be updated. We get a list of 8 features: 5 remain the same, and 3 require additional attention.

The competitive analysis process frequently involves competitive reviews, competitive testing, and competitive tests on the design:

• competitive reviews

analysis of a series of related products. During the review, an expert defines strong and weak points of the design, trends, patterns, and differences. You can narrow the review by analysing only one feature, or you can broaden it to analysing the whole website. The swot approach is frequently used for competitive reviews.

• competitive testing

this is a less popular approach yet very effective. In this case, we invite users to test different products and evaluate the design. A user is given specific tasks, and they have to perform them with the functionality of the product. In competitive testing, you should also include your product in the list.

• competitive tests on the design

competitive analysis can also be used in the evaluation of the design variants for one product. There’s no need to create a full design, a prototype is enough for evaluation. Conducting usability tests is important for any product, and when you have a list of things to compare, tests become more valuable.

Advantages that UX competitive analysis gives to the product?

When we conduct competitive analysis, we always keep in mind that customer behavior changes rapidly. For example, during the first year of Covid 19, retail apps noticed an increase of time spent in mobile apps by 20% . For businesses, this is the trigger that shows the necessity to make apps more interactive and engaging. Therefore, we believe that it’s important to analyze regularly. It will help to:

Define UX strengths and weaknesses

When we analyze our direct and indirect competitors, we can define their strong and weak sides. What do they use to make the UX of their product more satisfying to a user? How can we use their experience in our practice? These are the questions that we need to answer.

It also helps us to define effective solutions and functions that we can implement in our product. 

Investigating the patterns

UХ analysis methods can easily define user behavior patterns used for different products. Our task is to select most suitable patterns for our product and implement them in our design process.

Discovering new areas for growths

For example, new features of functions that our competitors have never used. In the future, some of them may become selling points of the product.

It’s important to pay attention to the functions and features with the same idea but can be implemented differently. You can list approaches to feature implementation and experiment with your feature list in the future.

Creating detailed requirements for the new product

If the product has not been launched yet, we can use the analysis results to create detailed documentation for further development.

It will also be useful if you are planning to improve documentation for already existing products.

When is the right time to perform a UX competitive analysis?

It’s never late to start UX competitive analysis. Yet, we believe that the sooner you start to investigate your competitors, the easier it will be for you to implement changes into your product.

Thus, the best time is at the early stage of product development. In this case, you can easily define the must-have features of your product, write a detailed guide for development, and develop a strategy for further updates and changes. 

There is also an importance of UX competitive analysis on other stages. The matter is that your competitor list will change all the time, as well as the market. It will imply the need to add or remove features and upgrade the product.

A guide to competitive analysis for User Experience design

When creating a guide to competitors` analysis, we’ve used our own experience and best practices of different markets. With the combination of these two aspects, the guide reveals what’s behind the stage of the whole process that frequently involves the whole teamwork on it.

Start with the goals

Use business and product goals as the foundation for defining the goals of the competitive analysis. 

This step is obligatory to answer the most important questions: why you do this and what you are planning to get in the result.

Geography of the analysis

If the product is focused on the local market, you should search for local competitors. But if the product will work on the global market, better to choose another strategy and analyze top global competitors.

The geography of the analysis helps us to set the list of companies that we’re interested in. For example, if you want to create an app for food delivery from one restaurant, we will analyze local competitors. But if you are planning to create an app for food delivery from different restaurants in different regions, you will analyze global competitors, like Uber Eats.

Analysis of direct competitors

When analyzing direct competitors, always pay attention to the following:

• you must have a common area and functionality. The competitor’s product or service must solve the same problems and satisfy the same needs as your product
• you must have the same platform. In the analysis of direct competitors, it's impossible to compare mobile and desktop platforms and offline and online businesses. Thus, if you analyze mobile apps, the competitor must use mobile apps as well.

Analysis of indirect competitors 

For this type of analysis, follow these requirements:

• the products must solve the same problems and satisfy the same needs, but they can be presented on a different platform 
• indirect competitors can work in another business area
• indirect competitors may have another target audience, but still, the functionality of their digital product is close to yours

Sorting the comparison table

A comparison table allows us to work with collected data in various ways: we can color the most and the least important information, define trends and tendencies, point out key information, or determine patterns. Also, we can sort information using available data: traffic level or a number of downloads. We can sort it by describing the order of functionality as well.

We fill in the comparison table to determine and establish competitive features for our product. We conduct detailed analysis for each competitor, which helps us to make successful decisions for our project.

As a result of the UX Competitive analysis, we create a general report and create a feature list.

UX competitive analysis: Klasha Case Study 

Competitor analysis of any company has certain patterns, but the results are always different. The matter is that the markets are different, and some of them have many things to compare. 

For Klasha , a fintech product, UX competitive analysis was a challenge: the business area is huge, the number of competitors is impressive. Klasha is a product that simplifies money transactions for local currencies. 

Before we started the competitor research, we UX audited the existing website. In this case, this was an essential step that helped us define gaps and understand the main problems. Using best practices and our expertise in the market, we created a preliminary list of issues we will deal with.

We collected all necessary information about product usability: features customers use, less popular ones, and features with poor implementation. We used the collected information to determine the priority of the problems to fix. For some of the issues, we offered best practice solutions that could be implemented immediately.

The next step was the conduction of competitors' analysis. We started with the geography and defined Klasha’s main competitors in the region. Later, we analyzed direct and indirect competitors. We listed their features in a comparison table. Detailed information helped us to define the best UX solutions for Klasha’s website problems. Also, we defined a list of features to be implemented in a fintech app working with money transactions in different currencies.

How to conduct UX competitive analysis for your product

UX competitive analysis is more than looking through the list of companies that work in your business area and randomly checking their websites or apps. It requires a profound understanding of UX, user behavior patterns, and business best practices. 

Fortunately, there’s no need to conduct competitive analysis on your own. Arounda is here to help you! We will take everything on us: starting with the UX audit of your product and up to creating a strategy for feature implementation. We will support you at any stage of the design process and explain how our solutions will work for your business.

Our team of dedicated UX experts will analyze your competitors and provide you with a full report. You will finally understand why your consumers do not use app features and what they expect from your product.

If you are not sure what business goals you can solve with design, don’t hesitate to contact us . We will answer your questions and help you with any inquiry!

Vlad Gavriluk

I make sure our clients get the high-quality result from the beginning stage of the idea discovery & strategy to the final digital product.

Have a project in your mind? Let’s communicate

Table of contents

Top stories.

Zeroheight Design System: Full Guide

What is Dynamic Island Apple and how to use it

How to use a Triadic color scheme

Faq on ui/ux design services, subscribe to our blog.

Sign up to our newsletter to get weekly updates on the newest design stories, case studies and tips.