A framework for competitor benchmarking in UX research 🧠

Research your competitors to find the work they already did for you. Here's a way to organize it!

** Why do competitor benchmarking?

A mildly intense quote for my fellow sci-fi nerds... 🤓

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him." (Ender's Game)

Not that we should consider competitors enemies, but knowing what your competitor is doing is supremely valuable.

What if we actually love what our competitors are up to enough to learn from it?

After all, we are all on the same mission to make more human-centered, helpful products — even if competing for market share. 😉

That is why competitor benchmarking for product design matters, and here's how to do it in 3 steps.

** Step 1 — Identify your competitors: What is a competitor?

Two flavors of competitor: direct and indirect...

- Direct — companies or products in the same industry and sector (like Honda competes with Ford — both in the auto industry) 🚗

- Indirect — companies or products in different industries but the same sector (like Honda competes with public transit — both in the transportation sector) 🚎

*Note: No matter how much you are chasing a blue ocean strategy, you will always have indirect competitors.


** Step 2 — Analyze your competitor: updating the SWOT framework for UX

Using SWOT analysis is classic for generally benchmarking competitors:
• Strengths

• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

The more savvy and specific way to do it for UX is the S.W.C.D.UX.O. framework. (It works great even if the name doesn't ring.) 🔕

• Strengths - What does the product do well?
• Weaknesses - What's a gap or glaring weakness in the product?
• Content - What's the tone/voice? Is it on brand for text and images?

• Design - Is it visually appealing? Icons, illustration, typography?
• UX - Does the product flow? Any problems or delightful surprises?
• Opportunities - What can we learn? Anything to do better, differently, or mistakes to capitalize on?


** Step 3 — Take your best opportunities.

Remember, the point of competitor benchmarking and any UX research is design decision!

By inventorying the competitor, you unearth opportunities that can affect your own designs.

In doing a competitor benchmark, you might find that your competitors have done some of the work for you. 💪🏽

Hope this helps! 🤟🏽