Don't build a website until you've done this market research
The site's goal, competitor analysis, unpacking the product and studying demand and the audience: my process before development, plus a spreadsheet template.
A competitor analysis spreadsheet template
1. Define the site's goal
Before building a website, figure out why you need it: to build trust in the company, increase sales, automate processes? Every project has its own goals.
2. Analyse competitors
The best way to understand what works is to find the market leader and borrow some of their ideas. It's much harder in niches with no competitors.
When analysing, I look at competitors' prices, unique offers, customer reviews, visual design and much more. At this stage lots of ideas appear about what the ideal website that sells should look like. I find competitors through Yandex or Google ads for the relevant keywords.
3. Unpack the product
How is it different from competitors? Who is ready to buy it? What problems does it solve? The answers will later help you write copy that sells and build a structure that works well with ads.
4. Study demand
In Google Trends or Yandex Wordstat you can enter a keyword and see how often and in which cities people search for it, and how demand changes over the year.
5. Understand the audience
Ideally you should know your client's target audience inside out. I read niche forums and customer reviews of competitors: people share very honestly what they'd like to improve or see in a service. I use all of this in my work. In some cases I recruit a group of potential buyers myself and interview them.
Useful tools
- Yandex Wordstat
- Keys.so: analysing competitors' ads
Timestamps
- 00:00 Intro
- 00:51 Defining the site's goal
- 01:51 Analysing competitors
- 08:41 Analysing the target audience
- 10:48 Unpacking the product
- 14:46 Summary
