Web clients often ask designers to do some competitive research before beginning a project. But there’s only so much information you can get by searching sites with similar demographics. You might learn how their design looks, what kind of technology they use, and how they target customers, but do you know how successful the competition really is?

Knowing the competitors’ complete traffic statistics would be ideal, but you’re not going to get that without a spy (not recommended) or a fight (equally not recommended). How about the next best thing?

Traffic ranking sites, like Alexa.com, show you how popular a site is, as compared to all other sites on the Web. For example, Amazon.com has a traffic ranking of 3—it’s the third most popular site out there.

Just enter in the URL of the site of your choice on the Traffic Rankings page to see its info, and check it fairly regularly to see how consistent a competitor’s traffic is or how effective a big promotion is.

You can get some other handy competitive info from a site’s ranking page on Alexa as well, like related links (maybe you’ll find a competitor your client didn’t even know he had!) and sites linking in.

The more competitors you look up, the better. When you know which one is the most successful and which is the least successful, delve into their designs and content to try to figure out why. What can you do to avoid the mistakes of the one with the low traffic ranking, and what can you do to top the effectiveness of the highest ranked one?

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you check out the top and bottom-ranked competitors:

1) How does their technology differ? For example, if the bottom site is Flash-based and the top one is HTML/CSS-based, you may learn that customers in this audience prefer HTML/CSS.

2) How do their visuals differ? Does one use a color scheme that is more soothing than the other? Does one have graphics that are more unique?

3) What is the ratio of text on the homepage to images? How are text and images used to get a main message across?

4) How does the navigation differ? How many clicks does it take to get to important features?

5) What special features does the top site have that might keep users coming back? What features does the bottom site have that might feel off-putting to new visitors?

Combining your understanding of a site’s experience with its traffic ranking will give you greater insight into your competitors and what works, than the site experience alone.

Most importantly, don’t worry about getting the #1 traffic rank… tools like Alexa compare all sites on the Web regardless of audience. Just keep an eye out for (and aim to beat) the competitors’ rankings and you’ll be in good shape.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Design Careers, Web Design. 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.