Your competitors are only a Google search away.

Search for one of the services your business provides and you’ll probably find several businesses competing for exactly the same customers. Some will appear above you in the search results. Some will have websites that can look more convincing. Others might leave you wondering how on earth they’re ranking at all.

Either way, they’re worth looking at.

Competitor research isn’t about copying another business. It’s about understanding what they’re doing well, spotting what they’re doing badly and finding opportunities to make your own website better.

So, open a few competitors’ websites in separate tabs and take a proper look.

Here are ten things to consider.

1. They explain what they do more quickly

How long does it take to understand what your competitor does?

Now compare that with your own website.

Visitors shouldn’t have to decipher a clever headline, hunt through the navigation or scroll halfway down the homepage to understand what a business actually offers.

The strongest websites tend to make their purpose obvious quickly: what the business does, who it’s for and, where relevant, where it operates.

There’s an old principle in usability: don’t make me think. Every time someone has to stop and work out where to go or what something means, you’ve introduced friction.

Look at your website as though you’ve never seen it before. Is your business immediately obvious?

2. They look more established

People make remarkably quick judgements about businesses from their websites.

Your competitor might be smaller than you, newer than you or even working from the spare bedroom – but if their branding, typography, photography and website are better considered, they can appear to be the more established business.

That’s one of the great levellers of professional design.

A strong visual identity creates consistency. A professionally designed website gives that identity somewhere to work. Together they can make a relatively small business feel confident, credible and established.

If your competitor looks like the safer pair of hands, that’s worth paying attention to.

3. Their services are easier to understand

You know your business inside out. Your potential customers don’t.

That’s an important distinction.

A common website mistake is organising information around how the business thinks rather than how its customers think.

Look at your competitors’ navigation and service pages. Can you quickly find the service you searched for? Does each page explain what the service involves, who it’s for and what happens next?

Then try doing the same thing on your own website.

Good website structure isn’t particularly glamorous, but neither is a road sign. You still miss it when it isn’t there.

4. They answer more of their customers’ questions

This is where a competitor with a useful website can start pulling away from one with what is essentially an online brochure.

Customers have questions.

How much does it cost? How long does it take? What’s involved? Which option should I choose? What happens afterwards? Do I really need it?

Businesses that answer those questions on their websites are doing two useful things simultaneously: helping potential customers and creating useful content that search engines can understand.

This is one reason business blog articles can help SEO. A good article isn’t there simply because somebody once decided every business needed a blog. It should answer something your potential customers are genuinely searching for.

Search for questions relating to your own services and see which competitors keep appearing.

Then look for the questions nobody is answering particularly well.

That’s where the opportunity is.

5. They’re easier to find on Google

Having the nicest website amongst your competitors isn’t much use if nobody finds it.

Search Google for the services you offer rather than your business name.

Who appears?

Try different variations. Add your town or county. Search the questions customers might ask. Look at the standard results, local results and Google Business Profiles.

You don’t need sophisticated SEO software to learn something useful from this exercise.

Look at how competitors describe their pages in the search results. What terminology are they using? Do they have individual pages for important services? Are they regularly publishing useful content?

Even something as basic as well-written title tags and meta descriptions can affect how clearly a page communicates its relevance in search results.

For businesses serving a particular area, it’s also worth comparing their local visibility. My guide to local SEO for small businesses explains many of the factors involved.

SEO isn’t rocket science, but it does reward businesses that make it easy for search engines – and people – to understand what they do.

6. They provide more evidence

Every business can say it’s experienced, professional and committed to excellent customer service.

Those words aren’t evidence.

Testimonials, reviews, case studies, accreditations, genuine project examples and photographs of completed work are.

Compare your website with your competitors. Who actually proves their claims?

A portfolio can demonstrate experience. A detailed testimonial can reassure somebody with the same problem. A case study can show not only what was produced, but why it worked.

This is particularly important when someone is comparing several businesses at once.

You don’t necessarily need hundreds of reviews or enormous household-name clients. You simply need enough genuine evidence to make choosing you feel less risky.

7. Their website works better on a phone

Don’t compare competitors only from the comfort of a 27-inch desktop monitor.

Pick up your phone.

Navigation that looks beautifully organised on a desktop can become irritating on a smaller screen. Buttons become harder to hit. Text becomes uncomfortable to read. Forms become a chore. Huge images suddenly take an eternity to load.

A website being technically “responsive” doesn’t automatically mean it’s pleasant to use on mobile.

Try performing a few simple tasks on your competitor’s site and then yours.

Find a service. Read an article. Locate the phone number. Complete the contact form.

Which website makes those tasks easier?

That’s the one that’s doing mobile better.

8. They make it easier to take the next step

A visitor understands what your business does. They’re interested. They’re almost convinced.

What do you want them to do now?

Call? Email? Request a quote? Book an appointment? Buy something?

Strong websites make the next step obvious without turning every page into a barrage of enormous GET A QUOTE NOW!!! buttons.

Calls to action should feel like a natural continuation of the page.

Look at competitors and see where they provide opportunities to make contact. Then look at your own site.

If someone reaches the end of an important service page convinced that you’re the right business, don’t make them go hunting for the Contact page.

9. Their website looks active and maintained

You can usually tell when a website has been forgotten.

Old news. Broken links. Copyright 2019. Services the company no longer provides. Staff members who left three years ago. A blog whose most recent article confidently predicts what’s going to happen in 2022.

None of these things individually destroys a business’s credibility, but together they create an impression.

A business changes, so its website should change with it.

That also applies behind the scenes. WordPress, themes and plugins need maintaining, security needs attention and backups need to exist before they’re needed.

A website shouldn’t be treated as something that’s built, launched and forgotten. It should continue developing alongside the business it represents.

10. They’re doing something you haven’t thought of

This is perhaps the most useful part of competitor research.

Don’t just look for things to copy.

Look for ideas.

Perhaps a competitor has an excellent FAQ section. Maybe they’ve created a useful calculator, downloadable guide, comparison page or particularly good case study. Perhaps their Google Business Profile is full of recent photographs and reviews. Maybe they’ve found a much clearer way of explaining a complicated service.

Then look in the opposite direction.

What aren’t any of your competitors doing?

If five competing businesses all have virtually identical websites saying virtually identical things, being the sixth isn’t much of an ambition.

The gaps are often more interesting than the similarities.

Don’t copy your competitors. Learn from them.

Competitor research should give you ideas, not a template.

Your competitors may rank above you without having a particularly good website. They may have excellent SEO but dreadful branding. Beautiful design but weak content. Great reviews but a terrible mobile experience.

Nobody gets everything right.

That’s why the useful question isn’t simply:

“Is their website better than mine?”

It’s:

“What are they doing better, what am I doing better, and where is there an opportunity to improve?”

If you’d like a broader benchmark for your own site, I’ve also put together a guide to what makes a good business website, covering the fundamentals a modern business website should get right.

And if looking at your competitors has left your own website feeling a little behind the pack, my website design services are probably a sensible next stop.

The aim isn’t to make your website more like your competitors’. It’s to understand why theirs works — then make yours better.