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How I Designed My Website

Competitive Research

Duration: 4 hours / ongoing

So who is my competition? It's a common fallacy that competition is everyone else in the same field.

The better question would be: who is generating revenue from a similar product or service to my target market?

Competition in regards to consulting services

The first part is of researching competition is defining what you actually get paid to do and by whom.

Who pays me? What do they pay me for? Who else does the same thing?

My clients are small businesses without a marketing or a sales department. They pay me to tell them how to get their site to make money or save money and to recommend experienced people who can make that happen.

My clients already have a web site. They spent alot of money and are currently getting no sales. They put their site and prayed for sales and had no proactive plan other then "getting on the search engines."

I mainly focus on helping the client figure out what to do after the site is finished. I get paid by giving my clients control in determining the success and failure of their website.

So who does the same thing?

In this service, it's not other web designers that are my competition, it's business consultants.

Basically, I do google searches, look at local newspaper ads, look at profiles for various business groups in order to collect a list of competitors. Then I usually look at their website to compare their services to mine and see if they provide the same services and where I can differentiate.

Sometimes, I'll go as far as emailing them for brochure under a business alias. This tends to lead to emails initiated by the company (not by me) where I get to ask a lot of questions about what services they provide.

My conclusion is this: the good consultants cost way too much for my target market.

Competition in regards to coding services

I target freelance graphic designers transitioning to websites for their clients. These designers want to do the web design, but don't have the time to learn the coding.

There are plenty of PSD to HTML services online. However, these companies don't do alot of hand holding for the designers because certain rules for print design don't apply very well to web design. Here, I need to compete by providing better service.

Second, there are no local companies that provide just this service. Usually, it's other design agencies and freelance graphic designers are hesitant to partner with companies that have their design team because they're worried about losing their clients.

The people who do provide this service advertise on Craigslist and marketing I've found for this service is not consistent.

Why the competitive research in the first place?

Competitive research gives me an idea of the level of competion and idea of how they market and what new skills or new services I need to provide to compete. Also, competitive research can indicate whether there's even a need for that service or product.

Next: Define Specific Goals