Practical examples of competitive product analysis

As a product, competitive product analysis is definitely indispensable in daily work; competitive product analysis is a basic step in product development. Before we do competitive product analysis, we must first determine the purpose of the analysis. The purpose of the analysis is different, and the focus and methods used are also different.

01 Is this how you write a competitive product analysis?

Competitive product analysis is a basic skill for product managers. The author believes that it is a task that new product managers and experienced product managers often have to do in their daily work, and they can definitely write it.

But is the readability and value of what is written sufficient? You guys may have to put a big question mark in your heart~

In most cases, it may become a vanity project as described below:

It's time to do a competitor analysis, but as a newbie I don't know how to write it, so I quickly searched for templates on Baidu, and wrote several thousand words according to the usual template [the five elements of user experience, written down layer by layer from the strategic layer - scope layer - structure layer - framework layer - presentation layer]. I felt so tired, and I was moved by the amount of text I produced. However, after I finished writing, my leader told me that it was not readable, and I felt that whether I wrote it or not would have no practical effect on my product design [I was not very willing to write it].

The above phenomenon also leads to several common misunderstandings in competitive product analysis:

• No conclusion: After writing a competitive product analysis article, no substantive conclusion is output.
• Miscellaneous: Because the purpose is not clear, a user research article will contain market analysis, user portraits and other contents. It’s not that these contents are wrong, but that they have everything but are useless.
• Insisting on making suggestions for improvement is a strong personal preference; without fully understanding the user scenarios and needs of competitors, it is actually meaningless to quibble over some interactive experience issues.

If you feel that the situation described above has happened to you, then I believe that this article will bring you considerable benefits.

02 Two major categories of competitive product analysis

In my opinion, competitive product analysis can be divided into two main categories.

One is functional point research, and the other is product research.

What are the similarities and differences between the two?

Similarities:

With clear purpose and focus on underlying logical processes, how are user needs met?

Different places:

Product research focuses on the process of functional iteration. For example, Alipay has launched version 9.0. In order to better speculate on the development path of Alipay products, we may check the iterative content of payment from V1.0 to V9.0.

This can serve as a good reference for us when we make overall product planning. Pay attention to product structure, and look at what the product structure is? Because it is a research on the entire product, you need to have a clear understanding of the overall framework; focusing on operational logic, after the product is launched, promotion and operation are also a core point of product research.

Function point research focuses on a certain function or a certain functional group (module). It focuses on business processes, interactive experience of key pages, and outstanding highlights of functions.

03 Function Point Research (main topic of this issue)

Generally speaking, there are three scenarios for function point research:

Scenario 1: When a competitor in the same track launches a new feature, the boss will usually immediately assign a task to you (manually funny)

Purpose: Want to quickly see what this new feature is? Can I copy it? Do you want to copy? Mainly show it to the boss and let the boss make the decision.

Scenario 2: You are responsible for adding a new feature to a product and need to learn from what your competitors are doing?

Purpose: Which competitor is better? How do competitors do it? How to copy? What to copy? Mainly used to shorten the product design process

Scenario 3: Mainly based on self-learning and driving, research the top players in each industry and maintain product sence.

Purpose: Why do leading players’ products do this? What is the meaning behind this?

What user needs are met? Ask more whys and find the answers.

It is mainly used to gradually improve one's product sense and enhance one's product knowledge reserves.

In order to make you understand better, I will take an example from my work some time ago:

Real case:

The company I work for is an online education company. Due to the needs of business development, our superiors asked us to build a marketing platform to support the company's operations. (You should be able to see the above scene)

After receiving this task, the author did some preliminary user research and combined it with some problems encountered in connecting with the operations department in daily work. He decided to conduct competitive product research to accelerate his product design and open up his thinking.

When I conduct competitive product research, I ask myself the following questions:

1. Who is my target user? 【Think before research】

Before conducting research, you must first understand who the target users of the function you are developing are?

As Mr. Song said above, it is obvious that the main user group of our marketing platform this time is the operations colleagues within the company.

2. What is the current status of product features? (Or the problems that the target users are facing now?) [Know yourself first and then conduct research with a purpose]

Through the collection of daily work requirements, the company's main problem is:

The growth of the company's online business has led to an increase in the volume of daily operational activities.

The process from 0 to 1 of the company's original activities is complicated (requiring copywriting planning-UI drawing-technical page development-testing). With such a long chain, one activity can easily take ten days, half a month or even longer; this not only affects the rhythm of the activities, but also increases the company's manpower costs.

In order to solve this problem, there is an urgent need for a system that allows operators to generate activity links themselves.

3. What are the target products for the survey? [Find competitors after determining the research purpose]

Generally speaking, we look for leading players [leading in the industry, leading in product reputation].

What is your question? I choose not to explain.

Based on the online education track in which my company is located, the author selected two leading players providing SaaS services.

They are a certain Etong and a certain Zan.

4. What is the user base of the competitor?

What is the user base of competing products? What are user needs? (Who wants to use competing products, and what key tasks are completed through competing products), how do users of competing products complete tasks through competing products? (The key function of competing products is how to meet user needs, which is the focus of the research)

Take a goose pass as an example:

User groups: merchants and students.

Merchants’ needs:

• Quickly build marketing tools for certain courses to accelerate monetization;
• Rapid promotion in multiple scenarios;
• Check the promotion effect;

Students' needs:

• Get courses at a lower price;
• Simple activity tasks and convenient ways to participate;

Key tasks:

Merchants and students hope to complete the following key tasks through Etong:

• Merchants: selection of marketing tools, creation of activities, promotion of links, feedback of activity data, and cash flow review;
• Users: participating in activities, purchasing courses, and watching courses.

How do users complete these key tasks through competing products?

The author has a little trick here. Use the reverse method to position yourself as a product or a student. Then complete such a task, capture the corresponding page, and you can infer the process based on the order of the pages.

The figure below is a flowchart that the author compiled during the research.

I won’t go into detail about the process, you can understand it by looking at the pictures.

The process is the soul of the product. With the process in place, and by breaking it down into each node in the process, you will have a clear idea in mind when designing the product.

5. What are the differences between different competing products? [Highlights, advantages and disadvantages of competing products]

In 4, we have sorted out the process for completing key tasks. The process itself is different for different competing products, so it needs to be listed.

Secondly, some key pages will appear in the process. Yes, that's right, we haven't come to the specific page until now. [However, many newcomers start to cut pages when doing competitive product research...]

Taking the above process as an example, in the process of creating an activity, there are (marketing center homepage - used to select marketing tools), (marketing activity creation page - used to create marketing activities), (generate link page - used to generate activity links), (activity landing page - for students to participate and complete activity tasks).

These key pages must be different for different competitors. I believe everyone is already familiar with finding the differences on the pages, so I will not go into details here.

Just two suggestions:

• Find different priorities: function > layout > ui
• When looking for differences, you need to think about: What are the reasons for the differences? Try to consider the user scenario needs as much as possible.

6. Summary [Top priority]

We often say "Don't forget your original intention", and the same applies to writing a competitive product analysis. In the end, don't forget the purpose of writing this competitive product analysis.

I worked so hard to write so much before, but what about all that? Whether their products are good or bad, they are just competing products.

Our original intention is to "copy":

What can be learned and what cannot be learned. If you want to learn from it, how can you integrate it with your own company's business?

Can the company do it? Are there any technical barriers? We must make it clear in the conclusion whether there are special thresholds, etc.

A well-written summary is a valuable competitive product analysis (main leaders generally only read the summary).

I believe that through the above examples of super practical stuff, everyone should have a sudden enlightenment.

The example mainly focuses on the functional point research done for scenario 2.

Scenario 1 and Scenario 3 are roughly the same, but the focus is different. I will also briefly describe them.

Scenario 1: A competitor has developed a new feature that we don’t have, and we are not sure whether to implement it. We may not have such a scenario or demand internally.

Then, during the research process, our analysis of our internal status quo will be weakened.

Mainly look at the similarities and differences in the user base, key tasks, key processes, and key pages of competitors.

At the same time, you should also find ways to test the data feedback after the launch of new features of competitors. (Only when the data is good is there a need to copy it)

I will tell you which specific data to look at in the subsequent data updates on the official account.

Scenario 3: It is self-driven, to conduct research and learning, and here we can be more casual in the output process. (For personal use)

In general, the following questions need to be investigated:

What are the new features? Which is the most critical functional point (what you want to know most)?

What are the user's needs, key tasks, and usage processes?

What are the highlights of the feature? Why? (It is recommended not to look at the shortcomings, just focus on the advantages)

If the data can be observed, it can also be taken into account.

04 Final Thoughts

The author had an original intention in writing this article. When I first entered the industry, I could only look for templates to write competitive product analysis. However, finding the templates was as difficult as filling in the blanks, and I felt that the analysis reports I wrote had no practical significance. I searched the Internet for some competitive product analysis methods, but they were all theoretical basis without actual cases to support them, which was actually difficult to digest.

As I worked more hours, I slowly figured out my own set of methods for competitive product analysis. I shared them with everyone based on actual cases, hoping to be of some help to newcomers and live up to my original intention.

Author: Song Laoshi

Source: Product Manager Tucao