1. What is competitive product analysis?
The term "competitive product analysis" first came from the field of economics. Simply put, it means analyzing and comparing products that compete with you, and then outputting the conclusions of the analysis.
2. What is the use of competitive product analysis?
For products in the exploratory period, competitive product analysis can clarify product development strategies, gain insight into the industry market, avoid misunderstandings, and control product direction through continuous trial and error.
For products in the growth stage, competitive product analysis can find their own characteristics and explore appropriate product design methods while maintaining their uniqueness, instead of blindly following competing products.
For products in the mature stage, competitive product analysis can find the uniqueness from related competing products, look for changes in the uniqueness, and create differentiated designs and differentiated positioning.
In general, competitive product analysis is to extract the essence and remove the dross; know yourself and the enemy, and think about others when you see the good.
3. What are the types of competing products?
3.1. Direct competing products
The market direction is the same, the customer group is the same, and the product functions are similar.
For example: Meituan Waimai and Ele.me; JD.com and Tmall; NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music.
3.2. Indirect competing products
If the product functions are partially the same and the user groups overlap, there is a possibility of becoming direct competing products in the future.
For example: National Karaoke and NetEase Cloud Music; Tencent Video and Douyin; Zhihu and WeChat.
3.3. Industry leaders
Industry giants want to occupy market share, expand business lines, and become competitive products.
For example: Meituan acquired Mobike to start the travel business.
4. How to find competing products?
4.1. You can find competing products through major application markets
For example, if you need to make a social product, you can enter the social product you know in the App Store, and then The Apple Mall has categories for apps. You can click on the Social tab, and there will be a ranking list of social apps, all of which are products under the social category. (I personally prefer this method, it is simple and crude)
4.2. You can also use some data analysis websites to find competing products
For example, you can use Qimai Data, etc. Go to data analysis websites to search. These websites also classify products with tags. The search method is the same as the application market method. Enter the product you know and then click on the tag type to view. The analysis is very comprehensive, but some websites may require charges. In order to obtain comprehensive data information.
5. How to analyze competing products?
Generally, we choose 8 domestic competing products and 8 foreign competing products. For these 16 competing products, try to choose industry unicorn products and products at the top of the rankings, because there must be a reason for others to be excellent. . (If you want to search for foreign competing products, for example, you can search with an overseas ID in the Apple market)
You can analyze competing products through two major latitudes and five major directions:
5.1. Two Large latitude
Breadth analysis: including market trends, industry status, product positioning, development strategy, target user positioning, user needs, information architecture and core functions, etc.
In-depth analysis: including user usage process and path analysis, visual, typography, style, and layout analysis, interaction, logic, dynamic effects, and emotional analysis, as well as analysis of user evaluations of competing products. .
5.2. The five major directions are the five elements of user experience
Strategic layer: As the name suggests, it is the analysis of the product at the strategic level. It can analyze the product positioning, market share, user groups, and business of competing products. Model and profit model are analyzed.
My commonly used analysis websites are
Lagou: /
iResearch: /home.shtml
IT Orange: /
Baidu Encyclopedia: /
Scope layer: Analysis at the functional level, what functions do competing products have, what is the priority of the functions, what needs of users can be solved by competing product functions, To solve the problem of what the demand rate is, these are all angles that can be analyzed.
Structural layer: The analysis of information architecture is to analyze the user's operation path. Compared with Taobao, I need to buy MBP. I can search for it in the search box on the homepage, or I can find it in the product classification module.
Framework layer: analysis of interaction logic and rationality of element existence, analysis of user operating methods and operating habits. For example, QQ's personal center is in the upper left corner, and WeChat's is in the lower right corner.
Presentation layer: Visual level analysis, analyzing whether the design specifications, style and color of the page are unified, whether the information transmission is accurate, and what are the design advantages and disadvantages of competing products.
6. How to output the analysis report?
The first method is for a competing product to output a report according to the process. The advantage is that it is highly targeted and can analyze competing products intermittently. The disadvantage is that there are many competing products and it is easy to forget the characteristics of competing products.
The second method is to produce several competitive product comparative analysis output reports.
The advantage is that there is contrast and comparison, and it is easy to find the differentiating features. The disadvantage is that the amount of work is a bit large and you need to know the competing products well.
Competitive product analysis reports can be written from the general direction to the small direction, such as:
Changes in national policies (new opportunities)
Industry background (development trends) )
Development of social technology (technical innovation)
Product positioning (general direction)
Business model (how to make money)
Target users (whose money to make)
User needs (core pain points)
Core functions (how to make money)
Architecture logic (whether it is easy to use) < /p>
Visual communication (whether it looks good or not)
7. Summary
It is not difficult to write a competitive product analysis report, but the difficulty is how to translate the problems summarized in the report into business Goals, transform business goals into product and design goals. Don't write a competitive product analysis report as a product experience report. We should analyze competing products with "hostility" and analyze all the generations of competing products. Don't forget the original intention. We analyze competing products to solve problems. of.
The above are some of my thoughts on competitive product analysis. I hope it will be helpful to you.