subject: Conducting Competitor Study for your Free Web Store [print this page] Conducting Competitor Study for your Free Web Store
Before you build store and start selling online, it is best to visualize where you need to be and know your current status as well as any barriers to entry. For this, it would be best that you conduct a competitor analysis.
In traditional companies, the marketing team is the best resource to find out who your competitors are and how the company measures up to them. However, online, it is a totally different game for eCommerce stores. It requires SEO or online marketing skills to determine who you're up against.
To conduct your first competitor study, you need target keywords. In the internet, it's all about whose on top and who is getting the most impressions, visitors and conversions. It starts with ranking for a good set of keywords.
The keywords you target is entirely up to you. The only piece of advice we want to share is to go after the long-tail first as this usually converts better for ecommerce stores. These are the more brand-specific or niche-specific keywords that searchers who are ready-to-buy use in order to find a product. Find out what the search volume is for those keywords and the number of competitors who are already aiming to rank for the same keywords. Choose the median for this, a good number for potential traffic and a relatively low number of competitors.
Now that you have your set of target keywords for your free web store, do the basic assessment for your site. What factors do you want to compare against your top competitor for each keyword? It could be ranking, PageRank, domain age, number of backlinks and more. Create an excel file listing these attributes one column each. In the rows, you will need to put in your competitors.
Next, go to your search engine of choice and type in one target keyword. The first ten that appear on the search engine results page are your top online competitors. You will have to aim to get ahead of them and to put your free web store on top of the results for each keyword set you type in. It will not be easy.
Start gathering data on your competitors by using the spreadsheet created earlier. Take as much information down as you can about your ecommerce store's competitors. Studying what they do and how they do it will affect your strategy creation for your free web store.
