Chapter Six. What Are Your Competitors Doing?

One last thing before Ken starts the web site design phase. He does a competitive analysis. He wants to meet or beat the competition. But, first he needs to know what the competition is doing. Ken has two local competitors. They both have web sites. In analyzing their web sites, Ken observes that the competitor’s web sites:

• do not address the benefits of custom made golf clubs. They focus on “features” – but not on the benefits, such as how custom clubs can help improve some one’s golf game.
• one site is not laid out very well and does not have curb appeal.
• the other site is laid out very well, has a nice business logo, and makes good use of images.
• one site offers coupons for ordering custom golf clubs online. The person still has to meet with the provider to get properly fitted to the golf clubs.
• neither site’s content contains the keywords and phrases that the target audience would use when searching for their products.
• one site has some good incoming links. Search engines give sites with relevant incoming links more weight than sites without relevant incoming links. (Notice that we said relevant incoming links. Non-relevant links can hurt your rankings.)

 

Ken decides the get with a graphic designer to create a professional logo for his business and web site. He will take quality photos of his products for the web site. He knows that benefits sell and plans to highlight benefits over features in the web site content. He will incorporate keywords and phrases into the content and create a “theme” for each page. He knows that he can get several golf courses and pro shops to link to his site. He will also look for other quality relevant links to his web site.

 

Now, Ken is ready to start the Design Phase.