How much time do you spend on your competitor websites?
Hey Indie Hackers! I was wondering how much time everyone spends on analyzing competitor websites :)
Would love to also know what ends up taking up the most time!
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When I am at the early stage being creative with mock ups, the last place I want to look is my competitor's website. I find it puts you in a box where you end up just another clone. Once I have some up with my sketch up I will start doing the competitor research to see who they are, what their message is, and who marketing to, usually hoping to find the gaps. Lastly, I will look at their features to see how they match up with mine to solve the problem and adjust accordingly. Competing on features is usually short lived because if your successful any competitor can copy you. Also sometimes it helps to think-inside-the box and use conventions that competitors use because that's how the customer understands the language and how to use your product.
Makes total sense. Thanks for sharing @AndrewFSA!
I am also working in a B2B SaaS product startup and I look at competitors' pages most of the time to see what their marketing strategy is and what sort of content they provide.
What role are you filling in the startup? Would love to hear a bout your workflow when doing these checks.
I was a content manager for a few years. I've been writing technical content in between technical writing and marketing. Naturally, I would visit other successful rival companies' websites/blogs/GitHub repos for some ideas and sometimes I'd write about topics that seem hot in the market. Of course, I get inspiration from other sources as well.
Recently shifted more into general marketing for open source software. Still in the early stage, I'm coming up with some old and new ideas to efficiently market our product. I use other global startups and large-scale companies as references, just like how I did with previous enterprise software I dealt with for the past few years. In this case, GitHub repositories of similar startups and large companies were a great help for references.
Through a few companies analysis, I'd get a few ideas on some of the most efficient open-source marketing strats, which is something I cannot get from a simple google search or conference videos.
Thank you for sharing @jbiz805!
Would love to read some of your work for a better understanding of what you do. Feel free to share :)
I am working on a B2B SaaS product (maybe different from B2C SaaS product). There are many competitors out there. However, the release/big update from those competitors is rare as competitors need several months to a half year for a feature. That is why I don't spend a lot of time on competitor websites. But I check competitors' github repos frequently (users file issues to raise problems/complaints), which can give me some hints on customers' needs and frustration.
Interesting that you checkout github repos. Do most of your competitors have some open source component on their product?
And another question if I may - how many competitors do you usually keep tabs on?
I keep track of 6 competitors ranging from big companies to startups (there are more, but due to those competitors are early phase, so just skip them for now). 4 of them have github repos. The other 2 just provides services for customers.
Gotcha, so 6 main competitors you track plus a few minor ones that you check infrequently. When you do check a comeptitor's website is therea anythin you tend to focus on? Like pricing, features, content, etc.
Lastly, is the B2B SaaS product you're working on launched? Would love to check it out if you're willing to share a link to it!
As the product is in early phase (different phases can be different), I mostly focus on features in big release and future roadmaps (open source companies does put this into their websites). I spent few hours before to check the pricing when I was thinking about how to charge customers.
Yes, it launched. Here is the landing page: https://vectorstore.webflow.io/
Very cool. Thanks for sharing @notethat22!
I never really spend time on competitor's websites, but I'm sometimes looking at their social media posts / ads / blogs. I want to see how they position themselves and see what the competition is doing! But I don't overcomplicate or spend too much time, better to focus on yourself
Do you use any tools to do these tasks? Would love to hear about your workflow!