Who are your competitors? What customer needs and
preferences are you competing to meet? What are the
similarities and differences between their
products/services and yours? What are the strengths
and weaknesses of each of their products and
services? How do their prices compare to yours? How
are they doing overall? How do you plan to compete?
Offer better quality services? Lower prices? More
support? Easier access to services? How are you
uniquely suited to compete with them?
Conducting a competitive analysis is an important
part of the job if you're a usability engineer or
information architect. A good competitive analysis
not only produces usability metrics but also aids
decision makers in their strategic goal-setting and
planning. Done right, a good competitive analysis
can steer a Web development project in the right
direction.
The day will come when you're sitting happily at
your desk and someone from marketing or business
development will come into your office and ask you
to do a competitive analysis for them. The company
is launching a news site or portal, and the decision
makers want to be sure that their site will stand up
to the competition.
Suddenly, you're not just in the world of
usability and information architecture -- of
theories and deep thinking about cognitive
psychology. You're now in the rubber-meets-the-road
world of business. Although you'll be doing
old-fashioned usability analysis work, you're also
expected to guide the team toward increasing return
on investment. You're expected to provide baseline
readings from which to measure success. And you're
expected to help the team snoop out what the
competition is doing.
We can do all the research and present to you the
information you need to stay ahead. 
