A competitive product analysis involves comparing the key features of your product or service with those of your toughest competitors.
If you are a product manager or owner, you will naturally be curious as to how your products stack up against similar offerings on the market in terms of things like price, functionality, the value you generate for customers, and how advanced or in-depth each feature is compared to your competitors.
By gathering intel on what’s working (or for that matter, not working) for your competitors, you are in a better position to identify gaps and potential areas for improvement in your own product development journey. This enhanced knowledge about what’s ‘out there’ eventually leads to better differentiation, powerful messaging, and a more strategic product roadmap.
With this Excel-based template, we offer a pre-made structure for you to more easily & systematically analyze product features and how they are positioned in an ever-competitive market. We use numerical values (from 1 to 10) to assign scores to each competitor against each product feature. We then assign a specific weightage to each criterion in light of how critical it is, allowing you to map out where you stand relative to your competitors in concrete & quantifiable terms.
Our template is customizable (so you can use any evaluation criteria that work for you) and scalable (so you can add as many competitors & individual evaluation criteria as you like).
So, What Exactly are We Comparing?
Here’s the thing: what you end up comparing about two or more similar products is not exactly based on a one-size-fits-all formula. Instead, it depends very much on the unique nature of each product and the specific industry or niche market you are catering to.
That said, here’s a list of product features you might find useful to compare and co-analyse:
- Usability or quality of user experience
- Core product features or functionalities
- Feature depth
- Style & design
- Product quality and range
- Use of new, enabling technologies
- Pricing structure
- Type and number of warranties
- Market positioning strategy
- Value generated for customers
- Market demand
- Sales & distribution channels used
- Post-sale Service
- Level of customer support offered
Now let’s explore our template in a bit more detail:
How Our Template Works
We have designed our spreadsheet to be simple but quant-based so you can develop a more precise sense of how your product profile fares against your competitors and what future strategies you should adopt in light of these numbers.
Step 1
Your first step is to identify between 3 to 5 direct competitors vying for attention in the same market space. Once you run this analysis for your direct competitors, that is, businesses offering similar products to the same target audience – you can repeat this exercise for indirect competitors to gain more product intel on alternate ways to meet the same customer needs.
Step 2
The next step is to identify a list of individual criteria you will use to compare and analyze your offerings to those of your competitors. From product functionality, usability, demand, and value to how well a product lines up with a company’s broader goals – there are countless points of comparison to make here.
In our template, we have used dummy criteria that you can easily replace or edit to meet your individual business needs & industry context. When determining your product evaluation criteria, ask yourself:
- Do rival products integrate better with other technologies, creating a competitive advantage for them?
- How is their product sales cycle more customer-friendly than yours?
- Do your competitors have rights to new intellectual property due to a recent merger or acquisition?
- What products or services are your target customers currently using to solve the same problem?
Step 3
And now, onto the core of our spreadsheet: a quantitative analysis of how well (or not) you stack up against competitors in terms of different aspects or features of your product.
All you need to do is rate each competitor (from 1 to 10), and of course yourself, against each criterion. For a more nuanced analysis, we accord different levels of importance to each criterion by letting you assign a specific percentage weight to each criterion in light of factors such as the financial and strategic goals of your business.
Step 4
Once you award an individual score to each competitor, we automatically calculate a total score (shown in the last row), giving you a consolidated idea of how your products measure up against competitors. Doing this ensures more informed product and feature development as you work to adapt your offerings to changing market trends & customer needs.
We also added a separate column at the end where you can jot down any specific observations, remarks, comments or justifications you have vis-a-vis your ratings and rankings for each competitor.
Who Is Our Template For?
- Product managers: To benchmark features and prioritize improvements.
- Business strategists: To identify opportunities for differentiation.
- Marketing teams: To refine messaging and highlight unique selling points.
- Entrepreneurs: To assess market fit for new products.
Why Do I Need One?
- Evaluating product-market fit.
- Identifying feature gaps or areas for improvement.
- Prioritizing product development efforts.
- Enhancing competitive strategy and differentiation.
- Highlighting how well a product aligns with market needs, company goals, and competitive dynamics.
Wrap Up
To sum up, the role of a competitive analyst is crucial for ensuring the sustained growth and success of any business. With the right market intel, you can better understand how your product performs against competitors, allowing you to pinpoint areas for innovation or product enhancement.
Summarized scores for each player in the game guide you on how to position your offerings on the market so you can one-up your competition. By playing on your strengths, such as the key differentiators and proprietary features of your products, you can dramatically improve your customer satisfaction levels, conversion rates, and overall revenue & profits in the long run.
Elevate your product development strategy and marketing game by using our pre-made template to evaluate and compare product features and performance across competitors!
Our free and editable Competitive Product Feature Analysis template can be instantly downloaded and directly saved to your device as an Excel file for easy offline editing or via Google Sheets for cloud-based sharing and collaboration!
