How to Tell if Your Competitor’s Website is Outperforming Yours

With countless people who could benefit from your product or service, what elements do you have in place to have them knocking at your door?

Your website serves as a valuable tool to distinguish your brand from the competition.

In order to remain successful, it's critical that you're not only aware of what your competition is doing well, but striving to do it better.

It's easy to navigate

If your website visitors can't easily make their way around your website, they can't convert. If visitors aren't converting on your website, it's not doing it's job right.

Visitors have come to expect to find your main navigation horizontally across the top of your site, or vertically on the side. Designing your website with this expectation in mind will help you to ensure a more user-friendly experience. 

Given that the short term memory can only store 7 items, it's a good rule of thumb to keep your main navigation at or under 7 items. 

While drop down menus are popular, that doesn't mean they're a best practice. Not only are they difficult for search engines to crawl, but also, usability tests reveal that drop-down menus are downright annoying. 

Unless of course you have your website has a sizable number of pages. If this is the case, drop-down menus perform best when they are structured as "mega menus", meaning that they are divided into panels or groups with no scrolling required. 

It inspires trust

Simply put, people buy what their friends and family recommend.

Essentially, anytime you can attach less risk to your product or service, you are improving the chances that a consumer will make a purchasing decision in your favor. 

In terms of your website, having the support of existing customers who are not only familiar with, but are currently using your product or service is unparalleled. This type of social proof can come in the form of customer tesitominals, case studies, or reviews, which should be easily accessible on your website (preferably in your main navigation.)

While case studies are powerful, there are a number of alternative ways to showcase social proof throughout your website's design. 

A seemingly small example of social proof that has the ability to make a significant impact is the copy used by Social Media Examiner on their blog subscription call-to-action:

By calling on the support of their 255,000+ loyal subscribers, Social Media Examiner is effectively demonstrating that others have seen the value in their content, so you should too.

It's better optimized

Optimization should not be an afterthought.

Both content optimization in terms of SEO and mobile optimization are two considerable factors that are going to play into the success of your website's performance. There is no one without the other. 

With 59% of consumers visit mobile business websites, businesses must not only be prepared to deliver a mobile-optimized website experience, but one that performs well in mobile search.

If your competitor is on the HubSpot COS and you're not, it's likely that they are pulling off this type of strategic optimization with little sweat.

How? 

Websites built on the HubSpot COS are out-of-the-box mobile-friendly. Thanks to a bit of code built directly into the COS, websites are designed to be fully responsive on smart phones and devices of all different shapes and sizes. 

Additionally, tools like the SEO Panel within the blogging platform help content creators ensure that their posts contain all of the ingredients necessary for improved search rankings.