Consumers on Shopify spent an estimated $160 billion in 2022. Shopify has become an important platform for merchants. Shopify’s growth has attracted so many store owners, who are excited about the tools the platform offers to build online stores. The excellence of Shopify’s tools has created intense competition on the platform. Merchants have to understand that their competitors are always a click away. If a merchant slips up, there is a competitor out there who is ready and waiting to pounce and win their customer. That makes it so important to track your competitors so that you can learn from and continue to offer your customers the best products they can get. The question that many merchants have is, “How do I track my competitors?”

Source: Market Place Pulse

Competition is for Losers

Venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, once remarked that “competition is for losers”. This is because competition prevents merchants from pricing their products at the most profitable levels they can. In order to become more profitable, and to have some degree of pricing power, you have to beat your competitors. In the world of ecommerce, you are never going to get rid of your competitors, but, what you can do is ensure that at the least, you offer the same standard of customer experience and products as the best of your competitors.

In order to achieve this, you have to keep an eye on your competitors, and learn from them, and adapt what they do well, and avoid the mistakes they make.

Track Their Metrics

You have to understand what your direct customers’ traffic volumes are, where they are getting that traffic from, and what the bounce rate is. You can then use this data to analyse your own website and integrate those lessons into your strategy. If you are not the top merchant in your category, you should focus on direct peers as well as the market leaders, so that you can get better. Tools such as SimilarWeb will provide you with an analysis of traffic volumes and demographics, engagement and bounce rates, where the traffic is coming from, and other information.

Study Shopify Insights

Shopify spy advises merchants to look at the insights provided on the platform. This will tell you about metrics such as engagement levels, traffic volumes, and other crucial details.

These insights will help you understand your own website, and weigh it against your competitors, thanks to the data you got from tracking their metrics.

You can use competitor metrics and your own insights to figure out what works, what you are doing wrong, what you can learn, and what you are doing right that others aren’t doing. You have to approach the data like a scientist and be objective.

On Facebook Insights, you can compare your store to similar stores, making this process of comparison easier. You should also use Google AdWords, and Google’s keyword tools.

Buy From Your Competitors

The best way to really understand your competitors is by experiencing the same customer journey as their customers. You don’t really need to buy the products, but you should go through the whole customer experience. You should do this for your store as well.

You should also sign up for their newsletters, follow their social media accounts, and if they have a physical store, visit it as well. This will give you a more visceral idea of what your competitors’ customers love about them.

When you have done this work, you will have an empirical and a visceral idea of what your competitors do well, do wrongly, and where you can improve.

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stash member Adam Alosi