When it comes to understanding your app's competitive landscape, traditional methods can be overwhelming and time-consuming. However, by adopting a lean approach, you can gain valuable insights without breaking the bank or sacrificing precious hours.

In this guide, we'll show you how to conduct a lean competitive analysis that focuses on the most critical data points, helping you answer the question: "Why would users choose one app over yours?" You'll learn how to identify your direct competitors, compare share of voice, analyze pricing and features, uncover strong and weak points based on user reviews, and present your findings in a clear and concise manner.

A Lean Approach to Competitive Analysis

Our template consists of two documents: a slide deck and a spreadsheet. The slide deck serves as the output document, providing an easy-to-understand visual representation of your analysis. Meanwhile, the spreadsheet acts as the input document, where you'll gather data and insights to inform your presentation.

Step-by-Step Instructions

To get started, follow these six tasks:

  1. Identify Direct Competitors: These are businesses that offer a similar solution to the same target audience.
  2. Compare Share of Voice: Measure your reach in any given channel compared to competitors.
  3. Compare Pricing and Features: Analyze whether your app offers the best value for money, considering both pricing and features.
  4. Find Strong and Weak Points Based on User Reviews: Identify areas where you excel or struggle based on user feedback.
  5. Compare Purchasing Convenience: Evaluate how easy it is to purchase and use each app.
  6. Present Conclusions: Summarize your findings in a clear and concise manner.

A Real-Life Example

Let's take Landingi, a SaaS for building landing pages, as our example. To identify direct competitors, we'll look at organic search and paid search ads.

Keyword Overlap

To uncover sites that target the same organic keywords as you, use Ahrefs' Site Explorer:

  1. Enter your site's address.
  2. Scroll down to Organic competitors.
  3. Visit the URLs to pick 3-5 direct competitors.

Paid Search Ads

Check who's bidding for search ads on Google using Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer:

  1. Type in a few broad keywords related to your niche.
  2. Go to the Ads history report.
  3. Visit the sites that have a high presence of ads in the SERPs.

Share of Voice

Measure your reach in any given channel compared to competitors using Ahrefs and Brand24:

  • Organic: Use Ahrefs' Rank Tracker to calculate Share of Voice.
  • Social media: Use Brand24's Comparison report to compare your project with competitors.

Pricing and Features

Compare pricing and features across different plans, considering whether you offer the best value for money. Take into account both the cheapest plans and custom pricing tiers.

By following these steps and using our template, you'll gain valuable insights into your app's competitive landscape and be better equipped to improve user experience. Remember, a lean approach to competitive analysis is all about focusing on the most critical data points to inform your decisions.