Instead of looking at your competition as an enemy, maybe you should start looking to them for guidance. Since you're both vying for the same customers, looking at their marketing and sales tactics can help you get ahead.
Business is about competition, isn't it? Whether you're setting up a business or you're acting as the customer, what other businesses do will affect the way that you do your business. So, it's no surprise that when you are starting up an online business that you need to start thinking about what your competitors are doing right now - and what you can learn from them.
Too often, new businesses are afraid that their research into other companies will cause them to become too similar to other businesses and that they might get into trouble for doing so. But so long as you aren't copying someone directly in what you do as a business, you shouldn't have any troubles with copyright infringement. And honestly, many companies naturally do similar things as their competitors. Here's what you can learn.
Looking at their Competition
If you've never run a business for yourself, you might think that your ideas are so good that they should be able to stand on their own. And while this may be true, ignoring what your competition does is not going to help you in the future. The business marketplace changes constantly, so if you're not 'in the know' about what everyone else is going, you are missing out on ways that can increase your ability to make profits. At least a few times a week, you should be visiting your competitors' websites to see what they are doing - especially when your business is similar. Try to see what they might have adjusted or removed and then see if you are noticing similar trends with your sales numbers. If so, you might want to try to make similar adjustments to your website as well.
You might also want to go through the process of being a customer on your competitors' sites to see what a customer sees. Buy something from time to time to see how the process works and what you might be able to do in your checkout process.
Defining the Role of their Website
It used to be that a website was simply an extra avenue of profits for a business - but now it's the main way that businesses interact with their customers. If you look at other websites, you will notice that not only are these sites promoting new products and old products, but they are also giving customers factual articles about relevant topics, plus they are linking to related sites to help encourage the visitors to make the most of their website experience. Websites are also being crafted to help guide the customer the answers to their most pertinent questions, while also helping them make the best decision for their budgets and their needs. A website is the stand in now for you as the seller, so your website needs to be 'interacting' with the customer with articles, news, blogs, etc.
Talking to Related Sites
The World Wide Web is a tangled web of sites, but this is a good thing. The more connected you are to other sites, the more popular your website will be in the search engine listings. Your competition is already seeking out related sites with which to share their links, so why aren't you? Perhaps now is the time to start looking for related sites to see if you can both promote each other - and both profit from the endeavor. Sometimes, it isn't about competition, it's about collaboration and cooperation. And even so, when you work with sites that are only related to you, you aren't actually directly competing with each other.
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