“Benchmarking” assignment
First, note that this assignment–like the video assignment–has been bumped by a week. It is due this coming Monday.
Actually, this is a bit mis-named. Really, what I’m asking you to do is something akin to competitive analysis or market analysis, though nothing that formal. When people talk about doing competitive analysis, they are usually referring to providing the best search engine placement or driving traffic. This is important (depending on the nature of the site), but here I am more interested in where you think you are likely to find the community who will be interested in your site, and what makes you think they will be able to find it and stay there once they do. In other words, while there are tools that will allow you to get a better handle on a potential competitor’s traffic, and the amount they are receiving from advertising, that is far less of interest to me than some clear idea of how your site fits into a larger ecosystem of content.
More specifically, I want you to:
Identify 3-4 sites
These should be sites that are either competitors or that otherwise draw traffic from a group of similar potential users. Describe the sites and link to them. What makes you think they attract the users you are most interested in? How do they do it?
Describe the users
What are the characteristics of the people who use this site? Is there a loyal following, or do people just find it through a web search and visit once? How old are they? Where do they access the site from? What are their interests?
You might think, at least in very preliminary terms, about what search terms you would expect people to use to find your site–what do they find when they use those now?
Organization
How is it organized? How is it structured? What’s the first thing you see when you arrive? Is there a “members section” or a way to log in? Do they have a subscription for a newsletter or another way to draw you back?
Again, this isn’t an SEO effort, but what have they done to make their site more findable–if you can tell? Who links to them and why?
Credibility
What elements of the site convince you (or fail to convince you) that they are a serious enterprise? How do you know this isn’t something some teenager has cooked up in his basement? What are the markers of credibility?
Design
Describe the design and how it makes you feel. What emotions does it evoke? What themes are they drawing on? What sort of associations are they evoking? This can be a fairly lightweight description at this point. (In 502, you are likely to do this in more depth.)
What they are doing well?
What have they done that you hope to emulate, or that you will have to strive to counter? Is there something that seems to be particularly appropriate or attractive?
What could they be doing better?
Every site can be improved. What do you think each of these sites needs to do in order to improve? Is there something in that which will give you a competitive advantage.
A few notes on this. First of all, even if you are not designing a site with a significant commerce element, every site has competition. As we have seen, there is a limited amount of attention available out on the web, and your aim is to claim some of it. It is important for you to understand that there are others who want to attract users’ attention away from your site and toward their own. So, by understanding who you are vying against, you have a better idea of how to pitch your own site so that it will draw traffic and a supportive community.
You may find this guide helpful.
October 19th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
If we did our 502 papers on “the competition,” can we use that research as a large part of this assignment?
October 19th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
My hope is that the 502 work was largely based on the visual aesthetics (layout, design, etc.) of the competition, and less to do with user needs, function, etc. In fact, they may be completely different sorts of things.
Take, for example, someone who (as in the 501dc class) was looking for comps for a site that rates companies. He pulled design comps from (among others) Rate My Professor. But this isn’t in the same market space as the site he was building. Glassdoor is close, and so he included it.
So, in short, I’m assuming that you were looking for design comps for 502. As noted, this is really more of a competitive analysis: where are people going now and how does your site compare?
October 20th, 2009 at 8:26 am
If you are working in a group should we combine our efforts into evaluating our 4 major competitors or should we each evaluate 3 or 4 sites (meaning we would evaluate 9 to 13 sites since I am working in a group of 3).
October 20th, 2009 at 8:40 am
On each of these prep assignments, you should split things up as you like (that is, the assignment is not double or tripled depending on the number of people). But you should present a single, cohesive assignment on one of your blogs, and link to it from the others.
You are not, however, limited to four if you think more are useful.
October 23rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
As far as collaborating with team members goes, I was wondering how much of an individual assignment this is. I understand we’re supposed to write our own analyses, but are we supposed discuss our ideas and the websites etc. with our team members before we complete our assignments?
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
As I noted in class–if you are working as a group, you should do the project as a group. You may choose to write your own analyses and combine them, or however you think will work best for your group’s work patterns.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:37 am
[...] My teammates – The World Through My Eyes and Well Comm – spent several hours Saturday discussing the benchmark assignment for our project. It was a rather interesting meeting as we worked through the tools that Professor Halavais suggested to use in his blog post. [...]