Are Their Sites Easier to Use or Better Designed?

There aren’t any tools that will automatically show you whether a competitors’ site is better than your own. You can, however, use paid panels or usability testing to watch a recruited test group complete tasks on your site and a competitor’s site to see where they get stuck. This kind of subjective feedback can be invaluable for design groups, particularly when you choose a task—such as reserving a room or adding a second passenger—that your analytics tools tell you is a common point of abandonment during a conversion process.

First, identify the places within your website where abandonment is common. Then identify similar processes within your competitors’ sites. Write task descriptions for your test subjects, asking them to accomplish the same tasks on both sites, and observe their reactions.

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