Day 1: Competitor & Market Research
Stage: Pre-build · Method: Qualitative · Who: Founders, early teams
What It Is
Before writing a single line of code or designing a single screen, the most valuable thing you can do is understand the competitive landscape. Competitor and market research isn’t about copying what others have built — it’s about finding the gaps they’ve left open and the mistakes you can avoid.
Why It Matters
Teams that skip competitor research tend to build solutions that already exist, price themselves incorrectly, position against the wrong alternatives, or underestimate the switching cost for their target user. The goal of this research is a clear-eyed answer to: is there a real gap in this market, or is it already crowded?
When to Use It
- You’re validating a new product idea before building
- You’re entering a new market or category
- You’re repositioning an existing product
- You’ve lost deals to a competitor you don’t fully understand
When to Skip It
- You already have a live product with paying users — talk to them first
- You’re in a very niche B2B space where public competitor data is thin
- You’re using it to delay building (analysis paralysis is real)
The Process (11 Steps)
Step 1: Define Objectives & Research Questions
Before looking at competitors, get clear on why you’re doing this. Write one sentence that this research needs to answer. Define the decision it will inform, and set a fixed timebox — competitor research expands to fill the time available.
Step 2: Identify & Shortlist Competitors
Look for direct competitors, indirect competitors or workarounds, and one aspirational example from outside your category. Keep your shortlist to 4–6. More than that and your analysis becomes too thin to be useful. Don’t forget indirect competitors — spreadsheets, manual processes, and pen-and-paper are all competitors.
Step 3: Define Your Evaluation Criteria
Decide upfront what you’ll compare. Choosing criteria after looking at competitors means you’ll unconsciously weight things your favourite competitor does well. Recommended criteria: onboarding speed, usability, features and offer, pricing and positioning, trust signals.
Step 4: Feature Comparison
For each competitor, note what they offer, what they’re missing, and how your idea compares. One of the fastest ways to spot a genuine gap.
Step 5: Customer Journey Mapping
Map the steps a customer goes through with each competitor. Comparing journeys side by side often reveals friction a simpler approach could win on. Map: awareness, sign-up, first value, ongoing use, and support.
Step 6: Experience It Yourself
Sign up as a real customer would. Note your own reactions as you go. Time how long sign-up takes. Note the first moment of confusion. Be honest about what would make you leave.
Step 7: Review Mining & Social Listening
Read reviews on Trustpilot, G2, the App Store, Reddit, and Twitter. Real complaints and praise reveal gaps the competitor’s own website hides. The recurring complaints are your opportunities.
Step 8: SWOT Analysis
Pull together what you’ve learned. Strengths (what your approach does better), Weaknesses (where you’d be behind on day one), Opportunities (gaps no one has addressed well), Threats (what a competitor could copy to neutralise you).
Step 9: Synthesis — Gaps & Opportunities
What could you do that existing options don’t, or don’t do well? A good opportunity has three properties: real users want it, competitors don’t offer it well, and you can build it without their constraints.
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Step 10: Write Up Findings & Recommendation
Summarise what you learned in a short, honest write-up. Include a one-paragraph summary of the competitive landscape, the top 3 things that changed your thinking, what this means for your direction, and what you’d do differently starting tomorrow.
Step 11: Monitor & Repeat
Set a cadence: monthly during the build phase, weekly during launch, ad hoc when a competitor makes a significant move.
Tips for Success
- Do the research yourself first — delegate later, not now
- Be brutal about what you find. If a competitor is clearly better in a key area, write it down
- Talk to users who’ve tried competitors before drawing conclusions from review data alone
- The goal is not to copy competitors — it’s to find what they’ve all missed
- Write your synthesis before you’ve made any decisions, not after
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Only looking at direct competitors and missing the workarounds users actually use
- Choosing evaluation criteria after seeing the results
- Using competitor research to delay building
- Treating competitor features as your roadmap
- Not dating your research — the competitive landscape changes fast
7 Types of UX Research in 7 Days: A Complete Guide from Idea to Post-Launch
Most teams do one type of research — usually usability testing, usually too late. They watch a few users click through a prototype, fix the obvious problems, and ship. Then they wonder why the product didn’t land the way they expected.
The reality is that different stages of building require fundamentally different kinds of research. The questions you need to answer when you’re validating an idea are completely different from the questions you need when you’re testing a prototype — and neither of those is the same as understanding whether users can actually navigate what you’ve built.
Over the next 7 days, I’m covering one research method per day — from the very first question (“is there even a market for this?”) all the way through to understanding how users behave with your product over time. Together, they cover every stage of building a product:
Day 1 — Competitor & Market Research: For when you have an idea but haven’t built anything yet. Understand the landscape, find the gaps, avoid the mistakes others have already made.
Day 2 — Generative / Discovery Research: For when you have a direction but need to understand your users before deciding what to build. Talk to real people before committing to a solution.
Day 3 — Survey & Quantitative Research: For when you need numbers, not just stories. Scale your qualitative insights and get evidence that holds up in a stakeholder meeting.
Day 4 — Diary Study: For when the experience you’re designing unfolds over days or weeks, not minutes. Capture how behaviour actually changes over time.
Day 5 — Card Sorting & Information Architecture: For when users can’t find what they’re looking for. Build navigation that matches how users think, not how your team thinks.
Day 6 — Concept Testing: For when you have an idea or early design and need to know if it’s worth building before you commit the resources to build it.
Day 7 — Usability Testing: For when you have something to test. Find out if real users can actually use what you’ve built — before it’s too late to fix it.
Whether you’re a founder doing research for the first time, a product manager who needs to make the case for investing in research, or a designer who wants a more structured approach to understanding users — this series is for you.
