Competitive Analysis In UX

Do you know your unique selling point or your customer’s reason to buy? You should. Knowing how you compare to the competition and stand out is essential for strong positioning. Positioning is essential for every product and service for which the customers have an alternative. It means identifying which valuable characteristics your offerings have compared to the main alternatives. Without positioning, customers have no reason to buy from you. After all, if you don’t stand out positively in any way, why would they buy from you? There are many approaches to positioning, Michael Porter’s Five Forces Framework and Generic Strategies being the most famous of them. While Porter’s approach helps finding out WHAT your positioning could or should be, there is little information as to HOW to do it. This is where April Dunford’s approach to positioning comes in. In her book, “Obviously Awesome” she lays out a practical, five-plus-one-component approach to positioning. The components are: 1. Competitive Alternatives If you didn’t exist, what would customers use? 2. Unique Attributes What features/attributes do you have that alternatives do not? 3. Value What value do the attributes enable for customers? 4. Customers that Care Who cares a lot about that value? 5. Market you Win What context makes the value obvious to your target segments? 6. Relevant Trends (Bonus)  What trends make your product relevant right now? There’s a couple of things I like about Dunford’s approach: 👉 It doesn’t start with thoroughly analyzing the customer’s needs and not even start with the product or market. 👉 It starts with how customers currently fulfill their needs. Whatever the problem, customers have some solution right now (otherwise the problem wouldn’t be a problem they would need a solution for…). 👉 It only moves to the product or service category in component 5. This means that picking what you call the product or service comes after establishing its unique and value-adding attributes. 👉 It helps bringing in current trends at the right place. Not at the start, which would merely lead to chasing hypes, but as a way to enhance the product or service’s relevance for the customer right now. While seemingly simple, this makes it one of the more intelligent approaches to positioning out there. Time to look at your positioning. Do you use all six components, and do you use them in the right order and way? #targetaudience #marketingdevelopment #productdevelopment

⏱️ How To Measure UX (https://lnkd.in/e5ueDtZY), a practical guide on how to use UX benchmarking, SUS, SUPR-Q, UMUX-LITE, CES, UEQ to eliminate bias and gather statistically reliable results — with useful templates and resources. By Roman Videnov. Measuring UX is mostly about showing cause and effect. Of course, management wants to do more of what has already worked — and it typically wants to see ROI > 5%. But the return is more than just increased revenue. It’s also reduced costs, expenses and mitigated risk. And UX is an incredibly affordable yet impactful way to achieve it. Good design decisions are intentional. They aren’t guesses or personal preferences. They are deliberate and measurable. Over the last years, I’ve been setting ups design KPIs in teams to inform and guide design decisions. Here are some examples: 1. Top tasks success > 80% (for critical tasks) 2. Time to complete top tasks < 60s (for critical tasks) 3. Time to first success < 90s (for onboarding) 4. Time to candidates < 120s (nav + filtering in eCommerce) 5. Time to top candidate < 120s (for feature comparison) 6. Time to hit the limit of free tier < 7d (for upgrades) 7. Presets/templates usage > 80% per user (to boost efficiency) 8. Filters used per session > 5 per user (quality of filtering) 9. Feature adoption rate > 80% (usage of a new feature per user) 10. Time to pricing quote < 2 weeks (for B2B systems) 11. Application processing time < 2 weeks (online banking) 12. Default settings correction < 10% (quality of defaults) 13. Search results quality > 80% (for top 100 most popular queries) 14. Service desk inquiries < 35/week (poor design → more inquiries) 15. Form input accuracy ≈ 100% (user input in forms) 16. Time to final price < 45s (for eCommerce) 17. Password recovery frequency < 5% per user (for auth) 18. Fake email frequency < 2% (for email newsletters) 19. First contact resolution < 85% (quality of service desk replies) 20. “Turn-around” score < 1 week (frustrated users → happy users) 21. Environmental impact < 0.3g/page request (sustainability) 22. Frustration score < 5% (AUS + SUS/SUPR-Q + Lighthouse) 23. System Usability Scale > 75 (overall usability) 24. Accessible Usability Scale (AUS) > 75 (accessibility) 25. Core Web Vitals ≈ 100% (performance) Each team works with 3–4 local design KPIs that reflects the impact of their work, and 3–4 global design KPIs mapped against touchpoints in a customer journey. Search team works with search quality score, onboarding team works with time to success, authentication team works with password recovery rate. What gets measured, gets better. And it gives you the data you need to monitor and visualize the impact of your design work. Once it becomes a second nature of your process, not only will you have an easier time for getting buy-in, but also build enough trust to boost UX in a company with low UX maturity. [more in the comments ↓] #ux #metrics

I spent about 2 hours on a sales call yesterday. This tech founder was amazing. The product was amazing. But their buyer kept saying - "Honestly... this feels like your competitor." They chose based on price. This is what broken positioning looks like. This founder had 12 different value props: 💪 Faster 💪 Easier 💪 Better customer support 💪 Integrates with X 💪 Powered by AI 💪 Lower cost Guess what the buyer heard? "We're like everyone else, but... maybe cheaper?" And what kills me worse: his competitor could have said THE SAME THING. Now it's a race to the bottom on price. I'm currently working with a portfolio of 3 more founders on repositioning. We're spending weeks on this. Even though it feels slow. My first founder resisted: "GP, we don't have time for positioning. We need to close deals." I said: "You're closing 7-10% of deals. Tighten positioning, you'll close 30%." She locked positioning to: "40% time savings for finance teams (without training)." Next quarter? Win rate: under 25%. ACV: up by 20%. Not bad. She's now spending less time closing + making more per deal. That's what real positioning does. Why This Matters? Generic positioning = commodity = price wars = low margins. Clear positioning = differentiation = faster sales = better margins. But founders resist because it feels like "limiting upside." No. It's actually unlocking upside. If you're a CMO/Head of Marketing, this is haunting you. Sales reps all pitch differently. Buyers are confused. Win rate sucks. If you're a founder, you feel it too. Sales cycles are long. Buyer confusion = indecision. Simple Breakdown (What Winners Do): 1️⃣ Define ONE buyer persona (not 3) 2️⃣ Identify the specific problem you solve for that persona 3️⃣ Test messaging with 20 prospects (surveys + calls) 4️⃣ Lock positioning across website, sales deck, email, everything 5️⃣ Train entire team on positioning language (reps, customer success, everyone) 3 founders did this. Revenue grew 2-4x. Not because product got better. Because messaging got clearer. Is your current positioning crystal clear, or are you saying "we're the faster, easier, cheaper version"?

You attract better customers when your message has direction. Most companies rush into campaigns without doing the one thing that matters most: Defining their positioning. Before you talk to the market, you must know what you stand for — your promise, your value, and the exact space you occupy. Because positioning is the compass. It guides your messaging, branding, and every touchpoint your customer sees. It answers the fundamental questions: • Why do we exist? • What value do we bring? • Who exactly is this for? Without that clarity, every campaign becomes guesswork. With it, every message carries purpose and lands with the right people. When your positioning and value proposition are sharp, your entire growth engine aligns: Marketing, branding, advertising, even sales conversations. Even leading ABM frameworks make one thing clear: Account-Based Marketing begins with a tight ICP and strong positioning. That’s what maximizes relevance and eliminates wasted spend. So before your next marketing push, pause. Write down your positioning and your ICP on paper. A Simple 5-Step Framework to Strengthen Your Positioning 1. Define Your Core Promise → State the outcome you deliver in one clean sentence. 2. Identify Your ICP → Industry, size, challenges, budgets, buying triggers to go precise. 3. Clarify Your UVP →Why you win over alternatives example : faster, better, safer or smarter. 4. Map Your Differentiators → List the 3 things you do uniquely well. 5. Craft Your Positioning Statement → Who you help, what problem you solve, how you solve it and why you’re the best choice. This one exercise determines whether your marketing connects… or completely misses. Agree?

By now, most of us use AI tools daily. As an experience designer, here is my observation: the shift from task-based to intent-based design is fundamentally changing our discipline. The Interface Paradox Look at any conversational AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini and more. They’re nearly identical. A text input field. A waiting state. An output response. Yet we have clear preferences. We favor one over another. Why? It’s not the visual design. It’s the quality of output. This is the critical insight: in AI-driven experiences, we’re no longer designing for tasks. We’re designing for intent and outcome. The GUI elements between input and output are minimal, almost invisible. What matters is relevance and accuracy. The Responsibility Gap Users rarely acknowledge poor prompts. When results disappoint, they blame the tool. “This AI sucks.” Never “My prompt sucked.” This is human nature, user psychology 101. The user is never wrong, the system always is. Whether deterministic or non-deterministic, we designers must account for this. We build padding around human error and input quality issues because that’s our job. The New Design Imperative Stop obsessing over visual representation. Start obsessing over output quality. In the age of AI, the experience isn’t what users see between input and output. It’s what they get as a result. That’s where differentiation lives. That’s where user experience is won or lost. #ai #design

How to position your offer so that customers will buy it (5 steps framework to nail your positioning) 🎯 Two weeks ago, I attended a workshop by April Dunford at the ARRtist Summit. She shared a powerful story about turning a CRM system from an underdog into a market leader. That caught my attention since we also struggled a lot to find the right positioning for Scripe. So, directly when I came home, I tried out the 5-step framework she used: 1️⃣ 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀: Ask, "If we didn’t exist, what would customers do?" This reveals your real competition. -> For us, it was manual writing, Notion, or ChatGPT. 2️⃣ 𝗗𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀: Identify what you can do that others can’t. Our unique edge? -> Real-time data on LinkedIn performance and the ability to generate high-performing content quickly out of any form of unstructured input. 3️⃣ 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Translate capabilities into customer benefits. ->Scripe acts as your professional ghostwriter, guiding you on what works on LinkedIn, helping you create high-impact content that drives leads and clients. 4️⃣ 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: Focus on those who truly need and value what you offer. Not everyone will be a fit, and that’s okay. -> We target B2B companies needing high-trust, high-ticket sales. 5️⃣ 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝘆: Position your product in a context that makes its value obvious. -> We're the first social content CMS that makes it easy and fast to create, manage and collaborate on personalised content at scale. By leveraging these components, we created a compelling and unique position for Scripe. 😅 Next, we just have to reconsider how we also implement and show this on our website and social channels. What's your go-to strategy when positioning your brand? Any frameworks you’d recommend? #BrandPositioning #MarketingStrategy #B2B #contentmanagement

Employees often miss what #CX is about, so I have an ice-breaker activity I've used at the beginning of #CustomerExperience workshops. Now, I offer this idea to you: At first, this will seem obvious and perhaps unhelpful, but stick with me, please. The activity is to have small groups spend 10 minutes discussing what drove their satisfaction and dissatisfaction with recent air travel. No, the outcomes will not be surprising—but that hides a really important point that will shake up participants' expectations and attitudes. Of course, everyone says the same things in this exercise. "I was satisfied because we arrived on time." "The snacks were better than expected." "The seats were surprisingly comfortable." "The flight attendants were attentive and pleasant." And, on the other side, "I was dissatisfied by delays." "Communications about flight changes were poor." "The seat was cramped and awkward." "The staff was grumpy and indifferent." I'll spend a few minutes collecting the drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Everyone will nod in agreement. And then comes the point of this exercise: Absolutely no one will say that a driver of satisfaction was that the airline flew them six miles in the air and delivered them to their destination safely. In other words, the CORE experience--and the most important priority of any airline--drives virtually nothing in terms of customer relationships. Getting there safely is expected, not a driver of satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. That's the "aha." Whether you're talking to a group of healthcare workers who think their only essential function is reducing mortality and morbidity or a room of telecom execs who feel everything hinges only on uptime, the message is that it's not what we do but how we do it that drives differentiation, satisfaction, and loyalty. We all can become so focused on the delivery of our primary product or service--or achieving the chief KPIs--that we can neglect to understand the experience from the customer's perspective. Forcing people to consider their own experiences and perceptions as customers helps them to perceive that air travelers landing safely (or patients having successful surgeries, or your phone service working) isn't what drives differentiated CX and outstanding loyalty. Don't get me wrong—you can't miss the table stakes. An airline isn't forgiven for lax safety because it has fresh nuts, nor is a telecom company pardoned for unreliable service thanks to rapid call answer times. But delivering table stakes is not what drives the kind of rabid loyalty, sales, and margin enjoyed by brands with differentiated CX. Ensuring people realize this before introducing them to customer-centric concepts and practices opens their minds to new possibilities within their existing job roles.

💎 Overview of 70+ UX Metrics Struggling to choose the right metric for your UX task at hand? MeasuringU maps out 70+ UX metrics across task and study levels — from time-on-task and SUS to eye tracking and NPS (https://lnkd.in/dhw6Sh8u) 1️⃣ Task-Level Metrics Focus: Directly measure how users perform tasks (actions + perceptions during task execution). Use Case: Usability testing, feature validation, UX benchmarking. 🟢 Objective Task-Based Action Metrics These measure user performance outcomes. Effectiveness: Completion, Findability, Errors Efficiency: Time on Task, Clicks / Interactions 🟢 Behavioral & Physiological Metrics These reflect user attention, emotion, and mental load, often measured via sensors or tracking tools. Visual Attention: Eye Tracking Dwell Time, Fixation Count, Time to First Fixation Emotional Reaction: Facial Coding, HR (heart rate), EEG (brainwave activity) Mental Effort: Tapping (as proxy for cognitive load) 2️⃣ Task-Level Attitudinal Metrics Focus: How users feel during or after a task. Use Case: Post-task questionnaires, usability labs, perception analysis. 🟢 Ease / Perception: Single Ease Question (SEQ), After Scenario Questionnaire (ASQ), Ease scale 🟢 Confidence: Self-reported Confidence score 🟢 Workload / Mental Effort: NASA Task Load Index (TLX), Subjective Mental Effort Questionnaire (SMEQ) 3️⃣ Combined Task-Level Metrics Focus: Composite metrics that combine efficiency, effectiveness, and ease. Use Case: Comparative usability studies, dashboards, standardized testing. Efficiency × Effectiveness → Efficiency Ratio Efficiency × Effectiveness × Ease → Single Usability Metric (SUM) Confidence × Effectiveness → Disaster Metric 4️⃣ Study-Level Attitudinal Metrics Focus: User attitudes about a product after use or across time. Use Case: Surveys, product-market fit tests, satisfaction tracking. 🟢 Satisfaction Metrics: Overall Satisfaction, Customer Experience Index (CXi) 🟢 Loyalty Metrics: Net Promoter Score (NPS), Likelihood to Recommend, Product-Market Fit (PMF) 🟢 Awareness / Brand Perception: Brand Awareness, Favorability, Brand Trust 🟢 Usability / Usefulness: System Usability Scale (SUS) 5️⃣ Delight & Trust Metrics Focus: Measure positive emotions and confidence in the interface. Use Case: Branding, premium experiences, trust validation. Top-Two Box (e.g. “Very Satisfied” or “Very Likely to Recommend”) SUPR-Q Trust Modified System Trust Scale (MST) 6️⃣ Visual Branding Metrics Focus: How users perceive visual design and layout. Use Case: UI testing, branding studies. SUPR-Q Appearance Perceived Website Clutter 7️⃣ Special-Purpose Study-Level Metrics Focus: Custom metrics tailored to specific domains or platforms. Use Case: Gaming, mobile apps, customer support. 🟢 Customer Service: Customer Effort Score (CES), SERVQUAL (Service Quality) 🟢 Gaming: GUESS (Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale) #UX #design #productdesign #measure

Working with over 350 B2B startup founders on their positioning has made one thing clear: Founders have no idea what market they’re actually competing in. This lack of clarity is driven by an ignorance of just how fragmented and complex B2B markets can be (and usually are). Most founders have drastically oversimplified their definition of their target market, adjacent markets, and competitive alternatives. We’ll hear things like: “We’re in the revenue operations market and compete against Clari and Salesforce” or “We’re in the analytics market and really only compete with Tableau” These descriptions are lazy — but more importantly, they are NOT helpful when it comes to making critical positioning decisions. ——— So we’ve decided to start visualizing markets for the founders we work with… By creating use case-based market maps. 🗺️ (see image for a snippet of a map we created for a client) It visualizes markets not as rigid categories but as functional activities — It also shows how tools like Siteimprove, Google Analytics, Hotjar | by Contentsquare, and Matomo position with overlapping and distinct needs. It's important to note that each square represents a market segment that could be positioned for. This client is trying to figure out what part of the market their website feedback and analytics tools fit into. As you might guess based on the map, there are several different markets they could position themselves in — Some broad. Some specific. We'll use this map to flesh out each strategy, and help us decide how to position their product. ——— When you can visualize the complexities and layers of market segments by activities, the easier it is to: → Identify strategies to penetrate parts of the market. → Translate your positioning into differentiated messaging. #positioning #startups #GoToMarket

If your competitor can sell it, you're not differentiated. If customers don’t care, you're not creating demand. Real positioning passes both tests. I feel like most positioning advice is generic "tell customers what you can do". But here’s the truth: the market doesn’t care what you can do, only what your competitors can’t. The market doesn't care about the one coffee shop, sitting next to a couple others, when they all sell largely the same cup of coffee at around the same price. If your positioning sounds like the industry benchmark with new adjectives, you’ve already lost the sale. On Monday I posted about how drinking your own kool-aid is bad for business because you build a brand around what you want to sell, now what customers want to buy. I got several messages asking how to pressure test what you sell so here is how I would start. SELL IT AS YOUR COMPETITOR Take your pitch and put their logo on it. Could they sell it just as easily? If yes, you're not differentiated enough and customers will see you as interchangeable. Find ways to distance yourself from the industry benchmark asap. FIND THE UNCLAIMED GAP Ask yourself: What would make my offer instantly impossible for the rest of my industry to claim? That gap is where differentiation creates demand. MEASURE BY REJECTION If your positioning doesn’t force competitors to abandon ground (because they can’t match it), then it’s not strong enough. Real positioning should trap other brands on the stance that only you can achieve, not just attract customers on what you all offer. For me, the ultimate test of a brand is when the market proves they will pay for it, AND your competitors can’t use it. When you learn how to deny the relevance of the rest of your industry through your positioning and messaging, you remove their influence and become the only logical solution. Differentiation creates distance. Distance creates demand.