Know Your Competition

Make it a priority to have benchmarks and a clear understanding of competitor websites: the pros & the cons

Problem

  • LGR wanted to create a brand new website to represent their new CRISPR collaboration.
  • They wanted to make sure their design aesthetic matched the current times.
  • They also wanted to get an idea of what are the important pages and sections a website needs

Solution

  • We pulled together full page screenshots of all the competitor websites.
  • Additionally we pulled aesthetically pleasing websites from all industries.
  • We notated what we liked and didn't like about each site and slowly developed an idea of what we wanted.

Annotated Benchmarking

Annotating benchmarks is all about first impressions when it comes to aesthetics, finding great content hierarchies, and understanding the industry you are in. While reviewing full page screenshots of home pages and any other standout pages, notate what you like and dislike around the information architecture, pages presented, graphics, fonts, general appeal, organization, importance and more. Below is an example of a annotated benchmarking session I conducted with the LGR team in the early days of defining their brand direction! (Purple comments were prepped in advance by me, and the green comments added during a team meeting.)

Reviewing Competitor and Complementary Businesses

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