Competitive Assessments

I have recently been involved in improving many of the processes and deliverables for the digital practice at GyroHSR. Across our industry a tool that is always daunting and hard to define is the competitive assessment of web properties, used to find opportunities for competitive advantage.

Two critical things I have learned looking at our processes:

1. The most important aspect is defining your criteria upfront and sticking to them. You can't analyze everything, so define what you are looking at and forget what you aren't.

2. An assessment should be scientific and objective. Comparisons should "show" not "tell". Leave the recommendations and "opinion" for a "Recommendations and Observations" sheet in the back of the deck.