Competitor Analysis

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Competitive landscapes make it critical to understand how similar products present themselves to users. For product designers and managers, the challenge is identifying which design choices set competitors apart and how those choices affect user perception.

Competitor Analysis Testing uses a design stack of UX metrics: comprehension, sentiment, engagement, loyalty, and success to compare multiple products side by side. This approach replaces assumptions with measurable insights.

With these findings, designers and managers can identify strengths, spot weaknesses, and benchmark performance against the market. For example, testing four CRM competitor landing pages (Zendesk, Hubspot, Zoho, and Salesforce) revealed strong engagement across all but highlighted weaker loyalty and sentiment for some, showing where competitors struggle to build deeper connections with users.

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Define Goals for Your Competitor Analysis Test

A competitor analysis should balance user needs like clarity, trust, and efficiency with business goals such as positioning, differentiation, and innovation. Measuring how competitor insights are gathered and used ensures analysis translates into strategy.

Audience

To define user needs, you first need to establish who your audience is. In the case of our competitor comparison example, we targeted marketers, sales professionals, and others who might be interested in their CRM solutions.

User Needs

As a team conducting competitor analysis, the five most important needs would be:

1. Analysis should provide clarity and actionable takeaways, not just raw data. (Analysis should be Insightful)

2. Sources and findings should be trustworthy, accurate, and clearly validated. (Source should be Credible)

3. Insights should highlight opportunities and risks that matter to business and product strategy. (Insights should be Valuable)

4. Findings should link to user needs, market shifts, and internal priorities. (Findings should feel Connected)

5. The process should deliver results quickly without wasting time or resources. (Process should feel Efficient)

These five ensure competitor analysis feels reliable, actionable, and relevant, supporting smarter decisions across teams.

Business Goals

Here are the five most important business goals for competitor analysis:

1. Differentiate Positioning – Identify where the brand can stand out in messaging, features, or pricing.

2. Benchmark Performance – Compare products, experiences, and strategies against industry peers.

3. Identify Opportunities – Spot gaps in the market that can be turned into competitive advantages.

4. Mitigate Threats – Anticipate competitor moves and minimize risks to customer retention and growth.

5. Guide Strategic Investments – Use insights to prioritize roadmaps, marketing strategies, and product innovation.

These goals help the business strengthen positioning, reduce risk, and uncover growth opportunities through effective competitor analysis.

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Choose Metrics to Test Your Competitors

For the CRM competitor analysis, a design stack of five UX metrics was chosen to measure how effectively each landing page communicates value and drives action. This stack — Comprehension, Sentiment, Engagement, Loyalty, and Success — was established by mapping user needs directly to measurable outcomes:

• Insightful → Comprehension

  Visitors should clearly understand what each CRM offers and how it differs. Comprehension measures whether the messaging explains the product’s value in a way that makes sense.

• Credible → Sentiment

  A competitor’s page should inspire trust and leave a positive impression. Sentiment reflects the emotions users associate with the experience, from trustworthy and confident to confusing or skeptical.

• Valuable → Engagement

  Pages should motivate interaction with CTAs, navigation, or highlighted features. Engagement measures whether users are drawn to explore the most important actions.

• Connected → Loyalty

  Strong brands foster connection, encouraging users to return or recommend them. Loyalty captures whether users feel aligned enough with the competitor brand to advocate for it.

• Efficient → Success
  Visitors should be able to complete key actions quickly, like scheduling a demo or starting a trial. Success evaluates whether users can achieve these goals without unnecessary steps or confusion.

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Establish Hunches to Direct Your Testing

Competitor analysis helps reveal how well different CRM providers communicate value, credibility, and differentiation through their landing pages. By starting with hunches about each competitor page’s weak spots or opportunities, we can frame questions that surface user reactions and clarify which approaches stand out.

Example: CRM Competitor Landing Pages

<table xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" style="min-width: 75px;"><colgroup><col style="min-width: 25px;"><col style="min-width: 25px;"><col style="min-width: 25px;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><th colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Hunch</p></th><th colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Question</p></th><th colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>UX Metric</p></th></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Salesforce emphasizes product breadth and credibility, but its complex navigation and demo scheduling flow may overwhelm new visitors.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>“How easy or difficult would it be to find and schedule a demo with Salesforce?”</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/success">Success</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Zoho’s landing page has weaker first impressions, with visuals and messaging that may feel outdated or less premium compared to peers.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>“What was your first impression of Zoho’s landing page — did it feel modern and trustworthy?”</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/attitudinal-metrics/sentiment">Sentiment</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Zendesk’s page positions its brand as approachable and service-focused, but its design may lean too heavily on general brand values rather than concrete features or differentiation.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>“What does Zendesk’s landing page make you think they do better than other CRM providers?”</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/comprehension">Comprehension</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Hubspot’s messaging feels friendly and engaging, but the volume of information on the page may cause cognitive overload, leading visitors to miss the key conversion points.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>“What would you click on first when visiting Hubspot’s landing page, and why?”</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/behavioral-metrics/engagement">Engagement</a></p></td></tr><tr><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>Across competitors, loyalty and advocacy may be weak — even if the products seem credible, the landing pages alone may not inspire visitors to recommend the brand.</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>“Based on what you saw, how likely would you be to recommend this company to someone considering a CRM tool?”</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://glare.helio.app/define/ux-metrics/attitudinal-metrics/loyalty">Loyalty</a></p></td></tr></tbody></table>

These hunches explore how credibility, clarity, differentiation, and usability shape user perceptions across competitors, and how those perceptions can be validated or challenged through testing.

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Turn Hunches into Test Questions

Turning these metrics into participant questions transforms design assumptions into measurable signals. Each metric uses a specific question type paired with a clear example from the CRM competitor landing pages:

• Comprehension **(5-pt Likert scale)**

  Question type: Agreement scale.
Example: “I understand what this CRM platform offers based on this landing page.” (Strongly Disagree → Strongly Agree)

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• Engagement **(First-click test)**
Question type: Click test.

  Example: “Where would you click first if you wanted to learn more about pricing?”

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• Sentiment **(Multiple-choice impressions)**

  Question type: Impression checklist.

  Example: “Which of the following words best describe your impression of this landing page?”
 (Positive: Trustworthy, Clear, Professional, Helpful. Negative: Confusing, Overwhelming, Generic, Distracting)

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• Loyalty **(Likelihood to promote)**
Question type: 10-point likelihood scale.

  Example: “How likely are you to recommend this CRM platform to a colleague or friend?” (0 = Not at all likely, 10 = Extremely likely)

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• Success **(Click test directive)**
Question type: Task-based click test.

  Example: “Where would you click to start a free trial or request a demo?”

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Calculate UX Metric Scores from User Feedback

We tested these competitor CRM landing pages with 100 marketing and sales professionals each, and their responses were scored across five UX metrics using a standardized 0–100% scale:

• Very Good = 90% and above

• Good = 70%–89%

• Average = 50%–69%

• Poor = 30%–49%

• Very Poor = below 30%

Once the individual UX metric scores are calculated, the average of those scores are used to determine the overall score for the user experience.

Competitor Results:

• **Zoho Landing Page — 40% (Poor)**
 Clear subscription messaging, but poor engagement, success, and loyalty dragged performance down.

• **HubSpot Landing Page — 48% (Poor)**
 Strong comprehension, but demo scheduling failures and weak engagement kept results low.

• **Zendesk Landing Page — 46% (Poor)**
 Users understood the offer, but poor first-click engagement and task success undermined trust.

• **Salesforce Landing Page — 60% (Average)**
 Best of the group, with solid comprehension and engagement, though task success remains weak.

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Takeaway: Across all competitors, Comprehension is a relative strength, but Success and Engagement are consistent weaknesses. Salesforce leads with an Average 60%, while peers fall into the Poor range (40–48%), showing an industry-wide challenge in turning clear messaging into action.

Click here to check out the raw survey data and UX metric scores for Salesforce's landing page.

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Draw Signals from Your Design Stack

Here’s how signals were surfaced from our competitor comparison of four CRM landing pages by following these five steps:

1. Focus on poorly scoring metrics

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   Across the four CRM landing pages, Engagement and Success consistently underperform, with multiple “Very Poor” scores (e.g., Zoho 25% engagement, 27% success; Zendesk 18% success; Hubspot 8% success). These metrics highlight a widespread issue: users struggle to act on critical CTAs across competitor sites. While Comprehension scores (72–81%) are generally strong, sentiment and loyalty remain low, showing that understanding the offers doesn’t translate into positive impressions or advocacy.

2. Identify patterns across metrics

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   The pattern is clear: competitors successfully communicate their offers but fail to drive action or confidence. High comprehension paired with weak engagement suggests that landing pages may be too complex, overwhelming, or poorly optimized around CTAs. Sentiment scores (as low as 36% for Zoho) and loyalty (as low as 39%) indicate limited emotional resonance, undermining long-term brand connection.

3. Determine if user needs are being met

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   • Insightful: Not fully met — findings show what offers are, but don’t provide clarity on why users should act.

   • Credible: Partially met — offers are understood, but low sentiment shows skepticism remains.

   • Valuable: Not met — difficulty engaging with CTAs signals that offers don’t feel compelling or worth pursuing.

   • Connected: Not met — loyalty results show competitors fail to link experiences to user priorities or trust.

   • Efficient: Not met — poor success rates suggest friction and wasted effort for users trying to take action.

4. Compare outcomes to your business goals

   • Differentiate Positioning: Opportunity — Salesforce’s relatively higher engagement (60%) and comprehension (77%) stand out, though still with room to improve.

   • Benchmark Performance: Competitors collectively underperform in engagement and loyalty, offering a benchmark for where differentiation can occur.

   • Identify Opportunities: Clear — improving CTA clarity and trust-building could provide a competitive advantage.

   • Mitigate Threats: Supported — insights reveal weaknesses across competitors, showing potential to out-execute on conversions.

   • Guide Strategic Investments: High value — metrics highlight where to invest: CTA optimization, trust signals, and emotional engagement.

5. Surface signals & establish a direction

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   Signals derived from the data:**

   • Competitors communicate offers clearly but fail to convert — comprehension is strong, but poor engagement and success scores reveal friction.

   • Emotional resonance is low across the board — weak sentiment and loyalty scores show users don’t feel connected to these brands.

   • CTAs are the primary weakness — lack of clarity, visibility, or persuasiveness is preventing action across all tested pages.

Direction based on business context:

To support goals of differentiating positioning and identifying opportunities, businesses should focus on:

• Simplifying and highlighting CTAs with clearer messaging and stronger visual hierarchy.

• Building emotional resonance with trust signals (testimonials, credibility markers, simplified value statements).

• Leveraging competitor weaknesses as positioning strengths, ensuring landing pages communicate value in both rational and emotional terms.

Based on the signals and design direction, we created an updated version of the design with the expected UX metric improvement:

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The signal is clear: CRM competitors explain their offers well but fail to inspire trust, action, or loyalty. Focusing on CTA clarity, emotional resonance, and brand trust creates a clear opportunity to differentiate and outperform.

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