With over 20 years of experience, we transform your digital presence. We specialize in website and E-Shop development, SEO and Digital Marketing, ERP software and smart automation that take your business to the next level.
Address:
154 Egnatia Street, Thessaloniki 546 36
Phone:
+30 231 231 4095
E-mail:
hello@twodots.gr
Ready for the next step?;
Competitive analysis is essential for any e-commerce, as it affects pricing, SEO, campaigns, and user experience. Semrush offers a methodology for understanding competitors and leveraging the data into strategic decisions. Important elements include product tracking, pricing, marketing, and UX. This process is not just observation, but a decision-making tool that can increase revenue and enhance market differentiation.
Competitive analysis is the systematic process by which a company studies its direct and indirect competitors, documents their commercial proposition, evaluates their digital footprint and identifies underutilized opportunities in the market. For an e-commerce owner, it's not a one-off theoretical exercise in the business plan. It's a development function. It affects pricing, SEO, Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns, experience checkout, the category structure, bundles, content, and even the way the brand responds to customer reviews and objections.
Semrush's article on competitive analysis gives a practical basis: first you identify who your competitors really are, then you study products, sales, marketing and content, and finally you turn the findings into strategic decisions. For TWO DOTS, the value lies precisely in this last stage: not just “seeing what others are doing”, but understanding what this means for conversion rate, customer acquisition cost, organic visibility and differentiation of an e-shop.
The need becomes even more acute when we see how easily a potential customer is lost in e-commerce. According to the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate, based on a pooled analysis of dozens of studies, stands at 70.19%. Simply put, for every 100 users who add a product to the cart, about 70 do not complete the purchase. This alone shows why competitive analysis should include UX, checkout, shipping, payment methods and trust, not just keywords or social media posts.
As shown in the graph below, the difference between users who complete a purchase and those who abandon the cart is huge and is a critical benchmarking area for any e-commerce brand.
Semrush approaches competitive analysis as a multi-level process. It's not enough to type your main keyword into Google and note the first results. You need to separate competitors into categories: direct competitors that sell similar products to the same audience, indirect competitors that fill the same need differently, SEO competitors that occupy organic positions for keywords you're interested in, and paid competitors that claim the same attention through ads.
For example, a Greek e-shop with premium cosmetics can directly compete with other beauty stores, indirectly with pharmacies with dermocosmetics, organic blogs ranked for “best moisturizer”, and promotional marketplaces displayed with Google Shopping. If it is limited to analyzing only competitors that have the same business model, it will miss important insights about search intent and the actual customer purchase path.
A good competition investigation looks at four key areas. First, the product: variety, quality, availability, bundles, guarantees and after-sales. Second, the commercial proposition: prices, discounts, free shipping, loyalty, instalment payments and refunds. Third, marketing: organic search, paid search, social media, email flows, influencer partnerships and content. Fourth, the experience: site speed, mobile UX, checkout, trust signals, reviews and customer support. When these are captured in a single dashboard, competitive analysis turns from an “observation” to a decision-making tool.
Especially in SEO competitor analysis, the value lies in the gaps. Which keywords bring traffic to competitors but are not covered by your own site? Which informational articles lead to commercial categories? Which backlinks boost their credibility? Which landing pages have a better match with search intent? Content gap analysis is not just a list of blog topics. It's a way to find out what the market is asking before they buy, what objections need to be solved and which categories need better content architecture.
Step 1: Setting a goal. Before you open any tool, decide what you want to learn. It's one thing to do a market analysis to enter a new category, it's another to reduce CPA, another to improve SEO visibility, and another to redesign pricing policy. A clear goal reduces noise and protects you from collecting data that doesn't lead to action.
Step 2: Mapping of competitors. Create a list of 10-20 brands and separate them into direct, indirect, SEO, paid and marketplace competitors. For each brand, note domain, key categories, market position, estimated audience, main value proposition and channels they seem to use heavily. At this stage, tools such as Semrush Market Explorer, Traffic Analytics, Organic Research, Keyword Gap and Backlink Gap can help with quick data collection, but human judgment is still essential.
Step 3: Benchmark products and pricing. Select 20-30 representative products or SKU clusters and record prices, discounts, shipping thresholds, availability, gifts, subscriptions, bundles and return policies. Competitor pricing shouldn't automatically lead to a price war. Instead, it should show you where you can differentiate: better service, faster shipping, specialized content, premium packaging or higher loyalty.
Step 4: SEO and content analysis. Identify the keywords in which competitors have a strong presence, the pages that bring organic traffic, the structure of category pages, blog topics, internal links and the schema markup they use. This is where benchmarking needs to be combined with a marketing strategy. If a competitor has 50 articles on buying guides, it doesn't mean you should just write 60. It means you need to figure out which articles link to revenue, which ones support high margin products and which ones cover pre-purchase questions.
Step 5: Evaluate paid media and creative. Observe Google Ads, Shopping ads, Meta ads, landing pages, offers, hooks and seasonal campaigns. Note which messages are repeated, because repetition often indicates that something is working. If you see a competitor consistently using “free shipping over £39” or “delivery in 24 hours”, that's positioning evidence. You don't mechanically copy it, but evaluate it against your own operational capability.
Step 6: UX and conversion audit. Do mystery shopping. Go from mobile, search for product, filter, add to cart, proceed to checkout and record friction points. How many steps are required? Are shipping costs showing up early? Is there guest checkout? Are there several payment methods? Are the returns clear? Market research in e-commerce is not complete until it goes through the actual buying experience.
Step 7: SWOT analysis and action plan. Summarize the findings in four columns: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Then turn them into a backlog of actions with priority, owner, cost, expected impact and timeline. Competitive analysis is only valuable when it results in decisions such as “improve category pages X”, “add guest checkout”, “create a buying guide for keyword Y”, “redesign shipping thresholds” or “test a new offer for high-margin products”.
The biggest mistake many companies make is that they treat competition analysis as a reference rather than a decision system. A report stays in slides. A decision system changes priorities. For this to happen, each finding must be linked to business impact. If competitors have clearer return policies, the question is not “should we write better copy too?” but “how much does uncertainty affect conversion rate?” If they have higher organic visibility in purchase leads, the question is not “should we put more keywords in?” but “which stages of the funnel are we not covering?”.
Baymard data helps us understand how specific friction points translate into lost sales. The most common reasons for checkout abandonment, such as high additional costs, mandatory account creation and lack of trust, are exactly the points that need to be put into competitive benchmarking. If the competitor clearly displays shipping before checkout and you reveal it in the last step, you simply don't have a UX problem. You have a commercial disadvantage.
The graph below shows the main reasons for basket abandonment according to the Baymard Institute, ranked from most to least important. These figures can be used as a handy checklist for comparison with competitors.
Based on this data, a practical way of utilization is to create a “friction vs competitor” table. In the rows you put the friction points: shipping, guest checkout, payment methods, delivery time, returns policy, trust badges, reviews, loading speed and mobile usability. In the columns you put your e-shop and 5 key competitors. Each cell is rated from 1 to 5. In the end you don't just have a sense of the market, but a clear priority for optimization.
The same applies to content. If the analysis shows that competitors have a strong presence in informational searches, the answer is not just blog production. You need intent mapping: informational, commercial investigation, transactional and post-purchase. An e-shop selling fitness equipment, for example, may need articles such as “how to choose a fitness treadmill”, category copy comparing product types, product pages with technical details, FAQs for warranty and installation videos. The digital marketing strategy should tie all of these together into a funnel, not see them as individual assets.
A serious competitive intelligence process needs KPIs. For SEO, track share of voice, keyword rankings, organic traffic by category, number of ranking URLs, backlinks, referring domains and content gaps closed each month. For paid media, track impression share, competitor overlap, CPC trends, creative themes and offer frequency. For e-commerce performance, track conversion rate, add-to-cart rate, checkout completion rate, average order value, repeat purchase rate and revenue by channel. For brand positioning, track reviews, NPS, social sentiment and frequency of reporting key selling points.
The repetition rate depends on the market. In categories with strong seasonality, such as fashion, gifts, tourism or beauty, a light competitive scan every month and a deeper audit every quarter is reasonable. In more stable B2B or niche categories, a full audit every six months may be sufficient, as long as there are alerts for significant changes, such as new landing pages, a sharp increase in ads, price changes or new player entry.
But there are also mistakes that should be avoided. The first is blind copying. If a competitor has lower prices, it doesn't mean that the right answer is to reduce your margin. It may mean that you need to increase your value. The second is overanalysis without application. If the team spends weeks on dashboards but doesn't change anything on the site, benchmarking doesn't work. The third is focusing only on the biggest players. Often, smaller brands move faster, experiment with better offers and discover gaps that the big guys ignore.
The fourth mistake is the misunderstanding of market share. A brand may have higher awareness but lower effectiveness in a particular niche. That's why competitive analysis should be done by category, by keyword cluster, by channel and by funnel stage. The fifth mistake is ignoring the true voice of the customer. Competitor reviews are a gold mine. There you will find complaints about delivery, questions about sizes, repeated objections about price, positive comments about packaging and needs not being met. These insights can feed product pages, ads, FAQs and email sequences.
Competition analysis is not espionage, nor is it a copying exercise. It is disciplined observation of the market in order to make better decisions. For an e-commerce brand, it can reveal why users aren't buying, which keywords are worth investing in, which offers make sense, where there's room for differentiation, and which UX changes can directly increase revenue. Semrush provides the framework and tools to organize the process. The real value, however, comes when the data is linked to a commercial strategy.
If you want to get a practical start, don't try to analyse the whole market in one day. Pick one product category, five key competitors and three questions: why they rank better organically, why they look more compelling commercially and where your e-shop is creating friction in the market. Through this small but targeted process, actions will emerge that can be implemented immediately. Therein lies the power of competitive analysis: not in gathering information, but in turning it into an advantage.
Semrush: How to Do a Competitive Analysis
Baymard Institute: 49 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics
Baymard Institute: Reasons for Abandonment During Checkout
Semrush Knowledge Base: Organic Research
Semrush Knowledge Base: Keyword Gap
Competitive analysis is the process of studying direct and indirect competitors, evaluating their commercial proposition, digital footprint and identifying market opportunities.
Competition analysis helps to identify keywords that bring traffic to competitors and are not covered by your own site, as well as to understand search intent to improve organic visibility.
Competitive analysis reveals critical friction points, such as UX and the checkout process, that can impact conversion rate, allowing for immediate improvement of the user experience.
The key steps include target definition, competitor mapping, product and pricing benchmarking, SEO and content analysis, and creating an action plan based on the findings.
Competitive analysis provides insights into market gaps, helping to improve marketing campaigns, develop content and adjust marketing strategy for better performance.
Competitive analysis helps to improve marketing strategy and advertising channels, thus reducing the cost of customer acquisition through targeted and efficient actions.
With competitive analysis, SEO strategy and data-driven optimizations, we build organic visibility and better conversions for your e-shop.
