How a Shopify Competitor Analysis Can Unlock Massive Growth in Just 2 Months

Hussam AlMukhtar

Feb 20, 2025

Whether it's Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) fast approaching or just a regular week, many brand owners feel more pressure than ever to hustle harder for sales. But where will your time and effort make the most impact?

Competitor analysis is a powerful resource for surfacing actionable insights, catching up, and even leading the pack. It’s a measure you can take all by yourself, choosing to get as quick ‘n’ dirty or as deep and detailed as your schedule and budget allow. 

You’ll come away from this guide with a valuable understanding of all things competitive analysis and an actionable, step-by-step strategy for pulling one off to boost your Shopify sales for BFCM — and beyond.

What is a competitor analysis?

Conducting a competitor analysis is the process of evaluating your Shopify company’s contenders to gain insights into their key differentiators, strengths, and weaknesses — and comparing that against your own brand.

A competitive analysis document reviews each competitor’s market position, sales and promotion strategy, growth tactics, and other crucial business elements. 

The purpose is to help you understand what they’re doing well and what works in the current environment — allowing you to make the best business decisions and uncover opportunities to thrive.

What a competitor analysis isn’t

Quickly, we also want to warn against taking your competitive analysis in the wrong direction. It’s critical that you don’t go through the steps of this process only to copy successful competitors. Consumers can see right through cheap imitations. 

It’s also not an opportunity to solely find and undercut pricing across your industry. After all, does anyone really win in a race to the bottom? 

Finally, a competitive analysis shouldn’t be treated as a one-time, one-off task. It should be a core element of your marketing strategy and revisited regularly to ensure you’re capturing all the “players” in the game and that you’re hip to all their products and tactics. 

How analysis can change the game for your e-commerce brand

Analyzing your competitors doesn’t only provide a comprehensive view of the market and your position within it. It also removes the guesswork in building your Shopify brand, saving precious time by equipping you with solid data to guide your business and marketing strategy.

Here are the distinct reasons we recommend every Shopify business owner examine their main competitors. 

Identify what sets you apart

Diving deep into other brands’ offerings, values, and practices provides a unique chance to reflect on your own business and pinpoint what makes you unique.

Not seeing enough factors that set you apart? Let your competitors inspire new ideas for distinguishing yourself in a crowded market.

Gather insight from competitor strengths

What have your competitors done well over time to fuel their growth? Studying your industry leaders will reveal some key strategies they've used to rise to the top. 

Comparing these to your own approach can expose gaps in your strategy and help you accelerate your growth and increase your sales.

Discover optimal pricing strategies

When you're unsure about pricing (and which business owner isn’t from time to time?), a competitor analysis can provide clarity. It allows you to evaluate whether competitors offer more attractive pricing structures and amounts, helping you organize and optimize your own approach.

Spot market trends to address traffic declines

Watching site traffic — or sales — take a dip is a scary thing. Analyzing competitors can help you determine why that’s happening by identifying market shifts and revealing opportunities to reposition yourself effectively. 

Inform your grow vs. sell decision 

To scale or not to scale? That's a very common question for Shopify brand owners. 

For many, there comes a point where you have to make a pivotal decision. Will you continue to pour in blood, sweat, and dollars to grow your brand — or is it time to sell your labor of love and reinvest in your next big idea. Or, gasp, take a break for a while? 

A competitive analysis provides objective clarity around the success and potential future of your brand, helping you make that important call to sell vs. grow. 

Enhance customer retention

If you’ve noticed customers moving to do business with your competitors instead, an analysis can help you understand why.

By studying your audience's preferences and experiences when it comes to rival brands, you gain valuable insights into what customers want, what they dislike, the user flow they expect, and so on.

Drawbacks of competitive analysis 

As much as we really do recommend the process of conducting a competitive analysis, we also want to make sure you're aware of the core challenges heading into it.  

Confirmation bias is a beast

Confirmation bias is the pretty much innate human reflex to interpret data based on our pre-existing beliefs. Unfortunately, this often leads to false conclusions when unrealized and unchecked.

To overcome it as much as possible, focus on what your observations and data tell you — not your gut. Involving multiple people in the analysis phase is another way to average out the impact of biases. Finally, ask questions and seek contradictions related to the conclusions you’ve drawn. This will help you identify areas where you’ve made an assumption that isn’t data-based.  

It takes (lots of) time

This may be hard to hear as you’re prepping for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or both! But, conducting a detailed analysis takes plenty of effort, especially the first time around.

At the same time, a competitive analysis is still just a snapshot in time. Regular updates are crucial to ensure you're always working with the latest insights, and prepared to make informed adjustments as trends evolve.

In other words, you must be ready to devote time and resources on an ongoing basis to make a competitive analysis worth it.

Without action, your findings mean nothing

As much fun as you may find the research part (that’s OK, we’re nerds, too!), you can’t just gather data from a competitor analysis. The whole point is to turn that information into action to drive improvements and reshape your strategic plan.

The real value of the analysis process lies in applying the insights to solve actual problems and realize measurable growth. That requires thoughtful planning and forward movement. 

Core elements of a Shopify competitor analysis

Now, before we bring everything together into an actual guide to getting a competitive analysis done, let’s quickly cover all the pieces of data a deep examination could cover.

Keep in mind you don’t have to study each one for every contender, especially if this is your first-ever analysis, resources are limited, and/or your market doesn’t call for this level of detail. 

• Name, URL, core messaging: Understand the central positioning each competitor uses to communicate their brand’s value and note the name and web address.

• Competitor type: Ask yourself if they’re in direct competition with you, if they’re a historical brand you’re trying to catch up to, etc.

• Market share: Analyze how much of the market each competitor controls and their standing compared to others.

• Target customers: Identify the specific audience each competitor focuses on and their key demographics.

• Unique value proposition: Examine what makes each competitor’s brand or products stand out. 

• Products and pricing: Review the range of products offered and their pricing strategy for each.

• Website features: Evaluate the design, functionality, ease of use, and content of their website. 

• Website traffic: Check traffic volume and how well their site attracts and retains visitors.

• Customer experience: Analyze their entire user journey, from checkout to post-purchase customer support.

• SEO efforts: Investigate their search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and how well they rank for their target terms.

• Sales pitch and funnel: Study their sales approach, including how they guide customers through the buying process.

• Marketing content, channels, and strategy: Look at the type of content they produce, where they distribute it, and how they target their audience using their marketing strategy.

• Shipping strategy: Assess their shipping options, costs, and overall customer experience in terms of delivery.

• Promotions: Monitor their use of discounts, special offers, and ads to attract customers.

• Communications: Observe their email marketing strategies, including newsletters and abandoned cart reminders.

• Reviews: Consider customer feedback on-site and off to gauge public perception and satisfaction.

Ultimate guide: How to conduct a competition analysis (8 steps) 

From setting clear goals to gathering data and implementing your hard-won insights, these eight steps will help you turn competitor analysis into a powerful tool for growth, just in time for BFCM. 

1. Name your objectives

The focus of your competitor analysis will, naturally, vary based on your goals.

You might want to use it to uncover the best marketing strategies behind your competitors’ success, to help reverse engineer your own. Or, perhaps you’re just laser-focused on a singular element, such as sales funnels — so your analysis may dive deep into each contender’s sales messaging, funnel phases, and lead qualification steps. 

Whatever your objective, keep that goal and your target audience in mind to stay within scope and get the answers you need. 

Pro Tip: Time-poor or working within any sort of resource constraints? In this step, we recommend focusing on a single goal. Better yet, set a SMART goal to help ensure an actionable outcome so that your efforts aren’t wasted. 

2. Decide which competitors to compare

So, who do you want to look at in this analysis? 

First, decide the competitor type(s): Direct ones who are right in your space with you, emerging companies setting new trends you want to get in on, etc. 

Then, list out the ones you already know you want to examine — and identify new ones that should be on your radar. 

How? Act like a customer. Jump on Google or Amazon and do a search for a product type you sell. Look for competing businesses that sell similar products, share your mission or philosophy, and/or target your same audience. 

Ten is usually a good goal. The trick here is to get diverse without getting overwhelmed, so don’t forget to stick to your objectives and core competitor types. 

‍Pro Tip: Again, for our smaller or more time-strapped Shopify business owners, this step offers the opportunity to narrow your focus. Consider comparing just three or five competitors to conduct your research more easily and get results faster. 

3. Determine which elements to study

It’s time to figure out what specifically you want to analyze, based on the robust list we provided above: market share, products, pricing, value proposition, website, SEO, marketing, customer reviews, and so on. 

Base your selections on your desired outcome, and how much time you have to conduct your analysis. 

Pro Tip: The longer your list of elements gets, the more time it will take to collect data, analyze it, and create actionable strategies. If you don’t have the luxury of time, cut down the number and complexity of features you want to scrutinize for each competitor. 

4. Set up your organization 

Let’s get tactical. How will you lay out each competitor, their core elements, and all the data you’re about to gather? 

Our recommendation is to keep it simple. Use spreadsheet software that’s easy to update and share. Bonus points if you’re already familiar with it, too, so you don’t have to spend a chunk of time learning the ins and outs. 

There are also lots of templates available online you can try, which are often free or just require you to sign up with your email. Here’s a simple, editable PDF from Smartsheet that’s totally free and open to use. 

5. Gather data (with tool recommendations) 

Now, there’s nothing to it but to do it!

This is the most time-consuming part of the entire process. You’ll essentially find and note key data on each element you want to compare.

Some of this will require a thorough, manual website examination, such as determining company missions or understanding target audiences. 

But thankfully, you can gather a lot of data with tools like:

• Competitors App: A surprisingly affordable tool for comprehensive competitor monitoring. Watch for changes to websites, content, email strategies, SEO, ads, and beyond.

• Shop Score: This Shopify app lets you compare your company’s performance, ad campaigns, and more with similar Shopify competitors.

• Koala Inspector: A custom-built Chrome extension for Shopify competitor analysis, offering comparisons across product catalogs, pricing, traffic, and marketing strategies.

• Brand24: Use this tool to reveal how customers talk about competitors on social media, how they handle negative feedback, and the marketing strategies they employ.

• Facebook Info and Ads: This Facebook feature lets you see the ads a page is running across Facebook and its properties, providing insight into competitors' campaigns.

• Ahrefs: Use Site Explorer to see the success of competitors’ SEO and SEM campaigns, and get the insights you need to win traffic back from top performers.

• SparkToro: Analyze competitor audiences to come up with creative ways to reach them.

6. Draw conclusions 

With data, data everywhere — what’s next? 

Take your time to review the data to pinpoint market trends, gaps, competitor patterns, product and pricing performance, what kind of engagement customers respond to, what’s working for other online businesses and what seems to be a waste of time, and whatever other indicators and tendencies arise.  

Then, evaluate how your business stacks up on these fronts. Identify your own areas of weakness, as well as strengths you can leverage even more to become an industry frontrunner. 

7. Implement insights

With opportunities for improvement identified, it’s time to put the rubber to the road. 

Go back to your guiding goals for this analysis. What insights from the data can be spun into actual strategies that push these goals, sales, and overall growth? 

For example, perhaps an analysis of market gaps has given you ideas for new marketing campaigns — which aligns perfectly with your goal to pursue creative marketing channels where competitors are just emerging. 

Whatever insight-driven plans you devise, it’s critical to establish a specific schedule, owner, and set of success metrics for each. This will help guide you toward a fruitful implementation, and make sure you didn’t come all this way for nothing!

8. Rinse and repeat 

Last but not least, it’s imperative to regularly update your analysis to adjust your strategy as market conditions change and competitors evolve.

We recommend cycling through the full process around once a year, though you can certainly conduct updates at other times. Above all, develop a schedule that’s attainable to you so that you won’t become overwhelmed and leave this valuable strategy by the wayside.  

The value of competitive analysis goes even deeper

Understanding your competitors is essential to refining your business and marketing strategies — which will help you break through the noise in a crowded market this BFCM season.

And the value of a thorough competitive analysis process goes well beyond that. 

Deeply understanding your business and how to position it flawlessly in the market is key to getting an accurate, high-dollar valuation. 

Like many entrepreneurs, you likely went down this path originally because you craved variety. 

Building out a Shopify business provides just that. You get to decide what you sell, and for how long, before moving on to your next project (or vacay!). 

If this is the crossroads you find yourself at, luckily you’ve also found the best sherpa there is for selling your Shopify brand. 

At OpenStore, we buy and operate the best businesses the platform has to offer.

Are you one of them?

If your U.S.-focused Shopify business has been operational for at least six months and made over $500K in net sales to consumers, you’re eligible to receive one of our compelling, data-backed offers. 

If you choose to accept, our simple process and fast close will maximize your exit without any delay hassle on your end. 

Request an offer here to leave your competitors in the dust.