The Compete.com Overview - Part 1

Tue, Sep 22, 2009

Online Tools

This detailed four part blog series takes a comprehensive look at Compete.com, and has been created through a first time user’s point of view. The series can be broken down to basics:

  • A Compete Overview: a synopsis about the website and its capabilities
  • Compete Features: a look at individual sections and how to use them, along with extractable, available data
  • Compete Pros: a briefing of what is great, useful
  • Compete Improvements: recommendations on aspects of the site that can be improved

The Compete.com Overview

Compete.com is an aesthetically pleasing site that gives and graphs website rankings based on traffic, along with competitive analytics. Its user friendly capabilities are only a slice of this reference site, as this invaluable source is quite revolutionary for company owners, workers and consumers.

The site seems to have rolled out the glitches (everything works fine). Combine this with the infinite amount of comparisons that can be made, searches on information about other websites, and the individualized searches of keywords, and Compete.com proves to be a streamlined experience serving up a massive amount of business intelligence.

Meet and Greet Compete

The homepage contains 4 short blurbs which, when clicked on, bring users to specific topic pages. Including the following:

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On the homepage, a user can immediately begin by comparing up to 3 sites with the test version of Compete.com (5 if the user creates a login name and password), or can start by looking at

  • Profiles
  • Analytics Tools
  • Client Solutions
  • Resources.

I anxiously started with the comparison section, as I was curious to see the idea behind the site. I put ‘Facebook,’ ‘Myspace’ and ‘Twitter’ into the white squares (the first circled in red) in the blue comparison box, then clicked ‘Compare’.

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What came up was quite impressive, including a color-coded chart of each site and where it stands in comparison to the others based on Unique Visitors.

A unique visitor is someone who visits a site once.  Any additional visits for that user are not counted except under total visits. (Software can track this)

This graph below is shown in a one-year span, but can be changed from 3 months, 6 months, 1 year or even 2 years (with a Pro subscription).

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To change from Unique Visitors to another type of visitor to a site, click the down arrow next to the Unique Visitor box:

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Users can only use a limited amount of options with the trial version, but this drop down does show the advantages to having a Pro Subscription.

Underneath this graph on the same page, other statistics are given in a nicely laid-out manner.  The sites, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, are listed on the left side, while Unique Visitors, Monthly Change and Yearly change are listed across the top of the chart. Circles and arrows in the chart below show Facebook.com’s numerical data, and other website traffic information useful for marketers and business owners.

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After experimenting with the compare section, users can look up other parts of the site to find more interesting statistical data.

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When the mouse is placed over each of these options, users can choose to explore and use specific parts of the site.

Keeping up with Compete.com

Look out for Parts 2-4! We will take a closer look at the individual sections, the Pros, and the Cons with ideas for improvement.

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