Good Ideas With Room For Improvement:
Although a mountain of good things can be said for this site, certain components exist as flaws, leaving a field of space for development and enhancement. We have already created an extensive overview of Compete.com, including its basic functions, a review of its features and the pros of the site. There is always room for improvement though, with several existing factors only needing small additions, while others could significantly change the statistics (and amount of users) of the site.
IF IT WERE TO GO GLOBAL: COULD BE DRASTICALLY IMPROVED
Complete.com searches only U.S. internet traffic while Google Insight analyses and compares the interest levels of Google searches across the globe and can focus in on individual countries to see where high traffic is on certain sites or where Apple is most popular due to amount of searches. Compete only is available to US traffic.
INTERESTING ENOUGH (BUT MAKES LITTLE SENSE):
Users are able to search sites that are completely unrelated, though conclusions cannot be made on the unique visitor count per site. Users with specific goals in mind may find this useful, while others looking to make direct comparisons will have little conclusions to make if their keywords or sites in their searches have little to nothing to do with one another.
For Example: In a Target and Walmart comparison search, the results were strikingly similar, two sites geared with similar products. Google and Yahoo also were extremely similar, although Google’s graph typically showed millions of users more. A clothing site and a plastic surgeon’s site would, on the other hand, not have anything to do with one another yet still produce results with ‘comparable’ numbers.
IMPROVING THE TRIAL VERSION: GOOD WITH ROOM FOR CHANGE
Things that can be done with the Compete free trial plan:
- Compare up to 5 sites at one time
- Tag sites and explore tag clouds
- Export data and run your own analysis
- View subdomain data
A plentiful amount of data is unable to be reached with the simple trial version, and of course the creators won’t make any money if they show all their cards upfront, but a little more info in areas that further demonstrate Compete.com’s power can enhance the visitors desire to purchase.
Thus:
Provided that the trial version were adjusted accordingly so that users would be able get more complete information, they would be more likely to upgrade to a paid account.
COMPARISONS CANNOT BE MADE: COULD BE BETTER
Under the “Tag Profile” option, users cannot compare tagged sites. I tried a comparison for the tag “electronic” at Target, Bestbuy and CompUSA. A graph was not made, though it does show ‘amount of users’, and it only gives a graph of Unique Visitors.
COUNT LOG: A NEW PROCESS OF HEAD COUNT COULD BE BETTER
Unique Visitors are extremely hard to track! Some characteristics make you independent, including an IP address. The idea of ‘Unique Visitors’ is more about the location a user is coming from (IP Address), demographics aside. Statistical data relating to particular groups within the population have nothing to do with the way Unique Visitors gets its ‘headcount,’ as it only credits a user with one visit in a given month rather than a pure count of how many times the site was actually visited (even by the same user) in a given month. Specifics should be looked at and perhaps a new method could be developed.
SHOWN DATA: NOT BAD
On any given site profile, unique visitors, visits, page views, and Compete rank statistics are shown.
THE IMPROVEMENT:
The rest of the site makes you type in each time on the different pages when you want the rest of the information. If it were all to go to the bottom of the search page as information does on the ‘Compare’ page or ‘Site Profile’ page, it may decrease time spent searching and increase user satisfaction.
The Compete Wrap-Up
Overall, Compete.com’s user-friendliness, unique capabilities and statistical data have been an interesting research project and not too much of a task to comprehend. With an easy to follow overview, how-to manual and lists of the positives and the improvements to be made, this all-inclusive blog series delves into Compete.com from various angles.
At its peak, Compete tracked 6.5 million visits, though 2.4 of these visits were from Unique Visitors. My guess is that a significant number of Uniques are repeat users, and Compete cannot track the amount that these users actually are on the site. This says that the same group of users were repetitively getting data from the site rather than a number of various users, posing a problem to the validity of statistical data across the site.
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