More and more companies are going online and saying "Hey I need a website. Great way to earn money and its a lower cost per acquisition and in the long run a cheaper sales/marketing channel than telephony or retail/branch".
Consumers are a lot more savvy with the internet and they are now so used to using the web that they expect a level of customer service. They want to go through a website and find what they want immediately and without hassle - a perfect example was when I was looking on a website for a complaints address and it took fourteen clicks to get to the address and several minutes of scaning the site. Now whilst that may be a good strategy to try and avoid getting complaints. It was not best practice. You should encourage customers to contact you via any channel possible - interaction with customers isn't always a bad thing. Sure they may scream and shout at you but, they will come up with hitches in the system quicker than any UAT tester will.
So getting back to the theme.... competitor insight / intelligence.
Lets assume that you are trying to get a foothold in an existing market (for arguments sake - you're a credit card firm which has a market leading rate to attract customers). Now clearly there are established brands in that field and some of these brands have been at it for many years - American Express for example. So what would give your new brand "MilesCard" a competitive edge.
Firstly (and I would imagine that the EGG Credit Card in the
Secondly direct brands tend to be more popular with rate tarts (those people who transfer balances from one card to another in order to pay less interest).
Thirdly, now you've got their attention you need to know what your competitors are doing to drive business to their sites. Are they adopting viral campaigns, what search words are they bidding on, what is their clickstream like? All these questions can be answered using some of the tools on the market. Google Trends is a free tool which shows how competiting websites' traffic compare over time (see below)..
Other subscription based tools like Comscore, Hitwise provide fantastic intelligence - but for a price.
is particularly useful because not only does it give analysis on real people but, also matches them against Acorn classifications. If you have an international brand you could find it difficult to get analysis on a global scale because you may have to comparie multiple regions. However, I have found the information invaluable for providing clients with insight that they have not seen before.
In the retail financial services there is a benchmarking firm (subscription based again) which does a bi-annual study measuring brands (anonymously) against hundreds of metrics e.g. advertising spend, subscribers to online banking, cross sales and so on.
Merging these sources of data we would be able to understand not only your competitors but the marketplace and identify opportunities for an increase in sales. Perhaps even a niche market – low barriers to entry, high profits and medium/high risk.