2012

Competitor Analysis

Navin.c Logicserve Digital 2/15/2012

Table of Contents
Page No. CHAPTER 1 : Executive Summary 03

CHAPTER 2 : 2.1 Introduction : 2.1.1 Objectives of the Project : 2.1.2 Introduction to the Industry : 2.2 Methodology

04 04 04

CHAPTER 3 :3.1 :3.2 :3.3 :3.4 :3.5 :3.6 :3.7 CHAPTER 4 : 4.1 : 4.2 : 4.3

Analyzing our competitors who are Our Competitors? what threats do they pose? what is the profile of our Competitors? Analyzing Broadbandchoices Strategies Adapted by competitors? Strengths and weakness of our competitors. Conclusions Limitations of the Report Recommendations

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ANNEXURES: Tab-1 : Bibliography

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Executive Summary
Opportunity
Competition between online Broadband comparison sites is at an all time high. However, most comparison sites have a traditional view of optimizing their site drive traffic to it, and hope for sales, while failing to take advantage of the Webs ability to create networks of consumers through online communities, content, and partnerships. Most of them still use social media as a mere tool to market their products and not user engagement.

The Concept
Comparison sites compare products on their site in a very standard and similar way, where they either use postcode or use any of product attribute to compare them. Most of the competitors have positioned themselves as what they do, or what they are. This is why the competition in this area becomes very high. We shall actually focus on what we are not, along with what we are. We are not just comparison site to earn money and part ways, rather our services are different because we are with you while choosing the deals and even when you start benefiting from the services. (User engagement)

Competitors Analysis
We have numerous competition in this area broadly classified as Direct and Indirect competition. Direct competition is the threat from direct Comparison sites and Indirect Competition is from either providers themselves or review sites. As for this study I have paid high attention on analyzing strategies advantages with Broadbandchoices as they stand for head-on competition with us. Broadbandchoices has various strategic advantages to drive traffic directly to them. High Back links to the sites: With 6 websites in the House of brand *Choices gives them the popularity and familiarity. Back links referring to website is as high as 57000. Highest number of Keywords: The lists of Keywords they use to drive traffic directly to their site are more then 16000. Certification from Ofcom: Ofcom as the regulating body has approved them as creditworthy website to compare broadband deals. Media coverage: Many Press houses like BBC, Financial times Telegraph and daily mail. Consumer satisfaction awards: This award annually rates ISPs based upon the customer research. This survey is focused on Customer satisfaction. Here they actually make every provider as a winner of some or the other category.

Introduction
Competitors analysis plays a crucial role in developing new strategies for either existing or new market. This Study is done to help us analyze position of our competitors, what they are capable of and their strategies. UKs Broadband market is flooded with broadband providers, which creates markets for selling points or purchase points at the same. As the number of providers is very high the level of competition also is very high amongst the competitors. Same is with the compare sites. Most often Customers prefer to visit a comparison site to make his purchase just to get rid of confusion created in his mind by over communicated market place. In this market each and every provider are promoting their deals in a very unique and fancy way. For a customer Objective of any comparison site should not be confused with another marketer who wants to confuse him. Many of comparison Sites when observed closely they are actually partial or inclined towards the providers who pay them highest. Across all compare sites BT, Virgin and Sky are most liked ISPs. Emphasis has been paid to analyze Broadbandchoices.co.uk along with other competing sites. Most of the reports and figures have been taken from alexa.com majesticseo and blekko.com

Objectives
Market conditions are to be explored as the providers are not in much favor of Uswitch. This opportunity has to be fruited with facing the competition. Broadbandchoices stands as our biggest competitor with highest ranking and sales. This study is done to analyze and identify the strategies used by them to improve their position in the Googles search engine. All the strategies used are given in description along with strategies adapted by other providers.

Introduction to industry
Increasing Competition between Broadband providers got most of users confused weather which deal to choose. This gave rise to Broadband compare sites and competition within them. The major Difference with communication from a broadband provider and Compare site is that providers can openly confuse customers with their lucrative deals. On the other hand Comparison sites were formed to get this confusion out of consumers mind. The differentiation between any comparison sites is not very prominent as all do direct comparison between deals offered by the providers.

Methodology
The study done is based upon the secondary information with the help various Website analyzing Tools. Website rank has been taken from Alexa. Traffic analysis has been taken from Soemajestic Semrush, and Bleko. Google.uk has been used as a search engine to search for competition. Competition has been identified as the names/ ads visible on First page after any Search Query. Further research has been carried out considering these competitors.

Who are our competitors?

The list of competitors considered for this study is based upon generic competition for few Keywords which are high on Competition and are high on keyword ranking. All the Competitors names mentioned in the report are the ones on very first search page. Few prominent Competitors names are displayed for different search query as well. Direct competitors are the ones who are dealing with compare sites and suggest deals on comparison. Here I have performed Search using different keywords to understand what average position for different competitors on generic terms is. For the search Broadband
Sr no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Direct Competition www.uswitch.com/broadband/ www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ www.thinkbroadband.com/ www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/ www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ www.broadband.co.uk/ www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ Indirect Competition (includes paid ads as well) www.sky.com/broadband www.uswitch.com/Broadband www.talktalk.co.uk/broadband www.o2.co.uk/broadband www.plus.net/broadband/ www.talktalk.co.uk/

For Search Broadband Compare and Compare Broadband

Sr no. Direct Competition Threats Ranks #13404 by alexa in uk Trusted in UK and Reknown not as a websit http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/ but as a company offering different services Threat poised: Diversified categories on the same page Ranks #13404 by alexa in uk Trusted in UK and Reknown not as a websit http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/compare/deals_and_offers/ but as a company offering different services Threat poised: Diversified categories on the same page http://www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/Ranks #4568 Excellent SEO Diversified category Improves their SEO rank Ranks #46335 Ofcom acrideted compare tool, user friendly compare using slider, advantage of being popular Ranks #19375 Is of a big threat as they have high visiblity as a portal and http://www.comparethemarket.com/broadband/?vck9=true http://broadband.consumerchoices.co.uk/ws_calc.asp are promoting broadbandchoices links products. http://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ Ranks #46637 call options with call back request aswell http://www.comparebroadband.co.uk/ Rank # 1122868 newly formed but well designed (good to see pages) Rank #46103 portal 43 inbound links with 422720 unique visitors not yet http://www.money.co.uk/broadband.htm broadband focussed http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html Ranks # 32222 working hard on SEO http://www.broadbandchecker.co.uk/ 5 http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/

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For Search Query Speed check

Sr no. Direct Competition (Speed check) Threats Ranks # 42009 Known for speedcheck only but may come up as a compare broadband site, they have compare although but click stream for Sky and other providers is minimal (2% and less) Ranks #350496 and is from Namesco broadband (Provider) Ranks # 32222 working hard on SEO Only Help site Ranks #13404 by alexa in uk Trusted in UK and Reknown not as a websit but as a company offering different services Threat poised: Diversified categories on the same page Acting Just as a bench of discussion and Reviews Typing test

1 2 3 4

www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ www. speedtest .bbmax.co.uk/ www.thinkbroadband.com/ speedtest .html www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

5 6 7 8 9 10

www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest/ www.zdnet.co.uk/broadband- speedtest / www.typeonline.co.uk/typing speed .php

Ranks #4568 Excellent SEO Diversified category Improves their SEO rank www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/tools/ speed - test / www.shoulderdoc.co.uk/article.asp?article=767 Not related speedtester.bt.com/ BT's Webtool

For Search Query Broadband Speedcheck

Sr no. Direct Competition (broadband Speed check) Threats Ranks # 42009 Known for speedcheck only but may come up as a compare broadband site, they have compare although but click stream for Sky and ww. broadbandspeed checker.co.uk/ other providers is minimal (2% and less) www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/ Only Help site Ranks #13404 by alexa in UK Trusted in UK and Renown not as a website but as a company offering different services Threat poised: Diversified www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest/ categories on the same page www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html Ranks # 32222 working hard on SEO www. speedtest .bbmax.co.uk/ Ranks #350496 and is from Namesco broadband (Provider) Ranks #835689 Its a very simple, informative but not attractive, lacks in www. broadband watchdog.co.uk/ speed - test .php promoting any providers deals. Ranks #304542 Call experts for help(buy rather) Boasts acridition of www.broadband.co.uk/broadband-speed-test/ Ofcom www. broadbandspeedtest .org/ Ranks #3273169 is an information site www. broadbandspeedtest .net/ Ranks 2759829 is an PC utility seller Ranks #4568 Excellent SEO Diversified category Improves their SEO rank www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/tools/speed-test/

Uswitch was able to maintain position in between 3 for both paid and generic terms. Broadbandgenie scores 6th position, the generic position of Broadbandchoices for keywords speed test and broadband test is beyond page 1. There are many sites that are only ad centric with providing information to their traffic driven.

What threats do they pose?

Our competitors have the advantage of being first to enter this market. They act as very strong barrier to enter this market. This is the time when most of UK is already switched to digital from analogue. This has opened space for Sky and Virgin to offer Broadband along with Digital TV and Homophone. Most of these companies have a very high spend on their ads. Another area of concern is the content. Uswitch and Broadbandchoices are ready with pool of contents on help and other topics.

Sr no. Direct Competition www.uswitch.com/broadband/ 1 2 3 4 www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ www.thinkbroadband.com/ www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/ www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ 5 6 7 www.broadband.co.uk/ www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/

Threats Ranks #13404 by alexa in uk Trusted in UK and Reknown not as a websit but as a company offering different services Threat poised: Diversified categories on the same page Ranks #46637 call options with call back request aswell Ranks # 32222 working hard on SEO Ranks #4568 Excellent SEO Diversified category Improves their SEO rank Ranks # 42009 Known for speedcheck only but may come up as a compare broadband site, they have compare although but click stream for Sky and other providers is minimal (2% and less) Ranks #304542 Call experts for help(buy rather) Boasts acridition of Ofcom Ranks #46335 Ofcom acrideted compare tool, user friendly compare using slider, advantage of being popular

Sr no. Indirect Competition (includes paid ads as well) Threats PPC budget $22,093 - $36,992, monthly clicks 12,705 - 16,230, ppc www.sky.com/broadband 1 keywords 2935 affordable broadbandprovider 2 www.uswitch.com/Broadband Info on PPC budget not available 3 www.talktalk.co.uk/broadband Not in category, but eat our visiblity 4 www.o2.co.uk/broadband Not in category, but eat our visiblity 5 www.plus.net/broadband/ Not in category, but eat our visiblity 6 www.talktalk.co.uk/ Not in category, but eat our visiblity

What is the profile of our Competitors?

Profile of these companies has been made to analyze what are their capabilities. As most-watched sites belong to single brand house their focus is only to one particular site and has deployed dedicated resources working on their sites. Profile also covers their achievements or recommendations received so far.

www.uswitch.com/broadband/ Formed by Forward internet group Serving multiple digital businesses and Uswitch is their product catering gas electricity, insurance and Loans. Having license from Ofcom Awards such as Top 10 website Hatwise, Topten Experian Hatwise. Company believes at making deals for user, not for themselves. They have 8000 followers on twitter. Uswitch Usave Usmile www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/ "Formed by Clairton in 2004 as a Broadband compare site but slowly grew to mobile compare and laptop compare as well. Research Decide and compare is their brand statement. Values of company assure impartial, independent, and consumer-focused, and plain English. Uniquely they have Broadband genie award, Sponsored result for few deals. Actively communicating and interacting with users, Site known for user reviews and posts on forum. www.thinkbroadband.com/ Formed by Sebastien Lahtinen as a co founder, this web site is dedicated to proving information to broadband users they are not much into marketing the broadband deals. Working hard for content on user help and fair and impartial Providers discussion about the Service providers. They are our future threat as they might start comparing broadband deals. www.moneysupermarket.com/broadband/ Formed and registered as Moneysupermarket.com Financial Group Limited. Services offered are Travel, Insurance, Money, Mobile phone, Broadband and Vouchers. As they have diversified offerings they have an advantage of visibility. Site is bright and attractive with crisp designs few of which are Freeze tab, Unique compare popup on the same page, enter postcode and compare deals. www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ Formed and operated by Speed checker Limited. Positioned as speed check site. More focused on
Visibility ads and working hard to sell broadband deals. Traffic visits for speed check and jumps to Google again away. www.broadband.co.uk/ Formed and by www.broadband.co.uk/ in year 2004. Aimed at providing independent, expert advice to anyone who is either upgrading their broadband connection, or signing-up to broadband for the first time. Ofcom Accredited price compare, having their own reliability score and active in communicating with customers. Unique visitors have decreased to 1/3, from 1700 in dec 2010 to 500 in dec 2011.

www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ Broadband choices were formed in yeas 2005 and belong to Decision Technologies Limited. The Main objective was impartial advice and save up to 363 when they switch. Other than this site they have following diverse websites as well.

Broadband (www.broadbandchoices.co.uk) Home phone (www.homephonechoices.co.uk) Financial Services (loans, credit cards, savings accounts and mortgages) (www.creditchoices.co.uk) Gas and Electricity (www.energychoices.co.uk) Digital Television (www.digitalchoices.co.uk); and Insurance (www.insurancechoices.co.uk)

Webpage layout Home page layout has plenty of objects and background of all inner pages is white. The main menu bar has dropdown with few listing on all categories. Search Bar gives posted articles as results rather deals. Ofcom and VeriSign Certifications are highlighted. Very next to it is about media presence (The Guardian, The Financial Times, BBC, Telegraph, DailyMail, The Independent.) Right hand corner includes a ticker box having Speed Test Tool, Broadband Guide, Broadband booster guide, etc. Videos posted on the site are again related to help. Featured Articles on the page dont talk about broadband at all

Lastly Web page is McAfee Secured. Internal Pages: Categories page/ Business Broadband A tab for home, mobile and business broadband with postcode checker is alongside with Featured broadband deals tab. All deals have a number to call and book the deals. Broadband Guide and Providers review is placed below these tabs. These Guides have multiple outbound links and inbound links.

One thing to be noticed is the date of changing or updating the deals has been mentioned on each deals page. It is worth to mention that while analyzing the technical effectiveness of Broadbandchoices following stats were revealed. Website relevancy score is above Average of which Description Relevancy is 81% relevant, Keyword Relevancy is 71% relevant, and Title Relevancy is at 70%. As they work hard on SEO their SEO relevancy stands at phenomenal 90%. Most of the pages crawled are Guides or News page. Thing to be noted here is that each guide or news page has deals on it and at few places they even have List of places where the service provider is present. (http://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/providers/bt/bt-infinity-fibre-optic-broadband.html) Total Back links for the site has decreased from above 57000 to 56000, which is due to shopping season.

Many of these back links are paid and give a feel of spamming for an example talking about broadband compare broadband on hospitals website. When we talk about Broadbandmart its we just have 273 back links.

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Keywords bank for Broadbandchoices is huge. They follow long tail model of business where they have many keywords driving traffic to their site. At present the keyword driving most of traffic for them is Tiscalli with having 5% share of entire traffic drawn. The monthly average traffic for the site is 15751 for Dec 2011

What are the objectives of our competitors? Objective of most of our competitors is to maximize sales of broadband and related bundles as an affiliate. The objectives are very similar to what we are operating for. Uswitch is a portal offering multiple services. These services are mostly for the customers who want to switch their existing service provider. Thinkbroadband Is a review centric site. They provide help on various topics related to broadband through discussions. Broadbandgenie provides both review and deals comparison. Moneysupermarket is focused to provide many services under one name. They are not Broadband centric as the search analytics of Alexa suggests that most of visitors visit either insurance or mortgage sites after visiting their site. What strategies are our competitors pursuing and how successful are these strategies? Strategies are the activities or events occurred either by accident or by planning of competitor up till now. With the help of various strategies they are now on the top ladder of consumers mind. Lets have a close look at such events one by one.

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Uswitch is a website offering multiple services at the same time It was listed in year 1997. The very first benefit they have is of being first in the market to offer such service. Uswitch Acquired the accreditation from Ofcom for providing price comparison calculator approved by Ofcom. Wide range of Service makes customer have everything at one place (One name for many services). Most of tools page have Tabs which gives them advantage of more content to be crawled by Google on each page. One thing to be noticed here is the use of Trigger Keywords. Keywords on each page are used excessively For E.g. Broadband on homepage has been used more them 70 times. Its very strange that Google is not taking it spammed in nature. Each and every article on page has internal linking to the deals page. Uswitch awards Happens every year in the month of January. Even this award is partially biased where the Nominee for any category chosen seems to be partial. Broadband Genie offers both information and deals at the same place. Page layout is cluttered with plenty of information on every page. Good at SEO ranking as they have plenty of relevant contents on the same page. Keyword bank of 17361 queries and maximum traffic drawn with Virgin media (18% of total traffic). Traffic to the site for Jan 2012 is 388467. Their SEO efforts can be seen from the inbound links to the site are 461810 from 1623 domain. What are the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors? Strengths of our competitors are the services which differentiate their offering form ours and add more value or improve the experience of its user. Most of the sites have descriptive and overloaded WebPages. This makes difficult for the user to get information as he has to think a lot to get any information. Uswitch and Broadbandchoices excel in webpage design as their page layout speaks more with images and less on Visible or noticeable contents. Uswitch particularly has hidden huge amount of content with the helping of websites design. Broadbandchoices on the other hand have so many articles and news talking about their site. They are not just speaking about the topics related to broadband but are also about other things happening around.
Provider Uswitch.co.uk 1. Highest Back links to their site. 2. Ofcom calculator 3. Informative website 4. Awards 5. Ofcom calculator Looked as gas, electric and other utility site not particularly as broadband compare site, most of traffic is driven through insurance or finance keywords, along with broadband. Broadbandchoices.co.uk 1. Highest Back links to their site. 2. Ofcom calculator 3. Articles and News 4. High PPC budget 5. Help Video 6. Redirecting page designed Most of Reviews Look to be partial and fake (In favor of any provider), Poor Search tool on page which leads only to topics.

Strengths

Weakness

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Conclusions
With this report I want to highlight few that how were our competitors able to achieve top position in the market. Broadbandchoices have done very well in SEO as well as paid listings. More emphasis had been given to inbound links.

Limitations of the Report

This report is made with the help of information provided by third party resources. Also all the figures keep changing every day depending on activities done by our competitors for development. The figures mentioned in this report may not be accurate, still are good indicators.

Recommendations
We will have to set a benchmark for Broadbandmart to reach at the level where our competitors are in terms of visibility. 1. Improve page ranking: currently our page rank is very close to 692562 whereas for Broadbandchoices it is 46433 2. User interface enhancement: Compare more user friendly search and compare tools 3. Work on Relevancy: Title, keywords and Description are low Ref table below

Relevancy Broadbandchoices.co.uk Broadbandmart.co.uk Title 66% 71% Discription 84% 57% keyword 71% 12% Complete rank 371452 Not available Visitors per month 3933 Not available SEO score 90% 83% Ref http://whois.domaintools.com/broadbandchoices.co.uk
Figures below indicate the webpage crawl history for Broadbandchoices and Broadbandmart respectively.

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References and Tables

Organic Keyword Tiscali virgin media speedtest bt vision bt infinity tagged sky broadband speed test www.sky.com my sky Other (15444 keywords) Keyword stats for broadbandchoices.co.uk Ranking (Prev) Volume CPC $ Traffic % Cost % Competition Results 13 1,000,000 0.28 5.03% 0.56% 39,000,000 17 1,830,000 0.32 4.0% 0.52% 0.13 222,000,000 13(13) 450,000 0.23 2.26% 0.2% 0.12 241,000,000 6(7) 74,000 0.34 2.07% 0.28% 0.28 20,100,000 5 74,000 0.26 2.07% 0.21% 0.26 11,100,000 20 1,220,000 0.16 2.04% 0.13% 0 1,160,000,000 11(10) 74,000 3.61 1.94% 2.83% 0.61 25,100,000 13(12) 368,000 0.27 1.85% 0.2% 0.24 473,000,000 8 110,000 0.55 1.84% 0.4% 0.27 554,000,000 10 110,000 0.6 1.84% 0.44% 0.1 497,000,000 75.00%

Bibliography 1. http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/broadbandchoices.co.uk+%28by+organic%292011 http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/broadbandchoices.co.uk+%28by+organic%29 2. http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/broadbandgenie.co.uk http://www.semrush.com/uk/info/history/index.html?domains[]=broadbandgenie.co.uk&gtype=1 &db=uk#domains:broadbandgenie.co.uk;type:1;db:uk http://blekko.com/ws/http:%2F%2Fbroadbandgenie.co.uk+/domainlinks http://whois.domaintools.com/broadbandchoices.co.uk http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/broadbandchoices.co.uk

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