How to review a competitor website
To review a competitor website, open it in a fresh browser tab and work through four areas: design and layout, messaging and copy, user experience, and any visible SEO signals (page titles, structured content, site speed). Capture annotated notes as you go — screenshots with comments pinned to specific elements beat a written list. Share the annotated review with your client as a link, not an attachment, so they can react inline without downloading anything.
Open it in an incognito window
Use a private/incognito tab so you see the site as a first-time visitor — no personalised content, no logged-in state, no cached assets. Resize the window to a common viewport (1280px desktop, then 390px mobile) to catch layout differences. Start at the homepage and note the first impression in 5 seconds: what does the site say it does, who is it for, and what do they want you to do next? This initial read often surfaces the sharpest copy gap for your client.
Evaluate design, layout, and visual hierarchy
Work through the page top to bottom. Note the type scale, colour use, whitespace, and image quality — is the visual hierarchy clear or does everything fight for attention? Look at the navigation structure: how many items, are they labelled by feature or by job-to-be-done? Check whether the mobile version collapses gracefully or breaks. Most importantly, mark the elements you think are doing something right — a competitive review that only finds problems misses half the insight.
Read the messaging and copy
Copy and paste the hero headline and subhead into a notes doc verbatim. Ask: does this describe the customer's outcome or the product's feature? Strong copy names the before and after ('stop chasing clients for feedback' beats 'streamlined client collaboration'). Scan the pricing page for how they frame value, and the FAQ for the objections they think buyers have — a competitor's FAQ is a free list of customer anxieties. Note any guarantees, social proof, and case study details; those tell you what their buyers care about.
Spot the UX patterns worth stealing — or avoiding
Complete a real task as if you were a buyer: find the product, start a trial or contact form, and get to the first moment of value. Time yourself. Note where you hesitated or had to backtrack. UX researchers say 45–90 minutes per site is enough to surface the most actionable patterns. Look at the number of clicks between landing and conversion, what the checkout or sign-up form asks for, and whether the onboarding path tells you what to do next. The mistakes competitors repeat are rarely obvious from looking at screenshots alone — you have to move through the flow.
Capture a few quick SEO signals
Right-click → View Page Source and scan the title tag and meta description — are they keyword-specific or generic? Check the URL structure (blog/company-name or /blog/how-to-solve-the-real-problem). Run the homepage through PageSpeed Insights (free, takes 30 seconds) and note the mobile performance score. Look at how many blog posts or resource pages exist and whether they answer specific questions. This isn't a full backlink audit; it's the 10-minute read that tells you whether a competitor has invested seriously in organic search.
Document and share findings with your client
A written list of observations is hard to act on — 'the CTA button is weak' means nothing without seeing which button and why. Annotate the actual pages instead: take screenshots with specific elements marked, or capture a live review where each note is pinned to the exact element you mean. Group findings into three buckets: things to match (table stakes), things to beat (genuine gaps), and things to avoid (patterns that clearly aren't working). Send your client a single link to the annotated review, not a PDF attachment — they should be able to react and ask questions inline.
If you're reviewing the competitor site to brief a client, the handoff is the hard part. Drop the URL into Drafty and it becomes a reviewable canvas — you pin notes to the exact element you mean, the client opens the link and reacts inline with no account, and the whole conversation stays anchored to the page. No PDF, no screenshot chain, no 'which header did you mean?'
Open a live demoQuestions
- What should I look for when reviewing a competitor website?
- Cover four areas: design and visual hierarchy (layout, type, mobile), messaging and copy (headline clarity, outcome framing, social proof), user experience (how many clicks to conversion, form friction, onboarding), and basic SEO signals (title tags, page speed, content depth). You don't need to go deep on all four in one pass — decide which matters most to your client's situation first.
- How many competitors should I review?
- Three to five direct competitors is the practical ceiling. Fewer than three and you miss pattern differences; more than five and findings start to blur. Pick the ones your client's buyers are most likely to consider — not the biggest names in the industry, but the ones showing up in the same searches.
- What free tools can I use to review a competitor website?
- For performance: Google PageSpeed Insights (free). For keyword signals: Google Search Console if you own the site, or type 'site:competitordomain.com' in Google to see their indexed pages. For traffic estimates: SimilarWeb's free tier. For copy review: just a browser and a notes doc — the most useful insights come from reading the page as a buyer, not from a report.
- How do I share a competitor website review with a client?
- Annotated screenshots beat a written list because the client can see exactly what you mean. Even better is a live annotated link to the actual page — the client clicks through to the element you pinned a note on rather than decoding a cropped screenshot. Avoid emailing a PDF: it creates a version and a download problem before the conversation even starts.
- How often should I review competitor websites?
- For an active client engagement, once at the start of a project and once every six to twelve months for monitoring. A quarterly 30-minute pass on your client's top two competitors is enough to catch a messaging shift or a new feature launch. The risk of reviewing too rarely is discovering a competitor has repositioned only after it starts affecting your client's traffic.
- Can I annotate a live competitor website to show my client?
- Yes — tools that render any public URL as a review canvas let you pin comments to the exact element you mean, then share a link. Your client sees the live page with your notes on it, not a static screenshot, so they can scroll to context and reply inline. It removes the 'which bit did you mean?' loop that comes with annotated screenshots.
Keep exploring
Stop emailing files back and forth.
Share one link. They comment on the exact spot — no account, always the current version.