RESEARCH METHOD 15 Competitive Testing Competitive testing is the process of conducting research to evaluate the usability and learnability of your competitors' products. 1 Keeping a pulse on the competition's business activity is a necessary marketing practice in most organizations. The process includes monitoring a competitor's key business financials such as revenue and operating profit, as well as company size, and product and service mix on an ongoing basis. Although the analysis of competitor information can be helpful when refining a market strat- egy, these traditional business audits rarely take a user-centered perspective, nor do they consider the social, economic, and technical realities that shape the context in which products and services help people accomplish goals in their day-to-day lives. Competitive testing provides design teams with an opportunity to assess a competitor's products from the end user's point of view. According to studies, the difference between your site and your competitors' can reveal a 68% gap in usability. 2 Teams inspect how usable and learnable competi- tors' digital applications are by conducting usability tests on their three to four competitive products, as well as on their own. 3 Unlike other methods that might survey attitudes toward competitor products (e.g., surveys or focus groups), competitive testing focuses on end-user behavior as they attempt to accomplish tasks that exist across products. When testing a competitor's digital application, it is likely that you will be able to reuse the same scripts, scenarios, and tasks you use when testing the usability of your product interface. 4 Although 1. Kuniavsky, Mike. Observing the User Experience. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 2003. 2. Nielsen, Jakob. "How Big is the Difference Between Websites?" 2004, www.useit.com. 3. Nielsen, Jakob. "Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability," 2011, www.useit.com. 4. See note 1 above. 5. See note 1 above.