Web design, like everything else, cannot be done in a vacuum. When creating a useful website, you must carefully match up the needs of the business, the environment in which it operates, and the clients who will be using it. One of the most important factors of the environment, is understanding your competitors. In a loose sense, when working on SEO and advertisements, every other business is part of the competition. But the direct competitors for your service or product are the ones who you will specifically be competing with.

If you are the 5^th result on google for a certain string, this will likely not be a big deal if your major competitors are further down. And when optimizing a website, you should be looking to be more functional, more appealing, and more useful than your competitors. While SEO will help get them to your website, if your design is worse than your competitors, a frustrated potential customer could end up over there. Therefore, ensuring that your website design takes into account the way that your competitors draw their customers will help you to draw more to your business.

Examining a competitor’s business model has always been an important part of trimming fat from your own. Being able to adjust to the pressures that they will create will always be easier when you have anticipated potential changes and have prepared strategies and plans to counteract any new pressures. Therefore, when designing a website, you should ensure that you are aware of how your competitors website works, and then work to be better in every way that you can. Whether you can create a more streamlined layout, or if the focus will be in appearing professional and crisp, it is critical that you take avoid making the same mistakes as those around you. This is what will separate successes from failures.

Finally, make sure that you are not so focused on your competitors that you neglect to give your website the level of personalization that will allow your individual company values to shine through. It is important that you are not just better than your competitors, but that you are also different. Finding ways to let yourself stand out is difficult when you are focusing merely on staying even. Therefore, if you wish to combine excelling in areas where others struggle, and creating a unique and memorable experience for your customers, the place to start is with your web design.