“Don’t copy your competitors… you end up with their bad ideas.”

When we start a project, we usually do some kind of competitive analysis to get our bearings on the client’s place in the market. The idea with this exercise is not to come up with a list of elements to copy, but to understand the world in where our client does business. Sometimes in conjunction with this exercise, we get a request (sometimes many) for a feature or design element and the only rationale is “some of our competition does it that way.” When this happens, we know we have to help fight the urge to copy.

The danger in copying is that we end up making the same mistakes as our competitors. Although it’s helpful to know our competitors, it’s never a good idea to do something just because the leader is doing it. Just because the leader in your industry puts a link in a certain place or gives their logo a particular effect, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

There are very few perfect marketing pieces out there. This is especially true when you’re dealing with the level of complexity that a large web project can have. Some of the best sites out there have miles of room for improvement. This is why we consistently try to bring our customers back to the big “why”. How will this feature, design, or piece improve what we’re doing and accomplish the goals we’ve set? When the only rationale is that the competition is doing it, we know it’s time to push back.

Seth Godin puts it this way:

Marketers (and all human beings) are well trained to follow the leader. The natural instinct is to figure out what’s working for the competition and then try to outdo it — to be cheaper than your competitor who competes on price, or faster than the competitor who competes on speed. The problem is that once a consumer has bought someone else’s story and believes that lie, persuading the consumer to switch is the same as persuading him to admit he was wrong. And people hate admitting that they’re wrong.

~ Seth Godin, from Be a Better Liar

The point here is that you need to pick the right battle. Rather than trying look at all the players in an industry and copy every possible feature and activity, it’s much more beneficial to do what you do better, simpler and more thoughtfully.

When figuring out what features you should put on your website, pick the handful that you can’t live without. Then pare that list down further. Trust me, in the long run, you’ll be happy that you did.