What is your competitive advantage?
A competitive advantage is something you have that your competitor doesn’t, it is a reason for someone to visit your website instead of someone else’s. This criteria could be one of the following:
1. Unique selling point (USP)
Having a unique selling point is one of the most important things in business, it means you offer something different from everyone else. For example if you held a patent on a certain design of a product that nobody else had.
Another USP could be that you specialise in one product and nobody else does this, for example you may be the only store in the world that only sells spoons, but you have every different kind of spoon that anyone could ever want.
Having a unique selling point makes advertising much easier, for example you could state at the top of your website “The world’s largest supplier of spoons” or something similar to gain peoples interest.
2. Reputation
This is everything in business, if you are a new start-up company it can be tough to establish, especially on the internet where people have to know where you are before they visit your website. It’s easier if you’re a shop on a high street where people will walk past and see what you have available, but its easier still if you have a great reputation.
Having a recognisable brand name is important, if you offer a product that people like then that will become recognised and your reputation will grow. If you manage to become the leading brand in a certain field then you are in a great position for the future, for example Google and eBay are the leading competitors in their respective fields of search engines and online auctions because they both have a great reputation and the vast majority of people use those websites over any other.
3. Effective Strategy
If you plan well and you get a head-start over your competitors then you have a great advantage, the best way to plan is for 3 different outcomes; if things go how you expect, if things go better than expected and if things go worse than expected. By doing things this way you will always be one step ahead of your competitors and will know exactly what to do no matter what scenario happens.
When the internet was first coming to prominence a lot of company’s saw it as a threat, and some still do. Michael Porter said back in 2001 that those who see the internet as a complement to the traditional ways of competing will be the real winners, this has proved true for many major companies.
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