For Software and SaaS Product Managers
A competitor dashboard is a live, ever-evolving document that tracks the most information, insights, and key metrics about your competitors. It’s a tool that helps your team stay informed by keep everyone up to date on what’s happening in your industry.
With a well-maintained competitor dashboard, your entire company has a clear view of what’s happening outside—helping you react faster and make informed choices.
Here’s the reality: every team in your company is already doing some level of competitor research.
But without a centralized competitor dashboard, all that valuable insight stays siloed, with many people doing the same work twice !
For PMs and PMMs, competitor dashboards can help you :
If your team doesn’t have a competitor dashboard yet, now’s the time to build one!
Competitor research is not something that you can do once and be done with. As your competitive landscape is ever-changing, you will derive the most value from a continuously improving approach.
The main artifact is your Competitor Dashboard, it's meant to be regularly updated, and acts as a fill-in-the-blanks template that makes you think of the right questions and helps you structure information.
The whole process is meant to take around 1 to 2 hours :
Competitor Dashboard - Research and Update Process
You will want to repeat this every month, maybe more often if you are in a rapidly-evolving field.
Creating an effective competitor dashboard is not a one-size-fits-all process—it should be tailored to the specific needs and resources of your company.
For Large Enterprises: With more resources, large companies often benefit from building comprehensive systems for competitor monitoring. This might involve setting up specialized teams, integrating various tools, and leveraging sophisticated custom-built dashboards.
For Small to Medium-Sized Companies: An all-in-one platform can provide significant value by simplifying the process and reducing the workload.
PeerPanda: An All-In-One Competitor Analysis Dashboard
If you’re interested in a straightforward, automated solution, check out our 7-step guide: Build the Perfect Competitor Dashboard For your SaaS.
You can return to this guide anytime to learn how to integrate these insights effectively into your product process and keep your dashboard up to date.
While every product manager should ideally design a dashboard that suits perfectly the needs of his product, here's an overview of the information that's useful to include.
This is obviously something that you will write it at the very end of preparing your dashboard, after doing your analysis.
The real value lies in your analysis: Are those new features a threat to your products? Are there especially good ideas that you can steal?
Partner with your Marketing team to help you on this, as crafting your product positioning and understanding the positioning of your competitors is already key of their jobs.
This might be the most important marketing section if your product is a B2C mobile app.
📊 Relevant Data to Include
💻 Sources of Information
💡 Pro Tips
Focus on the platforms most influential to your audience; for B2B, G2 might be more important, whereas B2C may prioritize Trustpilot or Google Reviews.
Social Listening tools can track competitor mentions on social media and forums, giving a fuller picture of customer sentiment beyond formal reviews.
Identify whether any major updates or changes at a competitor’s company (e.g., price increases, feature changes) correlate with shifts in sentiment.
The data should be easily extracted from your salespeople's CRM. Ensure that you have all the necessary fields to track Reasons for deal outcomes, competitors that were evaluated by your prospects, and Key Features that influenced the deal outcomes.
Use a dedicated tool such as PeerPanda's Win / Loss analysis dashboard will help you collect structured data and generate key insights at a glance.
Your salespeople and sales enablement team will LOVE that information, as it will help them build the perfect battle cards for each competitor.
Review the information from the past dashboards to identify patterns and trends.
Every business attracts customers in its own way, so adjust this template to fit how competitors in your industry work, and the GTM motions that you have put in place.
Choose the sections that help you understand the strategies they use to win over customers.
💬 Relevant for: SaaS, Consumer Products, Hospitality
Track average ratings and review trends on platforms like G2, Trustpilot, or Yelp. A solid KPI here is the average star rating over time. This can highlight areas where competitors might be letting customers down—or where they’re excelling.
🔍 Relevant for: SaaS, E-commerce, Media
SEO is a must-watch metric for understanding how your online visibility compares to others. Track key elements like your competitors’ keyword rankings, domain authority, and monthly organic traffic. A key KPI here is the number of keywords where competitors rank higher than you do for valuable search terms.
💸 Relevant for: E-commerce, Consumer Goods, Financial Services
Track competitors’ presence on Google Ads or social media, including estimated budget, ad frequency, and top-performing messaging. A great KPI here is Share of Voice (SOV) for keywords in paid search—this shows how often their ads appear compared to yours, letting you know if you need to adjust spend to keep up.
📧 Relevant for: Subscription Services, E-commerce, Online Education
Competitor email marketing tells you a lot about how they’re staying in touch with customers. Sign up for competitor newsletters to monitor the frequency, content, and tone of their emails.
📱 Relevant for: B2C Companies, Fashion, Beauty
Track follower growth, engagement rates, and content themes on each platform they use. A key KPI here is engagement rate per post—this shows how well their content resonates with followers compared to yours.
💲 Relevant for: SaaS, E-commerce, Consumer Goods
Pricing is an ongoing battleground, and knowing where competitors stand can be a big advantage. Monitor their standard pricing, discount offers, and seasonal promotions.
📝 Relevant for: SaaS, Professional Services, B2B
Track what types of content they’re publishing (blog posts, whitepapers, case studies), their frequency, and any notable engagement metrics. Use organic traffic estimates to individual content pieces as a KPI, helping you gauge which topics are resonating most with your shared audience and where you can improve or innovate in your own content.
Building your dashboard should not be a daunting activity.
When building your dashboard, it's tempting to add every competitor you find. Unless you have a whole team dedicated to competitor research, it's going to be too much to maintain.
Instead, remember the "80/20 rule":
When looking at competitors, it's easy to worry too much about the gaps in your own product. Remember that you should not react to every competitor's move: it's perfectly fine to wait to see the market's reaction before making significant changes to your roadmap.
A competitor dashboard is a centralized tool that collects and displays key data about your competitors, including product updates, pricing changes, customer feedback, and marketing strategies. It provides an at-a-glance overview of your competitors’ moves.
Start by identifying your main competitors and the key metrics you want to track, such as features, pricing, and product updates. Use a tool like PeerPanda to automate data collection and organize the insights in a clear, visual dashboard.
Essential components include product developments, pricing changes, marketing campaigns, win/loss analysis, and trend tracking. These elements give you a comprehensive view of your competitors’ strategies and performance.
Use automation tools like PeerPanda, Google Alerts, and RSS feeds to continuously pull in data from competitors’ websites, blogs, and social media. Set a regular schedule to review and update the dashboard with the latest information.
A well-crafted competitor dashboard is your secret weapon in a crowded market.
It is the cornerstone of your competitor monitoring strategy. With up-to-date insights, it equips your team with the knowledge to react quickly, make smarter decisions, and stay ahead of the competition.
As you stay on top of what's happening in your industry, you can learn from the successes and mistakes of others. As such, it is a perfect addition to your Product Manager Toolbox, and the perfect complement to the insights you gain from user discovery.
But remember—don’t get too caught up in reacting to every move your competitors make. Keep your focus on your vision, and use the dashboard to guide you towards opportunities that align with your goals.
Now, it’s time to build yours !
PeerPanda Competitor Intelligence Platform
Get Started for Free