Keeping an eye on your competitors' web pages is a vital aspect of competitive intelligence. In this guide, we'll walk you through the steps of monitoring a competitor's webpage with automated screenshots.
Why Monitor Competitor Web Pages?
Understanding what your competitors are up to is essential for staying competitive in your industry. By tracking their web pages, you can:
- Stay updated on their product offerings and pricing changes.
- Keep an eye on their marketing strategies and content updates.
- Identify new product features or services they're introducing.
Some Best Practices to follow
Before diving into the step-by-step guide, consider these best practices:
Choose pages strategically
Focus on web pages that are most relevant. This might include the homepage, pricing page, blog, or product-specific pages.
Start small and keep your list manageable
While it's tempting to track every page of every competitor, it's often more practical to prioritize and select a handful of critical pages to monitor closely.
Once you detect a change, you will be able to do a deep-dive into other pages of your competitor website, cross-reference data. You don't need to monitor everything all the time!
Analyze Changes:
Regularly review captured screenshots and look for trends or significant updates. Changes can offer valuable insights into your competitor's strategy.
Did they rearrange the pricing page ? They might be making room for introducing a new premium, or lower-tier plan !
Examples of Relevant Competitor Pages to Track
Here are some examples of competitor web pages that you might consider tracking:
Home Page: To monitor any design changes, promotional content, or shifts in messaging that can indicate strategic shifts.
Pricing Page: To stay informed about changes in pricing models, discounts, or new offerings that might affect your own pricing strategy.
Product Changelogs and new releases: Keep an eye on your competitor's product changelog to understand their latest feature updates, improvements, and bug fixes. This can help you stay informed on what product areas their development team is focusing on.
Job Postings: To understand their hiring strategies and potential expansion plans.
Monitoring competitors' web pages in PeerPanda
Now that we've covered the importance of monitoring competitor web pages and some best practices, let's set your first page up!
Step 1: Monitoring a new page
Log in to your PeerPanda account, add a new competitor or navigate to an already existing one you want to monitor pages for.
Once you're on the competitor's page, click on the 'Auto Screenshots' tab. Then, click 'Monitor a New Page.'
Step 2: Setting things up
Now, you'll be presented with a form to configure the monitoring of the target webpage. Fill in the following info :
URL of the Page:
Enter the URL of the webpage you want to monitor. This URL should be the direct link to the specific page you're interested in tracking.
Give a Name (Optional):
While this is an optional field, it can be helpful for organizational purposes. Give a short, descriptive name to the page you're monitoring, like "Home Page," "Pricing," or "Job Postings."
This will make it easier to identify the page in your list of monitored pages.
Select Monitoring Frequency:
Choose how often you want PeerPanda to capture screenshots of the page. You have the option to select from different monitoring frequencies.
Note: Screenshots will only be saved if there are noticeable changes on the page.
Save and Start Monitoring
After you've filled in the form with the necessary details, click the 'Save' or 'Start Monitoring' button to initiate the monitoring process.
After completing the setup, the very first screenshot will appear in less than a minute.
Step 3 : Reviewing the screenshots
All the screenshots captured for that page will be accessible below. From the most recent to the oldest.
Each screenshot is accompanied by a similarity score. This score reflects how closely the current screenshot resembles the previous one.
A higher similarity score means that there haven't been significant changes since the last capture. Conversely, a lower score indicates notable alterations.
Happy tracking!
Troubleshooting
Issue: Screenshot Capture Failure
If you notice that screenshots are not being captured as expected, follow these steps to identify and rectify the issue:
Check the URL
Ensure that the URL you've provided for the webpage you want to monitor is accurate and leads directly to the specific page you're interested in. If the URL is incorrect or broken, the capture process won't work.
Verify Frequency Settings
Double-check the monitoring frequency you've selected. If you've chosen a longer duration between captures, the subsequent screenshots might not appear immediately. Adjust the frequency if needed.
Reach Out to Support
If the issue persists after checking the above steps, and you're still facing difficulties capturing screenshots, please don't hesitate to contact our support team. We're here to help !