Why you should observe Competitor’s WordPress Plugins and Themes
In today’s competitive environment, it is imperative that you look at your competitor’s website. This will help you gain a competitive edge! So why should you know all about your competitor’s WordPress plugins and themes?
Before we start, keep this in mind that “spying” on your competitor is to help improve our own site. This is the research that will keep your site up-to-date with current trends. Also, it will ensure that you increase your site’s traffic. Check best competitor analysis tools that will help you know your competitor’s better.
While you do not want to outright copy your competitor, it’s always good to get inspiration from others. Besides, it is good to be knowledgeable about what features you can add to make your own site better.
You should keep an eye on best themes and plugins used by your competitor. After that, incorporate them smartly into your site. As a result, you can achieve more site traffic and more lead conversions.
Are you planning to make some big improvements to your WordPress site? Therefore, it is best to start by using some of the methods and tools discussed in this article.
Are you just beginning to develop a WordPress website? Simplify everything!
As a novice, there are a lot of ways you can learn about WordPress development. You listen to podcasts, read blogs, and subscribe to various newsletters. But, sometimes the availability of much information makes getting started an overwhelming task.
Also, you may get confused with all suggestions and recommendations made by experts. For instance, you will not be able to decide which security plugin is best for your site. Nonetheless, one way to avoid this confusion is to check the plugins used on other websites. As a result, you can rest get assured that you are using the plugin or theme that works best on similar websites. This takes a lot of worry out of the decision-making process
Find Your Source of Inspiration
The development of a site is sometimes frustrating. For instance, you may like to add a particular type of functionality to your site. Yet, you may struggle with coding it exactly right. Sometimes you visit a site, and you find it extremely inspiring.
Even so, you may want to how was it developed? However, must you start digging into CSS or JavaScript tutorials? There are a lot of instances when you do not have to code to make your site look awesome. Furthermore, you might want to find out if there is a plugin that will do the same job.
Always Discover the Latest Tech
Most WordPress themes and plugin are fine to use. Nonetheless, sometimes you just wonder if a new theme or plugin will really benefit your site. Often, there are not enough customer ratings to give you an idea of the quality of a theme or plugin.
So, if the theme or plugin get developed by a well-known developer, you might consider giving it a try. But, what would you do if the developer is unknown? One way to determine this is to see if any trusted websites use that new theme or plugin. If the answer is yes, this should be enough of a reason for you to try it out on your own site.
Learn from the Others’ Mistakes
Also, the practice of spying on other websites can get done to learn what should not get done on your site. Moreover, when you come across a site that has something wrong with it, you can make a note to avoid that in your work.
Furthermore, if you know the functioning of a WordPress plugin or theme, you can gain from that. For instance, you may find one of your competitors uses a free version of WordPress theme (3.8 rating). Alongside the theme is Jetpack functionality. Thus, you can use this inf0 to design a better site with a better version of the same theme or plugin
Well, there is nothing wrong with using a free tool like Jetpack. Still, you can improve your site more by using a lightweight or high-quality theme. Also, you can incorporate any of the best CDN services. Or, install a well-known top WordPress caching plugin.
Ways to Size Up the Competition
Which is the best way to know the WordPress plugins and themes in use on a site? One is by reviewing the wp-content folder. Also, you may get this information from your site’s developer. However, your competitor may go to great lengths to keep this information confidential. Therefore, this info is sometimes not easily accessible.
Still, there are some tricks that you can use to get a sense of the theme or plugin they are using. Here are some tools that can help you.
1. Confirm the Source Code
Most often, you will not find info about the WordPress theme in the website’s footer. However, you can figure it out by using a function called inspect browser.
To do this, open a competitor's site, right-click anywhere on the screen and click “inspect”. Then, in the console appearing at your browser’s right side, click on the ‘Sources’ tab.
Is the site made with WordPress and some of its folder files or wp-content is available to public? If so, then you can easily find info here about themes and plugins.
2. Use Built With
BuiltWith is a tool which does a little digging for you. Hence, you can even find out whether a site is using WordPress or not. Also, it reveals info about a site’s themes or plugins. You may be able to find the server and hosting information, libraries, and frameworks used. Besides, you may find info on analytics and advertising.
3. Use WP Theme Detector
Despite the name, WPThemeDetector enables you to dig deeper into the plugins of a site. Also, compared to BuiltWith, you can skip the extraneous technical details. Moreover, you get a lot more insight than you would get from the source code.
Still, the tool offers a feature that compiles a list of all the plugins on a site. From this list, you can go directly to the download/buy pages of every plugin.
How Can You Hide Your Site Info from Competitors?
All these tips about seeing info on a competitor’s site is beneficial to you. Even so, you are probably worried that your competitors are doing the same thing to your site. One way to avoid this is to protect your site from hackers. Thus, you should always ensure they cannot detect that your site is WordPress-based.
However, the truth is that you cannot hide all the info available on your site. Hence, it means that you cannot ensure 100% security. Unless, you rewrite countless lines of codes by spending hours and hours like a pro developer. However, there are premium plugins, browser extensions, and add-ons to do so. They hide your site’s info in an efficient manner.
Conclusion
Keeping an eye on competitors is important for salespeople, marketers, and UX researchers. Also, as a WordPress developer, you must do the proper research on your competitors. As a result, you can know what it takes to be the best.
Staying up-to-date with a competitor’s site is actually pretty easy to do. However, you can also read about the best WordPress Plugin checkers & theme detectors to detect their themes and plugins.
Getting crucial info about your competitors’ themes and plugins is vital. Once you get the info, you can stay a step ahead of them. Also, you can improve your conversion rates with ease.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know in the comment section!
What are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know in the comment section!
Frequently Asked Questions about How to do Competitors' Website's Analysis
Q) How to Analyze Competitor's website?
A) The cruel reality of running a business is that you will face a lot of competition. Now the question is: How to come out on top?
There are a few ways by which you can analyze your Competitor's site:
1) Evaluate your competitors' website content: It is very important to go to your Competitor's website and take a close look at what's there on their pages. Check details like the information they cover, is there FAQ section, etc. By doing this, you are looking for ideas for content that you can put on your site to make it better than your competitors. Take an idea and then modify it to make your site better and increase your website's ranking.
2) Pay close attention to their brand: While visiting your Competitor's site, see their brand colors, is their logo better than yours, what type of personality they are going for, etc. By going through your Competitor's site, you can identify the changes you need to do on your site and make it better and different from there.
3) Find out what website tools they're using: Use free services like, for example, Builtwith to search for the tools and plugins used by your competitors for running their websites. By this, you might get an idea about the tools you can use on your site too.
4) Monitor Competitors on Social media: To see a basic overview of your competitors' activity, you can follow them on social media and observe what's going on in their feed. You can see which social media platform they are more focused on and can change your focus on other social media platforms used least by them. To craft the media strategies, you need to know which posts of your competitors are doing well and how many times they are posting in a day.
5) Look at their Pricing Page: It's important to know what services and offers your competitors provide to users. Please take a look at their prices and then compare your prices with them. You can offer perks and features which your competitors don't offer and get benefitted from this. Build your pricing page after visiting and analyzing your competitors.
6) Get a picture of their Traffic and SEO strategy: There are numerous tools available in the market, which can help you to dig into your competitors' backlinks, referrals, and more. You can use tools like SEMRush. This tool will give you info about your competitors' "domain authority," which will show how they perform on search engine results.
7) Become a Customer: Sign up on your Competitor's site and make a purchase to know the flow of their checkout, their brand's tone of voice and are there any shortcomings that you could take advantage of, etc. Look for gaps and opportunities by becoming a customer of your Competitor's site and use them for your advantage.
Q) What can I learn from my website competitors?
A) Before you open up the powerhouse of information, figure out what is the one thing you want to learn from the competition. If you are not sure what you want to learn, then visiting and searching your competitors' websites will turn out to be a total time-waster. You will be unnecessarily comparing yourself to others and will feel more self-doubt. Don't fall down that hole!
Set a specific goal in your mind and then start your research
· Finding ways to increase your site traffic
· Differentiate between yourself and the competitors
· Finding Ways to Improve Search Engine ranking
· Finding Out the places where your competitors advertise
· Finding ways to improve your Social Media Strategy
Q) Why is it Important to Know about your Competitors?
A) Competitive research is important for your business's growth because it tells you about all the competitors' trends and strategies. You can use these to out-compete your competitors entirely. You need to do a deep search for the competition to make sure the business excels in all aspects.
Q) Name a few competitor analysis tools
A) These tools will help you to upgrade your traffic. You can also learn a lot about your competitors and their marketing strategies.
Some of these tools are:
1.Uber suggest: This tool makes it easy to analyze top keywords, number of backlinks and source, and Top pages of a site.
2.Spy Fu: If you want to increase your site traffic Pay-per-click is a channel you need to consider. It can be effectively utilized by beginners to increase revenue and leads
3. Quick Sprout
4. SEM Rush: It is an all-in-one digital marketing suite. It covers all like SEO, keyword research, Social media, PPC, PR content, and more. It is beneficial to find the best keywords of your competitors, discover new competitors, and find competitors' strategies and budgets.
5. Similar Web
6. Data For SEO
7. Rank Signals
8. Keyword Competitor
9. Google Advanced Search Operators
