MBA1371 The Do’s and Don’ts of Comparison Pages

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For example, with our software webinar Ninja, we compare our software with other webinar platforms so we'll have a page for each competitor. Why do businesses do this? Well, it's a very common search term, one product versus another. People want to know the difference between each product and make an educated decision on which product is better for their needs. And often these pages get a lot of traffic because again, it's a popular keyword phrase. So if you're going to build some comparison pages for your business, what are some do's and don'ts? There's a right way to do this and there's definitely a wrong way. And unfortunately many companies are doing it wrong and they're really shooting themselves in the foot. And I'll tell you why? In today's lesson, I'm also going to share with you some great examples on the Internet of companies that are doing it right. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business comparison pages. What are the do's and don'ts. Let's start with why are you creating these pages? What's the purpose here? Many people miss this point and this is where they go wrong. The point of comparison pages are not to make you look like you are the market leader and you're dominant and everybody sucks. No, because that's just simply not true. It's very hard to have that kind of binary relationship in the marketplace and it's just not believable. What you're trying to do here with these comparison pages is speak to your target audience. You want to weed out the people that are not right for you. And you want to talk directly to those who are, who are looking for your unique selling proposition and what you offer versus versus the competition. It's so rare to find any product in any marketplace that's just head and shoulders with no doubt, no brainer, better than everybody else. A lot of it is preference, whether it's an iPhone versus an Android phone, whether it's a Cadillac versus a Mercedes. You might think, you know, Mercedes of course, is better, but I can find you somebody that says the exact same thing about Cadillac. So the point of the comparison pages here is not to badmouth and to trash your competition. It's to highlight your differences, your unique selling proposition. And that leads me to start with the don'ts and don't. Number one is do not badmouth your competition. There are so many comparison pages out there that do this, that are downright nasty. And I've come across some of them that can really get into some trouble. I'm talking about making some claims that are not true and can get them into some legal troubles. Some of them are very sneaky and they don't even state facts. But they say questions like, is this product reliable? I don't know. The jury's still out. That's suggesting that it's not reliable. You know, that's suggesting that your competition, this other product is not a quality product. That's not cool. And I'll tell you why it doesn't work and why you shouldn't do it. Number one, you should not ever do that to your competition because you've heard of the saying, be close to your friends but closer to your enemies. Well, they're not your enemies, so to speak, because they share the marketplace with you. One day they may want to acquire you, one day you may want to acquire them. So drawing blood in this battle is not a good idea. Number two, the reason why it doesn't work and it's just bad for your business is that I find it very offensive when I see a comparison page that totally trashes the competition and just as nasty and is making claims that they can't back up. It's a total turn off and I don't respect the company anymore. I actually leave the website and say, you know what? If that's how they treat other people and even their competition, I'm not sure I want to do business with this company. I'm not sure I want to give them my money. There's something wrong with their culture. The second don't is you don't highlight any positives about your competition. A lot of people, they just say, we do all this and the competition does not do this. They only highlight the things that they do that the competition doesn't do, but they don't talk about what the competition does do. And the reason why this is a big don't is because it's just not believable. It's just not believable. When you have, let's say, a comparison chart and your side of the chart has all these green check marks and they have all red X's. When you're just highlighting things that are going to give you a green check mark and the competition a red X, it can go both ways. The competition can do the same thing and flip the script on you. So instead of being so binary, be honest and give credit where credit's due. For example, with our software webinar Ninja, on our comparison page with Zoom, we praise Zoom for being a great meeting software. And if you want to run meetings one on ones, we actually recommend them. That's their super strength. But when it comes to one to many or few to many, and you're running a webinar and you need marketing and registration pages and email marketing built in, this is where we're better. This is where you want to choose us. The potential customer is going to see, then say, that's fair. That makes sense. And I trust this company more because they're being fair. So not highlighting any of the positives of your competition is a bad idea. Third don't. Is third party negativity what I mean by that? Well, maybe you won't say something negative by your competition, but if you insert something from a customer, like say a testimonial that says, I love Product X. I used to use this product and it was absolute crap. Even though it's a real testimonial, even though it may be factual. Have some class. Don't do that to your competition. I am sure you've had customers that had a bad experience, in their opinion, where you dropped the ball by mistake. It could have been customer service, it could have been a glitch. It could have been they didn't get their package on time. Something where a customer's not satisfied. It happens to all of us, the best of us. How would you feel if that customer and their story of how things went wrong in your business was on your competition's website? Not cool. Last don't is tit for tat. A lot of people say, hey, my competition is nasty. They're bad mouthing left and right. They're doing this and that. They're saying untrue things. I totally can relate to that. But it doesn't mean that you have to stoop down to that level. Like Michelle Obama once said, when they go low, you go high. You have a culture, you have a standard, and you will resonate with those that have the same standard and culture. Now, the do's are obviously the opposite. You want to be honest, you want to be fair, you want to show your unique selling proposition without trashing your competition. And a good way to kind of gauge if you're doing this right. If you showed your comparison page to your competition, to the CEO of that company, do you think they would say, this is absolutely horrible, I'm suing you, this is ridiculous. Or do you think they're going to say, you know what, that hurts, but fair enough, you're not saying something that's not true. You're not saying something that I can disagree with. So I want to give you some examples of some really good comparison pages so you can see what I'm talking about. The first example is webflow. I talked about webflow in an earlier episode. This is a up and coming website builder, website design type of tool. And they have competition like Squarespace and WordPress and Shopify. They're in a market that's super crowded. But if you check out their website or you can just Google like webflow versus WordPress or webflow versus Squarespace, look at their page, it's lighthearted, it's transparent, it's honest. This is on webflow's comparison page for Squarespace. This is on their site. Webflow site is saying this about Squarespace. Squarespace template approach makes it easy for anyone to have and manage a website. That's what they're saying about Squarespace. It's true, it's positive. Why would they put that on their site? Because what are they comparing it to? They're comparing to themselves. What do they do that's different from Squarespace? They're not template based. They allow you to customize anything and they're designer friendly. So if you're a designer and you like things to be a particular way and you don't want to work in the confines of a template, you're going to resonate with webflow. Hey, I like webflow better because that's what I want. Cool. Templates are cool and everything, but that's not for me. Good for you, not for me. And that's a great way to create a comparison page without bashing the competition. They say Squarespace offers solid blogging, event publishing and email marketing tools. But then again, on the other side, they say, hey, webflow, cms, our blogging has the ability to be edited visually and you can structure it any way you want. So they're comparing them to Squarespace without bashing them because they're saying, hey, this is what they're good at, but this is what we're good at when it comes to each feature set. Let's take a look at another company that does comparison pages really well. Our friends over at Podia. Podia is an online course platform where you can create and sell courses online. And they have comparison pages with their competition, teachable Kajabi Thinkification. Now they highlight their strengths as well, but they back it up with some testimonials. So they get a testimonial from their user that talks about their unique selling proposition without bashing the competition, without saying, hey, I use this because I used to use this and it was horrible. No, they just say, I use Podia and one of my favorite things is this. And that is the unique selling proposition. They also have a very short comparison page that highlights their advantages, price point, all that kind of stuff. I wanted to bring up Podia because it's simple, it's a short page, it's not very lengthy. Webflow's comparison pages are very detailed. Podia has a very simple approach to it and something that you can easily use as an example. Comparison pages are very, very effective. It answers a lot of questions for your customers. It's also a great way to support your customers. You can give this to your support team, say, hey, here are some pages, some comparison pages we created. So to answer that question, hey, how are you different from Product X? And you could say, we've written an article on that topic. Here you go. And they can just read it and see it for themselves. And if they have any other questions, they can follow up with customer support. So it could save a lot of time and be very convenient for your customers. It also helps your team answer that difficult question, how are you better than Product X?

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If you're in a marketplace filled with tons of competitors, don't feel compelled to create a comparison page for all of them. You may want to just start with your top three and then build upon that. These pages don't have to be front and center on your website. You can have like a root page where it's just called compare and you can put that link in the footer. In fact, some companies don't even have it in the header or footer at all, and people just find them organically through a Google search serving its purpose. Guys, I hope today's episode was helpful. If you loved it, leave us an iTunes rating and review. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. Also, don't forget to hit subscribe to make sure you get the next episode automatically right on your device. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I always recommend to play the long game in business. Your reputation, what you stand for, and what you do matters. And it's going to affect a lot of the things that will happen to you in the future. So don't do something that you're going to regret. Don't do something like bad math, your competition. Especially on the Internet. That stuff doesn't go anywhere even when you delete a page, it gets saved somewhere in the archives. These nasty strategies, they don't work in the long term. They have a shelf life. You know, they don't really last too long, and when you do that, you just attract the wrong customers. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Of Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals, like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.