Most competitor analysis templates were written for business plans. They ask about market share and funding, which a small store can’t see, and skip what shoppers actually compare: price, shipping, the product page and whether the store shows up when they search.
This one is for online stores. We’ll work through it on an example and then give you the template.
An ecommerce competitor analysis compares your store with the three to six stores your shoppers choose between, on the same points: catalog, prices, promotions, shipping and returns, product pages, Google rankings, content, AI answers, reviews and positioning. Then it says what each difference means for you.
The example
Stilehouse Coffee is a made-up specialty roaster in Portland, Oregon, selling beans, subscriptions and brewing gear online across the US. It’s the store in our demo, so you can click around its numbers. Its three closest rivals, also made up, are Ferngate, Bracken Roast and Hollowmill.
Step 1: Find the competitors that matter
Not every coffee company is a competitor. The ones that matter are the stores a shopper looks at before buying from you. Three ways to find them:
- Search like a shopper. Search Google for your five most important products or needs (“coffee bean subscription”, “fresh roasted coffee beans”) from the country you sell in. Note every store on the first page.
- Ask an AI. Ask ChatGPT the same needs as a question (“what’s a good coffee subscription in the US?”). Note the stores it names.
- Ask your customers. “Where else did you look?” in a post-purchase email gets honest answers.
The stores that turn up in more than one list are your competitors. For Stilehouse, that’s Ferngate (the bigger, better-known roaster), Bracken Roast (the discounter) and Hollowmill (the small specialist).
Step 2: Fill in the matrix
Here’s the matrix for Stilehouse, shortened. The full template has a row for each area.
| Stilehouse (you) | Ferngate | Bracken Roast | Hollowmill | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catalog | 48 items, own roasts, some gear | 120 items, wide gear range | 60 items, mostly blends | 22 items, single origins |
| Price index (yours ÷ theirs × 100) | 100 | 96 | 108 | 92 |
| Promotions running | None | 15% off first order, always on | 50% off first bag with a code | None |
| Free shipping from | $40 | $35 | $35 | $50 |
| Product pages | Tasting notes, no spec table | Spec table, video, reviews | Short, no reviews | Farm and harvest details |
| Google: ranks top 10 for | 5 of 10 searches | 9 of 10 | 6 of 10 | 3 of 10 |
| AI Overviews citing them, this week | 17 | 36 | 12 | 6 |
| Reviews | 4.8 from 140 | 4.6 from 2,300 | 4.2 from 610 | 4.9 from 85 |
| Their promise, from the homepage | “Roasted to order in Portland” | “Coffee for every morning” | “Great coffee, fair prices” | “Single origins, traced to the farm” |
A few things jump out, and they’re the point of the exercise:
- Stilehouse is priced against Ferngate, not against Bracken Roast. An index of 108 against Bracken Roast is mostly its 50% first-bag offer. That’s a promotion, not a price, and it will end.
- Ferngate wins AI Overviews and Google with product pages, not prices. It has spec tables, video and 2,300 reviews. Stilehouse has tasting notes and 140 reviews.
- Free shipping at $40 is the highest but one. Two rivals start at $35.
- Hollowmill owns “traced to the farm”. Stilehouse sells single origins too but doesn’t say where they come from.
Step 3: Write what it means
The last column of the template is the one most analyses skip, and the only one that matters. For each row, one line: keep, fix or ignore.
For Stilehouse:
- Add a spec table and harvest details to every bean page. It’s what the stores AI Overviews cite have and Stilehouse doesn’t. It also answers Hollowmill’s one advantage.
- Ask every subscriber for a review. 140 reviews against 2,300 is the biggest gap in the matrix that money can’t close quickly.
- Test free shipping at $35. Two rivals are there, and shipping is the price shoppers notice last and resent most.
- Don’t chase Bracken Roast’s 50% offer. It’s a first-bag promotion aimed at new customers. Watch how long it runs.
- Ignore Ferngate’s catalog size. Stilehouse’s promise is roasting to order, and 120 products would undercut it.
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Step 4: Keep the parts that move up to date
A competitor analysis is a snapshot. Half of it is out of date within a month:
| Area | How fast it changes | How often to check |
|---|---|---|
| Prices and promotions | Days | Every day for your key products, weekly for the rest |
| Google rankings | Weeks | Weekly |
| AI answers | Weeks | Weekly |
| New pages and content | Weeks | Weekly |
| Reviews | Months | Monthly |
| Catalog, shipping, positioning | Months | Every quarter, plus the full analysis twice a year |
You can do the fast-moving rows by hand, if someone owns them and does them every week. Or you can have a tool read them for you. That’s what Over the Fence does: it reads each competitor’s prices, promotions, pages, Google rankings and AI citations every week, and the products that matter most every day, then sends you what changed.
The template
Download the ecommerce competitor analysis template (CSV, opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets). Each row is an area to compare and says what to record. There’s a column for your store, three competitors and what it means for you.
To use it in Google Sheets, create a blank sheet, then choose File, Import and upload the file.
For prices on their own, there’s a separate competitor price tracking template, explained in our guide to competitor-based pricing.