6/7. Analysing the Competition: the good and the bad

“Part of target marketing is to understand where consumers see your product fitting in the market ecology, what are you offering in relation to the rest?” (Knight & Cook, p196, 2013). It is important when creating a new business to analyse the competition. By examining their strengths and weaknesses, you can further expand and improve on their ideas. Finding your niche and USP within the market is crucial. Innovating pre-existing ideas and finding ways to make them better is one way to do this (Motion, Heath & Leitch, 2016). Take UBER cars for example. UBER improved on the private hire taxi industry with the use of an app, low prices and the promise of a car in under 5 minutes. This became hugely popular in big cities like London and New York, where cabs are notoriously difficult to hail and tend to be overpriced, and the business grew from there.

Two websites belonging to freelance film editors in Leeds will be critically analysed in this post.

The first website: http://www.andyhardwick.co.uk/.

Andy’s website at first glance looks sleek, minimal and professional. Unfortunately, as you start to explore the site further there is very little content aside from Andy's show reel. The majority of the social media icons are inactive. The social media icons that are active, link to social media accounts that don't look like they are updated on a regular basis.

There is no additional information about Andy and what he does. It seems that Andy’s approach is ‘if you like what you see give me a call for more information'. A client may find this off-putting. A client in charge of hiring a freelance producer in Leeds would probably use the internet as their first port of call to find information. Therefore, they would expect all the information they needed to be on the potential client’s website. In Andy’s case to find out more information they would have to call or email him. In this day and age people want information quickly and easily. Hypothetically, it may take Andy a couple of days to respond to an email, and even with that response he may not be appropriate for the job. This process could potentially cost the client time and money.

Andy’s site is the first to come up when you enter “freelance film producer Leeds” into Google. This may come as a shock due to the minimal amount of text and keywords. However, upon closer inspection if you scroll down Andy's website and highlight the black space this will appear.

This is quite a clever, but sneaky way of improving ones search engine optimisation. Andy has stuffed his website with key words to ensure a high ranking on Google. Getting the top spot on Google is great for business. In Andy's case this almost feels like a wasted opportunity, as mentioned earlier most clients would probably need a little more information than just a show reel before hiring someone.

To conclude on Andy's website, his showreel is impressive and shows a range of notable skills. Good examples of past work would probably be the most important thing a client wants to find, but certainly not the only thing they would want to find. The hidden key words could be a useful tool to help boost one’s search engine optimisation and may be one worth considering. However, with Google Panda’s algorithms constantly updating to prevent key word stuffing (Schwartz, 2016) it's difficult to predict whether or not this would work long term, so finding legitimate ways to boost SEO (good content, links etc.) may be more beneficial.

The second website: http://www.radmiller.com/.

This website as a whole works really well. Rad has found the right balance of video content and text. He has embedded his videos straight from Vimeo. This means you don’t have to click on any external links, but have the option to explore his Vimeo page if necessary. The "about me" section works particular well. Rad has produced a video alongside the textual information which, tells his story in a creative way, providing information while showcasing his video production skills at the same time.

The only criticism is that the site looks slightly dated. At the bottom of the website you can see the site was created and published in 2012, the most recent video (his show reel) was also produced in 2012.

Overall to conclude on Rad’s website, the one-page parallax scrolling format works really well. It makes it easier for the user to navigate, and you almost find yourself scrolling without even realising. This is beneficial as it enables you to explore the whole site. Frederick, Mohler, Vorvoreanu & Glotzbach (2015) conducted a study and concluded that parallax scrolling did in fact improve user experience. They discovered that the participants who engaged with the parallax scrolling websites experienced more pleasure, enjoyment and visual appeal. They found that participants engaging with parallax scrolling sites tended to explore the whole site, whereas participants engaging with non-parallax scrolling websites would lose interest before making it on to the final pages of the site.

However, in terms of Rad’s content, it needs to be updated on a more regular basis. It is crucial you engage and update your website with new exciting content. This is extremely important within the film industry where technology and innovation is constantly changing.

References

Emrich, O, & Verhoef, P 2015, 'The impact of a homogenous versus a prototypical Web design on online retail patronage for multichannel providers', International Journal Of Research In Marketing, 32, 4, pp. 363-374, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2016.
Frederick, D, Mohler, J, Vorvoreanu, M, & Glotzbach, R 2015, 'The Effects of Parallax Scrolling on User Experience in Web Design', Journal Of Usability Studies, 10, 2, p. 87, Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2016.
Knight, M, & Cook, C 2013, Social Media For Journalists : Principles And Practice, pp.196,197: Los Angeles : London : Saga Publications, [2013., Leeds Beckett University Library Catalogue, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2016.
McManus, S, & Quick, R 2011, Web Design, n.p.: Southam : In Easy Steps, c2011., Leeds Beckett University Library Catalogue, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2016.
Motion, J, Heath, R, & Leitch, S 2016, Social Media And Public Relations : Fake Friends And Powerful Publics, n.p.: London : Routledge, 2016., Leeds Beckett University Library Catalogue, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 March 2016.
Schwartz, B. (2016). Google Panda Is Now Part Of Google's Core Ranking Signals. [online] Search Engine Land. Available at: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-is-now-part-of-googles-core-ranking-signals-240069 [Accessed 12 Mar. 2016].