Competitor Analysis

After completing As Is Analyses for 3 competitors (ratemyprofessor.com, koofers.com, studentsreview.com), we were able to have an overview of what areas our competitors are strong/weak in.

One of the competitor sites did not date the posts, so users did not know how relevent the post was though, all competitor sites confirmed immediately when the user's post was submitted.  We will ensure to stay competitive by putting dates on posts and by confirming the user that their post has been submitted.

All of the competitor sites use language that is appropriate and up-to-date with the college student demographic.  We will be sure to use language that is appropriate, as well.  Additionally, we could use smiley faces for rating as www.ratemyprofessors,com did, or we could allow the use of smiley faces in writing the posts since emoticons are extremely applicable to how college students express themselves via social media.

We will be sure to have back button support, as this is a site where users will most likely be browsing different areas of the site and going back to different sections.  To allow even more ease of use, we will establish "bread crumb" links so the user will be able to see their activity trail and easily go back to any specific section they were on before.

We will be sure to keep terms consistent throughout the site, as our all our competitors did so, as well.  Two of the competitor sites had poor error prevention, in such that they did not notify the user preemptively.  One site did not tell the user that their username was already taken until the last step, and the other site did not have a "confirm submission" pop-up before submitting the user's post.  We will be sure to not follow suit within these certain instances, and apply strong error prevention in all areas of the site.

All of the sites were fast, though one was redundant as side bars were the same as the top drop down bars.  We will provide a concise layout with fast loading times.  We will also provide a clean, minimalist layout to avoid overwhelming the user.

We will be sure to have error notifications if an error does occur that tell the user why the particular error occurred, as well, we will offer a button to the help page that gives the user more information on recovering from their error.  Additionally, we will provide a FAQ page that users can go to for any questions.