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competitor-teardown

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Competitor Teardown

Produce a structured, evidence-grounded competitor teardown brief. The output is a markdown document containing stack detection, heuristic/UX findings, SEO and content observations, and a digital maturity score — ready for internal strategy review.

When this skill applies

  • User provides a competitor domain, brand name, or a list of competitors
  • User asks for a "competitor analysis," "teardown," "audit," "landscape review," or "platform read"
  • User wants to understand how a client stacks up against named peers before a pre-envision or platform-selection engagement
  • RFP response prep: "who are we going up against and what do they do well?"

Skip for: standalone Five Forces → five-forces-analysis; SEO/content gap register → seo-content-gap; digital maturity scoring only → digital-maturity-benchmark.

Inputs

Parameter Required Default Notes
competitor-domain-or-name Yes — One domain per run; for multiple competitors run the skill once per domain then compare
--client No — The client's domain; enables head-to-head comparison where data allows
--platform No auto-detect Forces platform adapter notes even if signals are weak
--depth No standard quick = stack + 3 heuristics + 1-para summary; deep = full checklist + recommendations
--output No brief brief = structured markdown; slides-notes = presenter notes for deck; full-report = long-form with appendix

Workflow

Step 1 — Scope and confirm

Restate what you are analyzing:

  • Competitor domain
  • Client domain (if provided)
  • Depth and output format
  • Engagement context (platform-selection, pre-envision, BD, advisory)

Confirm before proceeding if anything is ambiguous.

Step 2 — Stack detection

Fetch the competitor's homepage and 2–3 deep pages (about, a content-heavy page, and the careers or blog section). Look for:

Server-side signals:

  • X-Powered-By, X-Generator, X-Backend HTTP headers
  • <meta name="generator"> tag
  • URL patterns: .aspx, /sitecore/, /umbraco/, /episerver/, _next/, /wp-content/
  • robots.txt and sitemap.xml paths — CDN vendor paths, CMS-specific folder patterns

Client-side signals:

  • JavaScript globals: Sitecore, EpiServer, Umbraco, wp, Contentful, __NUXT__, next, __astro
  • data-sitecore-*, data-epi-*, data-umbraco-* HTML attributes
  • Script sources: Azure CDN paths, Akamai, Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront patterns
  • Analytics: Adobe Analytics (s_code), GA4 (gtag), Segment, Tealium
  • Personalization/A/B: Optimizely Web Experimentation, Adobe Target, Dynamic Yield

Cross-reference with Wappalyzer lookup (https://www.wappalyzer.com/lookup/?url=<domain>) and BuiltWith (https://builtwith.com/<domain>).

Classify the stack into these layers (see reference.md § Stack Taxonomy):

Layer Detected Confidence Evidence
CMS/DXP
CDN / Edge
Analytics
Personalization / A/B
Search
Commerce
Tag management
Frontend framework
Hosting / cloud

Confidence: High (direct code evidence), Medium (indirect signal or single source), Inferred (pattern match only, may be wrong).

Step 3 — Heuristic / UX review

Walk the competitor site as a first-time visitor. Evaluate against Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics, scoring each 1–5 (1 = serious violation, 5 = excellent). Focus on:

  1. Visibility of system status — loading states, form feedback, progress indicators
  2. Match between system and real world — language, mental models, content hierarchy
  3. User control and freedom — undo, back-navigation, escape routes
  4. Consistency and standards — platform conventions, UI pattern consistency
  5. Error prevention — form validation, confirmation dialogs, guardrails
  6. Recognition over recall — navigation clarity, iconography, contextual cues
  7. Flexibility and efficiency — shortcuts, personalization, search quality
  8. Aesthetic and minimalist design — visual noise, information density
  9. Help users recognize, diagnose, recover from errors — error message quality
  10. Help and documentation — findability of support, onboarding flows

For each heuristic: score, 1–2 sentence rationale, and one concrete example (page URL + element).

Add a Content Author Experience note if the CMS is identifiable: how editor-friendly does the content appear to be? Signs of templating rigidity, content freshness issues, or editorial consistency gaps.

Step 4 — SEO snapshot

Fetch publicly available SEO signals:

  • Domain authority proxy — backlink count visible on Ahrefs site explorer public view or SEMrush overview
  • Organic traffic estimate — SimilarWeb monthly visits (public tier), traffic trend direction
  • Title/meta quality — sample 5 pages: title tag format, meta description presence and length
  • Core Web Vitals — run PageSpeed Insights (https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=<domain>) for mobile and desktop; record LCP, CLS, INP
  • Structured data — check for Schema.org markup types (Article, Organization, Product, FAQ, BreadcrumbList)
  • Indexability signals — robots.txt restrictions, canonical tag consistency on 2–3 pages

Summarize as: Organic visibility (Strong/Moderate/Weak), Technical SEO health (Strong/Moderate/Weak), Content signal quality (Strong/Moderate/Weak). See reference.md § SEO Evidence Standards for thresholds.

Step 5 — Content strategy read

Sample 10–15 pages across the site to characterize:

  • Content types present — blog, case study, product/service pages, resource hub, video, interactive tool, calculator
  • Publishing cadence signals — date stamps on 5 recent posts; gap between them
  • Depth and format — average word count estimate; use of visuals, video embeds, downloadable assets
  • Topic authority signals — what subjects do they publish most on? What do they appear to own?
  • Personalization signals — gated content, progressive profiling, recommendation widgets, region/industry selectors
  • AI search readiness — is the content structured for featured snippets and AI answer extraction? (concise definitions, Q&A blocks, schema FAQ)

Step 6 — Digital maturity scoring

Score the competitor on RBA's six-dimension maturity model (see reference.md § Maturity Dimensions, scale 1–5):

Dimension Score Evidence summary
Experience design
Content operations
Data / personalization
Commerce capability
Cloud / infrastructure
Accessibility

Overall maturity band: Emerging (6–12) / Developing (13–18) / Advancing (19–24) / Leading (25–30).

Step 7 — Findings brief

Use the structure in templates.md. Sections in order:

  1. Executive summary — 4–6 bullets; strength, weakness, and what it means for the engagement
  2. Stack profile — table from Step 2 plus key observations
  3. UX / heuristic findings — top 3 strengths and top 3 weaknesses with scores
  4. SEO snapshot — three-signal summary with supporting data
  5. Content strategy read — content type inventory and 2–3 strategic observations
  6. Digital maturity score — dimension table and band with interpretation
  7. Strategic implications — what does this mean for the client? What should RBA frame in the engagement?
  8. Confidence and caveats — what you could not verify from public data; what would change this read

Step 8 — Self-check before returning

  • Every finding cites a page URL, HTTP header, or named tool output — no floating assertions
  • Confidence levels are assigned for stack detection (High/Medium/Inferred only)
  • SEO figures are labeled as estimates from the named source, not presented as authoritative metrics
  • No personally identifying data about site visitors or employees
  • Strategic implications are framed as hypotheses for the strategist to validate, not conclusions

Return the teardown brief as markdown. Remind the user to run market-research-reviewer for an independent check before client sharing.

Reference and template files

  • reference.md — Stack Taxonomy, SEO Evidence Standards, Maturity Dimensions with scoring anchors
  • templates.md — Teardown brief template with section-by-section guidance
Technical details
Plugin
market-research-agent
Author
Dakota Smith
Skill name
competitor-teardown
Maturity
experimental
Security review
No security review
Owners
  • strategy
Argument hint
<competitor-domain-or-name> [--client <your-domain>] [--platform sitecore|optimizely|umbraco|composable] [--depth quick|standard|deep] [--output brief|slides-notes|full-report]
Allowed tools
  • Read
  • Write
  • WebFetch(domain:www.wappalyzer.com)
  • WebFetch(domain:builtwith.com)
  • WebFetch(domain:similarweb.com)
  • WebFetch(domain:www.semrush.com)
  • WebFetch(domain:ahrefs.com)
  • WebFetch(domain:pagespeed.web.dev)
  • WebFetch(domain:web.dev)
Source
plugins/market-research-agent/skills/competitor-teardown/SKILL.md

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