As a Head of CX & UX, I know that creating exceptional experiences isn’t just about innovation — it’s about context. What do customers expect? What are competitors offering? And, most importantly, how can we exceed those expectations?
Read about competitive benchmarking — the process and tool that provides the answers, grounding ambitious design and product strategies in real-world insights.
What Is Competitive Benchmarking?
At its core, competitive benchmarking is a process of evaluating products, services, or experiences against others in the market. It’s not about imitation, but about understanding:
- Industry standards: What features or functionalities are considered baseline in your sector?
- Emerging trends: What’s shaping customer preferences today and in the future?
- Strengths and gaps: Where are competitors excelling, and where are opportunities for differentiation?
In practice, the process involves collecting data from real-world sources: app interfaces, user journeys, customer reviews, and even social media communication.
Then comparing this data against your own products — evaluating usability, customer satisfaction, and design effectiveness.
Our approach
At Ableneo, we approach benchmarking in two ways — full or specific:
Full version: complete market overview
For digital teams that need to get a comprehensive picture of their entire industry, we combine visual and functional reviews with market trends, preparing:
- Design reference library: screens, flows, animations, content design, communication, social media.
- Market analysis: comparison of regional and top global solutions, including landing pages, app store ratings and social media presence.
(Btw, for some customers we prepare annual updates of the libraries)
Design Sprint version: for teams looking for specific answers to important questions
We experience a recurring situation with clients: they are preparing for a project and it is not complete redesign of a website or an app, but only an improvement of some part — let’s say onboarding or payments overview/report. Although their team is good, they have no or minimum time to answer questions such as:
- How does the competition solve this particular problem?
- What innovations or examples are best practices?
- How to implement it on time and on budget?
The decision making and the solutions then fall short of the potential of the team and the available know-how.
This is where we step in and help the teams to speed up and make better decisions — providing inspiration, best practices, and clear examples of how others solve similar challenges. This accelerates decision-making and ensures that solutions are informed and impactful.
Why we call it Design Sprint version? If you are familiar with the Design Sprint methodology, then you know that after you define the goal and the problem (Monday), you need to prepare possible approaches and concepts (Tuesday) so that the best approach can be selected from them (Wednesday), from which a test the prototype (Thursday and Friday).
Monday and Tuesday are the key parts and this is where you can feel the value of a good benchmark and reference library.
Why it matters
Think of competitive benchmarking as both a microscope and a telescope. It lets you examine the fine details of user interactions while spotting larger trends and best practices in design, micro interactions, UX copy, typography or colors — as well as beyond banking strategies and features.
Without this perspective, businesses risk becoming disconnected from their audience or investing resources in areas that won’t deliver impact.
I’ve seen firsthand how benchmarking empowers teams to make better decisions. It’s not just about knowing where competitors stand — it’s about using that knowledge to elevate your own offerings.
Whether it’s identifying overlooked pain points or finding untapped opportunities for delight, benchmarking connects the dots between strategy, design, and business success.
Do you want to learn more?
If you’re interested, we would be happy to show you our benchmarking library of banking and fintech apps.
These apps serve as excellent models because they address not only usability and content strategy but also security, performance, regulatory compliance, and more.
This library is instantly valuable for any digital team or organization, not just those in the financial sector.
In a rapidly changing market, staying still is falling behind. Competitive benchmarking equips you with the tools to keep moving forward, ensuring that your products don’t just meet expectations but redefine them.
Why competitive benchmarking is a CX leader’s secret weapon was originally published in ableneo tech & transformation on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.