# Competitor experience audit Human Guide ## What This Is For Capture the brand, UX, and site design that the leading sites in a vertical observably share, and where they fall short. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for competitive research: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return. Use this as a human-readable version of the Competitor experience audit agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions. ## When To Use This - Use this when you need a repeatable process for competitor experience audit. - Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt. - Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact. ## When Not To Use This - Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer. - Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant. - Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review. ## What You Need Before Starting - The goal or business outcome you want. - The audience, customer segment, or market context. - Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance. - Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements. - A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like. ## Step-By-Step Workflow 1. State the job clearly: "Use the Competitor experience audit guide to help me with..." 2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints. 3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output. 4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below. 5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed. ## Skill-Specific Guidance - Setting the experience bar for a new build in a vertical you have not built in before - Capturing the design and UX conventions a credible site in the category is expected to carry - Auditing the competitive field for a critic or strategy review where SEO and accessibility have been covered but design and experience have not - Naming the positioning opportunity that recurs across the leaders (the gap even the leaders share) - Pairing with a technical audit (SEO, accessibility) so the competitor review captures both axes - Rating a single page or one brand's design taste in isolation (use `design-standards` or `brand-style-guide` for production design decisions on a known build) - Backlink, keyword, or SERP-overlap competitive analysis (use `seo-competitor`) - Generating a creative direction from scratch for a new brand (use `creative-direction` and `brand-discovery`) - User research with real participants on your own product (use `ux-research`, `usability-testing`) - Auditing a single page's on-page SEO or accessibility against the audit suite (use `seo-onpage`, `accessibility-audit`) - The vertical and a list of the leading sites in it (3 to 6 sites; more than 6 stops surfacing new patterns) - Access to the rendered sites (a real browser view, not just static HTML; see "Static vs rendered" below) ## Decision Points And Nuance The original skill emphasizes: When to use, When NOT to use, Required inputs, Static vs rendered, The framework: 7 experience dimensions, Primary-task prominence, Layout register and density, Merchandising and category surface, Primary navigation and search paths, Brand register and conviction. Use these questions to steer the work: - What is the intended audience or buyer? - What source material must be preserved? - What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion? - What examples represent the desired quality bar? - What should the assistant avoid? ## Common Mistakes - Never write `Good design` or `Bad design` or any aesthetic verdict. The dimensions are about what the field observably does, not whether you like it. - Cross-reference the `creative-direction` and `brand-archetype-system` skills for the vocabulary. Report the register the field converges on. Do not rate the taste; describe what posture the leaders take. - Do not name a convention from one site. A pattern is a recurrence across the field (3 of N or more); one site doing something distinctive is a single-site observation, not a convention. - The output is a grounded experience bar: the conventions and gaps of the field, usable as a standard a build must meet. It is not an opinion piece. - **Judging un-rendered pages for layout, density, or motion.** Mark `not_assessable` and get the rendered view. Static HTML supports only partial assessment; do not guess at design quality you cannot see. - The experience bar (the synthesis: what a credible build in this vertical must do) - A credible build in this vertical, against this field, must: - Score each leading site on each dimension using the observable questions below. Mark `not_assessable` whenever the evidence does not support a judgment; do not guess. The audit's value rests on honest observation. ## Copy-And-Paste Prompt ```text Use the Competitor experience audit human guide. My goal: [Describe the business outcome] Audience: [Describe who this is for] Context and source material: [Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy] Constraints: [Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items] Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result. ``` ## Final Checklist - [ ] The output matches the original goal. - [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer. - [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved. - [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit. - [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person. ## Source This guide was generated from the rampstackco/claude-skills skill entry for `competitor-experience-audit`. ## Source Skill Notes These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic. # Competitor Experience Audit Capture the brand, UX, and site design that the leading sites in a vertical observably share, and where they fall short. The output is the experience bar a new build must meet or beat, grounded in cross-site patterns rather than aesthetic opinion. Stack-agnostic. Works on any SiteShape (ecommerce-catalog, inventory-listing, hospitality-food, b2b-manufacturer, and so on). Auto-parts catalogs are the first test case, not the only target. This skill is the brand / UX / design counterpart to a technical audit like `seo-onpage` or `accessibility-audit`. Technical findings are objective (a missing canonical is missing). Design is more subjective, so this skill is deliberately written to make the subjective assessable: every dimension is judged by observable questions about what the leading sites actually do, reported as patterns and gaps, and marked `not_assessable` whenever the evidence does not support a judgment. --- ## When to use - Setting the experience bar for a new build in a vertical you have not built in before - Capturing the design and UX conventions a credible site in the category is expected to carry - Auditing the competitive field for a critic or strategy review where SEO and accessibility have been covered but design and experience have not - Naming the positioning opportunity that recurs across the leaders (the gap even the leaders share) - Pairing with a technical audit (SEO, accessibility) so the competitor review captures both axes ## When NOT to use - Rating a single page or one brand's design taste in isolation (use `design-standards` or `brand-style-guide` for production design decisions on a known build) - Backlink, keyword, or SERP-overlap competitive analysis (use `seo-competitor`) - Generating a creative direction from scratch for a new brand (use `creative-direction` and `brand-discovery`) - User research with real participants on your own product (use `ux-research`, `usability-testing`) - Auditing a single page's on-page SEO or accessibility against the audit suite (use `seo-onpage`, `accessibility-audit`) --- ## Required inputs - The vertical and a list of the leading sites in it (3 to 6 sites; more than 6 stops surfacing new patterns) - Access to the rendered sites (a real browser view, not just static HTML; see "Static vs rendered" below) - The site shape the audit feeds, if known (ecommerce-catalog, inventory-listing, etc.); this scopes which dimensions to weight - Any explicit constraint on the build downstream (the brand voice, the audience, the conversion the build will own) If the list of leading sites is unknown, ask. Picking the wrong field produces an experience bar against the wrong vertical. ### Static vs rendered Some dimensions can be partially assessed from static HTML (primary navigation, the catalog/category surface count, the presence of search). Most cannot. Layout density, brand register, motion, trust-signal prominence, and the rendered hierarchy of the first viewport all need the rendered page to judge honestly. If you only have static HTML for a site, mark every rendered-only dimension `not_assessable` for that site rather than guessing. --- ## The framework: 7 experience dimensions Each dimension is judged by observable questions across the leading sites in the field, then reported as a cross-site pattern plus the gap (where the leaders converge, and where even they fall short). Score each dimension as `Pattern present` (the field converges on a recognizable convention), `Mixed` (the field splits across two or three approaches), or `Gap` (no convention emerges, or every leader misses it). Mark `not_assessable` when the evidence cannot support a judgment. Never write `Good design` or `Bad design` or any aesthetic verdict. The dimensions are about what the field observably does, not whether you like it. ### 1. Primary-task prominence Does the site lead with the visitor's primary job, or bury it? - What is the largest, earliest interactive element on the first viewport? (For auto-parts: typically a fitment selector. For hospitality-food: a menu or reservation entry.) - How many clicks or scrolls to the core task? - Does the site protect the primary task from competing CTAs in the hero? Observable signal: count the elements that compete for first attention, identify which one the layout actually privileges, name what the field converges on as the primary task. ### 2. Layout register and density Is the layout retail-dense, editorial, or marketing-airy? Cross-reference `creative-direction` aesthetic positions (editorial restrained, polished standard, controlled maximalist, expressive maximalist) for vocabulary; do not redefine that here. - How many distinct modules appear above the fold? - What is the content-per-viewport ratio (dense storefront, calm editorial, generous marketing)? - Does the page read as a storefront, a catalog, a landing page, or a brochure? Observable signal: count modules above the fold across the field; describe the register the leaders share, not whether you find it attractive. ### 3. Merchandising and category surface How much of the catalog or offering is surfaced at once, and in what shape? - How many category, collection, or entry-point modules appear before scroll? - How is depth signaled (mega-menu, grid, side rail, faceted search)? - Is the surface flat (one tier visible) or hierarchical (parent plus child categories shown together)? Observable signal: count the category entry points and describe the navigation depth pattern the field uses.