Definitely, there is a very big chance to lose if you don’t mind the major players in your industry! Studying so well your competition and competitors in your market is healthy and is a must in order to survive, grow and have a successful business. The bottom line is if you don’t do that, they will do it from their sides.

That means a healthy competition is always supporting change which will distinguish your company from others, especially if you are operating on a relatively crowded market!

In this article, I will be sharing with you a secret weapon that will allow you to spot the trends, services, tools and technologies your competitors are using.

In this way, you can generate a detailed insight that will lead you to earn a competitive intelligence.

With only one tool such as BuiltWith, you can really depend on it to answer many questions regarding Internet Research, Competitive Analysis and Business Intelligence, Advertisers, Analytics, Frameworks, CMS used, Web Servers and many more.

Let’s see some examples of how this tool can help you!

Ethical Tricks To Spy On Your Competitors

1- Detect their Content Management System:

Have you ever wondered, what is the Content Management System of your competitors? Or how did they create the website? Well, you can have answer for like these questions by using Builtwith.com. It will help you identify the CMS used, the trends and number of websites currently using it.

You may ask why I need to know that? My answer is that it will help you get the right choice when selecting from different CMS out there. If your competitor is having good results using a certain CMS. Sure you will do also.

More, choosing the right CMS can help you NOT to run in selecting the wrong CMS platform that will not work for you as you expect. Therefore you are going to repent that for later stages.

FYI: Content Management Systems are web-based applications designed to create and manage the content of a website. Some famous Content Management Systems are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Bigcommerce (for eCommerce), Magento (for eCommerce website), Shopify (for eCommerce website). To know more visit this link.

2- Identify your competitors Web Server:

Spotting your competitors Web Server can help you save too much time, effort and money. It can help you mostly if you are an entrepreneur. To establish a competitive intelligence over the competition, you should be aware of what the trending technologies in the Web Server. Most importantly, this can give you great insight about their leading indicator for initiatives.

Based on a study the following are the most Web Servers used by websites: Apache (57.1%), Nginx (24.5%), Microsoft-IIS (13.2%), LiteSpeed (2.2%), Tomcat (0.5%)

For example, I can say that Aljazeera.com website is running on a Microsoft IIS Server (IIS8).

FYI: Web servers include those programs that empower a computer to present web pages on the Internet.

3- Email Services:

Email Marketing is a very important channel in digital marketing. Having the right email provider can make a world of difference to your business. This information is publicly shown if you want to check that out.

If you have many competitors in your industry, try to use an excel sheet where you can list what they are using and what not.

By checking, for example, CNN.com, I can say that there are using Microsoft Azure DNS. (check out thelink to see trending and statistics).

4- Identify their Advertising Platforms:

By using Built With Tool, you are in your way to get a very good and clear idea about the advertising means or platforms that your competitors are using to get more exposure, leads and sales for their business.

Cyprus is known by hosting too many Offshore companies operating in Financial Industry like Forex and Binary Options. If you are operating in like this crowded industry and wanted to know about your competition, that tool can hep you expose their Advertising tools.

By checking one reputed Forex Company In Cyprus, I noticed that they are taking advantage of these advertising platforms: Double Net, AdRoll, AppNexus, Yahoo Small Business, IponWeb BidSwitch, Openads/OpenX, Twitter Ads, Facebook Exchange FBX.

5- Identify their Analytics and Tracking:

If you were Apple, you would keep a track of what Samsung was doing. To achieve this, you should know among other things, what your competition is using for Analyzing data and tracking traffic, conversion, sales and ROI. All we know Analytics is an essential part for any business development and success.

The giant search engine ”Google” is a good example of using this technology. It is legal and ethical to have a competitive intelligence about what your competitors are utilizing in the field of Analytics and Tracking as it is displayed publicly.

Summary:

Of course, there are other things to look into when using Built-with tool. You can discover other features by yourself. I listed what is important above as a Marketer. If you are an IT individual you can find it also so useful. It really a great tool for anyone!

Important note: I am not doing any advertising for this tool or whatsever. I am just a big fan of it and I thought it would help you in your analysis to achieve competitive Intelligence.

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