SimilarWeb review: a complete market intelligence solution

Similarweb

SimilarWeb is a Market Intelligence solution with several objectives. What is Market Intelligence? It is the set of data that allows us to understand a market and its trends. This data also helps to analyze the performance of the competition in order to benchmark and identify growth drivers.
In order to meet this need, SimilarWeb offers a complete platform, allowing the analysis of several elements of a market. But first of all, what is SimilarWeb?
SimilarWeb is a company co-founded in 2007 by Or Offer and Nir Cohen in Tel Aviv, Israel. Today, the company has 1233 employees worldwide, and among its customers are some of the biggest players in E-Commerce and current digitalization, such as :

  • eBay
  • Google
  • Reckitt Benckiser

SimilarWeb’s estimated annual revenue is currently $124.2M per year. SimilarWeb has opened offices in 7 different cities around the world: Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco, London, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, and Paris.

What is SimilarWeb?

As mentioned above, SimilarWeb is a Market Intelligence solution, which allows E-commerce professionals to analyze a market and its players. It currently analyses more than 3 million mobile applications and 80 million websites.
SimilarWeb sheds light on the strategy of both small companies and multinationals. In 2015, it was elected the second most promising startup in Israel.
Indeed, SimilarWeb has a particularly interesting history: navigating between fundraising and the opening of several offices in different countries, the company quickly accumulated success and became a renowned B2B company, both commercially and in terms of investment.
In addition, many Business Angels quickly became interested in the platform to search and find the promising companies of tomorrow, the objective for them being to invest in the projects that seem most relevant and attractive to them. SimilarWeb then gives them very clearly the keys to be able to invest in the desired company and thus meet their objectives.
The platform targets several actors:

  • E-Retailers
  • Marketing managers
  • Business Intelligence, research, or analytics managers
  • Sales representatives
  • Investors

Indeed, it allows all these stakeholders, as well as E-merchants, to make a complete report of a chosen market or market niche. For greater accuracy, SimilarWeb updates its platform daily. 

Similarweb offers several benefits, especially for E-retailers:

Competitive insights: Understand competitors’ strategies, traffic sources, and customer behavior.

Target audience understanding: Gain insights into target customers’ interests, preferences, and online behavior.

Marketing optimization: Identify effective marketing channels and keywords for driving traffic and conversions.

Performance tracking: Track website performance, monitor market trends, and identify growth opportunities.

The registration process of the Market Intelligence platform is very simple, allowing its users to choose between 2 ways to get started:

  • Creating a free account, with the “Try SimilarWeb” option
  • Discussion with a SimilarWeb expert, with the option “Schedule a demo”.

The features of SimilarWeb

To carry out complete and accurate market research, the platform offered by SimilarWeb offers several functionalities:

Website analysis:

SIMILARWEB, A COMPLETE MARKET INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION

When we talk about market research, we think a lot about the analysis of our competitors. Thus, SimilarWeb gives us what we want, by offering a tool for studying the competition, allowing us to know several key indicators in the competition.

Of course, your competitors’ websites are not the only ones you can analyze, so you have the freedom to analyze all the sites you want. 

This feature allows E-retailers to gain valuable insights into their competitors’ websites, including traffic sources, audience demographics, and engagement metrics. By understanding their competitors’ strategies and performance, e-retailers can benchmark themselves, identify areas for improvement, and stay competitive.

Additionally, website analysis helps e-retailers gain a broader perspective of the market by tracking industry trends, identifying emerging players, and discovering new opportunities for growth.

Category analysis

In case you would like to narrow down your search a little, you can do an analysis of a specific category or industry (i.e. a market, or a market niche). Thus, SimilarWeb will offer you a ranking of the sites that work best, based on the filtering you select. Some of the available categories are:

  • Arts and entertainment (music, books, literature, cartoons, comics, etc.)
  • Business and consumer services (online marketing, real estate, textiles, shipping, and logistics, etc.)
  • E-Commerce & shopping (marketplaces, coupons, and discounts, etc.)

Category analysis helps E-retailers gain insights into their industry or specific product categories. It provides data on market trends, top players, and customer preferences, enabling e-retailers to refine their offerings, identify new niches, and stay competitive.

Marketing channels

Conducting a general analysis of the competition is the first step toward effective market research. But a complete and detailed analysis allows you to go further, especially by looking for the most successful marketing channels in the market you are targeting.
SimilarWeb helps its users to take a complete look at the different channels of success, allowing E-commerce merchants to optimize their traffic acquisition strategies via:

  • Search engine queries (organic and paid)
  • Direct searches (type the URL of the site in the address bar)
  • Referrals (links placed on other websites)
  • Social networks
  • E-mails
  • Display ads

Since the main goal of advertising and marketing activities of E-retailers is to sell more with positive ROI, understanding the effectiveness of various marketing channels is crucial for e-retailers. This feature of SimilarWeb allows them to analyze and compare different marketing channels, such as search engines, social media, display ads, and referrals. It helps allocate resources effectively and optimize marketing strategies for maximum reach and conversion.

Application analysis:

SIMILARWEB, A COMPLETE MARKET INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION

We can never say it enough, mobile represents a formidable growth area for E-Commerce. In this way, you can analyze your potential competitors with an application.
As with websites, it is possible to know the traffic generated on the application, the number of monthly downloads, or the score obtained on the various mobile stores.

In this mobile-oriented era, mobile applications are even more crucial for E-retailers.  With this feature, E-retailers can benefit from understanding the mobile app landscape. Application analysis of SimilarWeb provides insights into app performance, usage patterns, and competition. It helps e-retailers refine their mobile strategies, enhance their app experience, and reach customers on their preferred platforms.

Keyword analysis

As an E-merchant, you may be very interested in certain specific keywords. No matter what SEM (Search Engine Marketing) strategy you want to implement (SEO or SEA, organic or paid SEO), you can rely on SimilarWeb.
The platform helps its users to know the number of visits generated by certain keywords. Regardless of whether these visits were generated via an organic strategy or a paid strategy, SimilarWeb will be able to give you the number of visits generated, and the Organic / Paid distribution.

Keyword analysis is an especially valuable feature for e-retailers. It enables them to identify and analyze relevant keywords related to their products or services.

By leveraging keyword analysis, e-retailers can optimize their website content, product descriptions, and marketing campaigns to align with customer search behaviors. This helps improve organic visibility in search engines, drive targeted traffic to their online store, and ultimately increase conversions and sales.

The ability of understanding and target the right keywords is a powerful tool for e-retailers looking to enhance their online presence and attract customers actively seeking their offerings.

Historical data

SIMILARWEB, A COMPLETE MARKET INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION

Need to step back? The platform helps you take it by giving you access to data from 3 years ago.
All these data are grouped in graphical form, helping you to have an overall visual on traffic spread over 3 years, allowing you to see peaks and falls. In particular, it helps to identify potential seasonalities or to know the influence of Ads campaigns, on social networks or search engines, for example.

This feature is particularly advantageous for E-retailers. It enables them to access and analyze past performance data, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of trends, seasonal patterns, and consumer behavior over time.

This historical context is crucial for e-retailers, as it helps them make informed decisions and plan effective strategies. By leveraging historical data, e-retailers can identify successful marketing campaigns, evaluate the impact of specific initiatives, and forecast future performance accurately. 

Custom dashboards

When you do data analysis, you can very quickly get lost in a proposed flow. Thanks to SimilarWeb, this flow can be limited to what you are interested in.
This allows you to create custom dashboards, helping you to filter the data you want.

This feature is especially beneficial for e-retailers as it enables them to focus on the key metrics and KPIs that are vital for their business. By customizing their dashboards, e-retailers can easily monitor and track essential performance indicators such as website traffic, conversion rates, and revenue.

The ability to visualize and access real-time data in a personalized manner empowers e-retailers to make informed decisions promptly, spot trends, and identify areas that require attention. Custom dashboards enhance efficiency, productivity, and strategic decision-making, helping e-retailers drive growth and success in the dynamic e-commerce industry.

Lead generation

As mentioned above, SimilarWeb also seeks to equip sales representatives. For the latter, the platform has included a Lead Generator in its complete list of features. This generator, in particular, allows sales representatives to create several lists, depending on the categories of sites targeted.
This tool can be a particularly useful device in commercial logic. Indeed, the generator can allow you to compare the performance of each selected website and analyze which of them is the most interesting for your own business.

Lead generation in SimilarWeb allows e-retailers to identify potential business leads and prospects. By analyzing website traffic, engagement, and other indicators, e-retailers can identify companies or individuals showing interest in their products or services. This feature helps e-retailers expand their customer base and drive sales opportunities.

Monitored companies

Salespeople and E-merchants / marketers are not the only ones targeted, as mentioned above. Investors also have a place on SimilarWeb’s platform.
Indeed, it is possible for them to create Watchlists, allowing them to create customized lists, taking into account several elements such as :

  • The number of monthly visits
  • The evolution of traffic
  • The evolution curve of this traffic
  • Sector analysis
  • Comparative analysis
  • Application analysis
  • The number of visits from organic research
  • The evolution of traffic from organic research (month by month)
SIMILARWEB, A COMPLETE MARKET INTELLIGENCE SOLUTION

These lists are fully customizable, and allow you to have a global view of potential investments.
They make it possible to answer investors’ questions about digital technology and highlight key digital signals. They delimit and evaluate markets and give an overall picture of the competitive landscape.
For investors, the stakes are therefore high: thanks to SimilarWeb, they can be the first to identify isolated cases and opportunities. It also allows them to track the market share of their portfolio to maximize their growth potential and identify opportunities.

This list of companies to watch is easily achievable thanks to the business opportunity search engine. In particular, it makes it possible to identify the categories of companies in which investors show a certain interest.
SimilarWeb is, therefore, an important tool for investors. It allows them to make strategic decisions based on the performance and web applications of each company and industry.

The “monitored companies” feature can be a game changer for E-retailers too. It allows them to keep track of their competitors. It provides ongoing updates and alerts regarding competitor activities, website changes, and marketing strategies. By monitoring competitors closely, e-retailers can stay aware of market trends, benchmark their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

The Price of SimilarWeb

In order to adapt to the different needs and budgets of the companies requesting the solution, SimilarWeb offers a free version, as well as a PRO version:

Free version:

This first pack includes several elements, such as 5 results per indicator (such as traffic), 1 month of mobile application analysis, or 3 months of web traffic data.

The company/pro version:

This pack is fully modular and allows companies to meet very specific needs, resulting in a modulation of prices. Among the different features, you can find:

  • An unlimited number of results per indicator
  • 28 months of mobile application analysis
  • 3 years of web traffic data (which you will need for historical data)
  • Data at the international and national levels
  • The comparison between computers and mobile devices
  • The commitment to mobile applications
  • Popular pages on a website
  • Keyword analysis
  • Analysis by sector
  • Unique visitors
  • The possibility of having several users on the platform

Support from SimilarWeb

In order to help its users as much as possible, the platform offers multiple resources, such as:

  • Webinars, developing various and varied topics such as digital marketing or growth strategies, allowing users to obtain additional development axes thanks to SimilarWeb ;
  • Events, in order to know more and bring value to its users, SimilarWeb plans meetings;
  • A knowledge center, in which multiple documents and pages are gathered. A FAQ, API integration documentation, various guides, and the glossary are included in this section of the platform;
  • A blog, to give relevant advice to Internet users;
  • Support, which can be contacted on a dedicated page.

If you’re looking to maximize the potential of your e-commerce business, We highly recommend taking the next step and getting in touch with SimilarWeb. Don’t hesitate to reach out and explore how SimilarWeb can revolutionize your e-commerce business.

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ECN Team
E-Commerce Nation is The 1st B2B Web Media about E-Commerce in Europe. The team of E-Commerce Explorers help businesses to reach new potential market through delivering useful content. Let us know in comment if you enjoyed this content.