True optimization is figuring out what works better for your audience.

Don’t copy your role models, and stop copying your competitors: they don’t know what they’re doing either!

I hear this all the time. “Our competitor, X, is doing Y, we should do that too” or “X is market leader and they have Y, we need to have Y”.

There are 2 key things wrong with this reasoning:

The reason the site you want to copy uses X or Y on their website (menu, navigation, checkout, home page layout, etc) is probably random. In 90% of cases the layout is what their web designer came up with (he/she most likely did not perform a long, thorough analysis and testing), or they simply copied another competitor.

What works for them won’t necessarily work for you.

You’d be surprised by the number of people who actually know their shit. It’s (maybe!) 5% knowing and 95% opinions. It’s the blind leading the blind!

“Don’t focus on the competition, they’ll never give you money.”

– Jeff Bezos

Action:

Stop chasing the silver bullet. Just keep testing – your goal should be to do better than what you did last month. That’s your benchmark.