# Competitor analysis for an online store: a 1-day plan with AI Competitor analysis for an online store in one day: find rivals, compare landed prices, delivery, SEO, reviews and ads, then turn it into 3 decisions. Source: https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/competitor-analysis-online-store · CloudCart · 2026-11-06 In short: a competitor analysis for an online store fits into one working day. You pick 5 competitors, compare price, delivery, range, keywords, reviews and ads in one table for your 10 best products, and finish with 3 decisions for your own store. An AI assistant with web access collects the public data in about an hour, so your time goes into the conclusions. This guide comes from the CloudCart team, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform, and is written for founders, expats and companies selling in or from Bulgaria, as well as EU sellers shipping into the Bulgarian market. Use it before a launch, a peak season or a price change. Legal rules and ad library details link to their official sources. ## What is a competitor analysis for an online store? A competitor analysis (or competitive analysis) compares your store with the stores the same shoppers buy from, on what the shopper sees before ordering: price, delivery, choice, trust and advertising. The goal: 2 or 3 places where you can be clearly better. For an online store almost everything is public: prices on the site and on price comparison sites, ads in the libraries of Meta and Google, reviews on Google and marketplaces. A competitor's margin and sales stay hidden, so you compare the offer the shopper sees. ## How to find your competitors: Google, Pazaruvaj, eMAG and Meta Your competitors are the stores your customer sees while searching for your product. You find them by searching like a customer in 4 places and noting which names show up more than once. - Google. Search 5 to 10 phrases you want to be found for ("coffee beans", "coffee beans next day delivery"), in the organic results, the ads and the Shopping tab. Write down the domains on page one. - Pazaruvaj and other price comparison sites. Pazaruvaj is a Bulgarian price comparison site. It shows which stores carry the same product and at what price. - eMAG and OLX. eMAG is an online marketplace and OLX a classifieds site, both used by Bulgarian shoppers. Sellers there compete for the same shopper, even without a website of their own. - Meta Ad Library. Search your niche's words in the Meta Ad Library with Bulgaria as the country. This surfaces the stores buying customers on Facebook and Instagram. Split the list into three groups. Direct competitors sell the same products to the same customers. Marketplaces and large chains set price and delivery expectations. Indirect competitors solve the same problem another way (capsules instead of beans). For a one-day analysis, take 3 direct competitors, 1 marketplace seller and 1 indirect competitor. Selling cross-border? Repeat the search per country. ## A 1-day plan: competitor analysis step by step A one-day competitor analysis runs through 7 steps, each with a clear output. - Goal and 10 products (30 minutes). Write down what you are deciding: price, range, advertising or launch. Choose the 10 products that bring, or will bring, most of your sales. - Competitor list (45 minutes). The search on Google, Pazaruvaj, eMAG and the Meta Ad Library from the previous section. - Prices and delivery (1.5 hours). For each of the 10 products: the price, delivery to an address and to a courier office or parcel locker, the free shipping threshold, the delivery time and the payment methods. - Range and product pages (1 hour). How many products each has in the category, which brands, whether photos and descriptions answer the shopper's questions. - Keywords and SEO (1 hour). Which searches they rank for, how their category titles read, whether they have a blog and FAQs. - Reviews and ads (1 hour). What their customers praise and complain about, which ads they run and with what message. - Conclusions (1 hour). A one-page SWOT and 3 decisions, each with a date and an owner. If you are still choosing a niche, start with the shorter check in the article on [online store business ideas and how to test them](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/online-store-business-ideas), and run the full analysis once you have 10 products to compare. ## How to compare competitor prices and delivery Compare prices and delivery on the total the shopper pays to the door, because that is exactly the number the shopper compares. A €24 product with €5 delivery loses to a €26 product with free shipping over €25. One table covers all 10 products; the example shows one. | Item | Your store | Competitor A | Competitor B | eMAG seller | | Product price incl. VAT | €24.90 | €22.90 | €26.50 | €23.40 | | Delivery to address / to office or locker | €4.90 / €3.50 | €5.90 / not offered | free shipping over €40 | marketplace terms | | Total for 1 unit to an address | €29.80 | €28.80 | €26.50 + delivery | work it out for your city | | Delivery time | 1-2 working days | 2-4 working days | 1 working day | depends on seller | | Payment | card, cash on delivery | cash on delivery | card, cash on delivery, instalments | marketplace terms | | Advertised discount | none | −20% from €28.60 | none | none | The numbers are an example. Fill in yours by adding the product to the cart and going to the last step before payment without ordering, so you also see fees missing from the product page. In Bulgaria, check delivery to a courier office and to a parcel locker separately: many shoppers pick up from an Econt or Speedy office or a BOX NOW locker (Econt and Speedy are Bulgarian couriers, BOX NOW runs parcel lockers) and pay with cash on delivery, so note which competitors offer it. Be careful with advertised discounts. Under Art. 65(2) of the [Consumer Protection Act (in Bulgarian)](https://lex.bg/laws/ldoc/2135513678), in force since May 28, 2022, the previous price shown with a reduction must be the lowest price the trader applied in the same store during at least 30 days before the reduction. A competitor's "−20%" therefore does not prove the product cost that much last month. The same rule applies to your own promotions. Then decide where you stand: cheaper, same price with better delivery, or dearer for a reason (brand, warranty, speed). How to set a price that covers your costs and margin is in the guide to [pricing, markup and margin](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/pricing-margin-online-store). > CloudCart Pay 0% transaction fee through Dec 31, 2026 When the gap to a competitor is €1-2 per product, the card fee matters. With CloudCart Pay, cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay are built into the checkout with no transaction fee until the end of 2026, so you can set a sharper price without losing margin. How CloudCart Pay works → ## Product range: what competitors sell and what shoppers look for Compare the range with three questions: how much choice the competitor has in the category, what they lack that shoppers want, and how well each product is presented. - Breadth. Number of products and brands in the category, and the price range from the cheapest to the most expensive. - Gaps. Sizes, pack sizes, bundles or brands that every competitor is missing. - Page quality. Photos from several angles, dimensions, materials, delivery time next to the "Buy" button, answers to the common questions. The best source for gaps is your own store's search box, where shoppers type what they want. > Aura Search What shoppers search for and do not find, from €9 a month Aura Search shows the popular searches in your store, the searches with no results and those with no clicks or low conversion. A search with no results is a product someone wanted. Put it next to the gaps from your analysis and you know which products to add first. How Aura Search works → ## SEO: which keywords your competitors rank for Competitor keywords show which searches bring them customers. Three tools, from simplest to most complete: - Search Google like a customer. Type 10 to 20 phrases from your niche and note who is in the top 3 for each. - Google Search Console for your store. The performance report shows the queries you already appear for and your position. Queries at positions 5 to 15 are where a competitor is only slightly ahead of you. - Ahrefs or Semrush. Enter a competitor's domain to see the keywords it ranks for, their volume and the pages that win them. Check the AI assistants as well. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude "where can I buy [your product] in Bulgaria" and note which stores they name. This is your visibility in language models (GEO). How to prepare your store for it is on the page about [SEO and GEO in CloudCart](https://cloudcart.com/en/seo). Output: 5 keywords for new category titles and 3 unanswered customer questions for your blog. ## Competitor reviews: what their customers praise and complain about Competitor reviews are the cheapest market research: their customers write what they expected and did not get. Read the 1 to 3 star ratings first. The sources are the competitor's Google Business Profile, seller ratings on eMAG and other marketplaces, and the reviews in the store itself. Sort the complaints into 5 boxes: delivery (late, damaged), product (not as pictured), service (no answer on the phone or by email), returns (slow refunds) and price (hidden fees). The fullest box is the message for your ads and product pages. Important: under Art. 68e(7) of the Consumer Protection Act, in force since May 28, 2022, a store that displays reviews must state whether and how it checks that they come from customers who bought the product. Art. 68zh, item 27 bans fake reviews and commissioning them from third parties. If a competitor shows only perfect ratings with no purchase check, do not treat them as reality and do not answer in kind. How to collect your own reviews after every order and show them in Google is in the article on [customer reviews for an online store](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/customer-reviews-online-store). ## Competitor ads: Meta Ad Library (Facebook Ad Library) and Google Ads Transparency Center Competitor ads sit in two public libraries: the Meta Ad Library (formerly Facebook Ad Library) and the Google Ads Transparency Center. According to [Meta's Ad Library tools page](https://transparency.meta.com/researchtools/ad-library-tools), ads that deliver an impression in the EU are displayed while active and archived for one year after their last impression. For these ads you see the text and visual, the dates, the total reach, the reach split by country, age and gender, and the location, age and gender the advertiser targeted. In the [Google Ads Transparency Center](https://adstransparency.google.com/?region=BG) you search for an advertiser by name or website and filter the results by date and location, as described in [Google's help on ads transparency](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/13733850). | What you record | What it tells you | | How many ads the advertiser runs and since when | An ad that has run for months most likely brings sales | | Message: price, delivery, quality or emotion | What the competitor thinks wins the customer | | Offer: discount, free shipping, gift | Which offer the shopper already sees every day | | Reach by age and place (for ads in the EU) | Who actually sees the ad | Do not copy the ads. If everyone talks about price, your ad talks about delivery time or warranty. How to launch your own ad afterwards is shown step by step in the guide to [Meta ads for an online store](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/meta-ads-online-store). ## How an AI agent collects the data for a competitor analysis An AI agent collects the public competitor data in about an hour: you give it the competitor list and the 10 products, and it returns a finished table of prices, delivery terms and category titles for you to check. AI assistants with web access, such as Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex and Gemini CLI, can open public pages. Connected to your CloudCart store, they also read your own products and prices, so the comparison ends up in one table. Here is a sample instruction for the assistant: "Open the pages of these 5 stores for these 10 products. For each, record the price, the delivery price to an address and to an office or locker, the free shipping threshold and the delivery time. Take my prices from my store. Build a table and mark where I am more than 5% more expensive. Do not log in to any account and do not fill in any forms." - Give a read-only key. For an analysis the assistant should not change anything. In the admin, under the "PAT Tokens" screen, you create a key with read-only access. - Check the numbers. Open 2 or 3 of the pages yourself. Prices change, and some sites show a different price once a variant is selected. - Repeat monthly. Run the saved instruction again; the second table shows what changed. > Store run by an AI assistant Your conclusions go into the store with one instruction The same assistant that built the table changes prices by SKU, adds missing products and rewrites descriptions once you give it a key with write access. It works with Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Cursor, VS Code and Gemini CLI, and you write to it in English. How to connect the AI assistant → ## From the table to decisions: SWOT and 3 actions A competitor analysis ends with a one-page SWOT and 3 actions with dates. | Finding | Goes into | Example action | | You deliver in 1-2 days, competitors in 2-4 | Strength | Delivery time next to the "Buy" button and in the ad | | You are over 5% more expensive on 4 of 10 products | Weakness | A new price or a bundle with more value | | Nobody sells a 1 kg pack | Opportunity | New product within 2 weeks | | A large store runs ads with free shipping | Threat | Free shipping threshold based on your average order | How to build the full SWOT and carry it into the numbers is shown in the [online store business plan with an example](https://cloudcart.com/en/blog/business-plan-online-store). Pick advantages a competitor cannot copy in a week: speed, service, niche range, content. ## How often to run a competitor analysis Run the full competitor analysis once a quarter and before the big seasons, and check the prices of your 10 products every month. For Black Friday and Christmas, do the check 3 to 4 weeks early so you have time to change prices and ads. Between checks, watch your own numbers. In [CloudCart analytics](https://cloudcart.com/en/analytics) you compare every period with the previous one, and on plans that include comparisons, reports such as cart conversion rate also show the average for CloudCart stores in your industry, updated every week. You choose your industry in the analytics dashboard settings. So you see whether you are above or below the average without knowing a competitor's figures. ## Common competitor analysis mistakes - Comparing yourself with the biggest player. A chain with thousands of products is not your direct competitor. Compare with stores of similar size and niche. - Looking at price alone. The shopper pays the total with delivery and also chooses on delivery time, payment options and trust. - A table with no decisions. If nothing changes in your store after the analysis, the day is lost. - Copying. Their photos and descriptions are protected by copyright, and an identical offer leaves the shopper only price. A CloudCart store also sends its catalog to eMAG, OLX and other [sales channels](https://cloudcart.com/en/sales-channels), and in your own store you pay a fixed plan with [0% commission on sales](https://cloudcart.com/en/offer/zero-commission-ecommerce). > New store €1/month for the first 3 months The analysis shows where you can be better, and the store turns it into sales. New stores get the full plan for €1 a month for the first 3 months, with Econt, Speedy and BOX NOW in the checkout. The offer is for new stores until Dec 31, 2026. Create a store for €1 → ## Frequently asked questions **What is a competitor analysis?** A competitor analysis compares your business with the companies the same customers buy from, on price, product, delivery, trust and advertising. For an online store it ends with a table covering 5 competitors and 3 decisions. **How do you do a competitor analysis step by step?** Set a goal and pick 10 products, find 5 competitors on Google, Pazaruvaj, eMAG and the Meta Ad Library, then compare prices, delivery, range, keywords, reviews and ads. Finish with a SWOT and 3 actions with dates. With an AI assistant, it all fits into one working day. **How can I see my competitors' Facebook ads (Meta Ad Library)?** Open the Meta Ad Library, select Bulgaria (or the country you sell in) and search for the Page name or a niche keyword. You see all active ads. Ads delivered in the EU stay in the library for one year after their last impression, with reach by age, gender and location. **How do I find out which keywords a competitor ranks for?** The fastest way is Ahrefs or Semrush: enter the domain and you see the keywords and pages that rank. Without a tool, search 10 to 20 niche phrases on Google and note who is in the top 3. **Can AI do a competitor analysis?** An AI assistant with web access collects the public data in about an hour: prices, delivery, category titles and ad messages. Connected to your store with a read-only key, it also compares your own prices. **How many competitors should I analyze?** Five are enough for an online store: 3 direct competitors, 1 marketplace seller and 1 indirect competitor. Compare the 10 products that bring most of your sales. **What is a competitive advantage for an online store?** A competitive advantage is a reason to buy from you that a competitor cannot copy quickly: faster delivery, depth of range in your niche, service, content or warranty. **Is it legal to track competitor prices?** The prices a competitor shows to every shopper are public, and you can record and compare them. Respect the site's terms and do not copy photos or descriptions. For your own discounts in Bulgaria, follow Art. 65 of the Consumer Protection Act: the previous price is the lowest one during at least 30 days before the reduction. Questions about connecting an AI assistant? Write to [support@cloudcart.com](https://cloudcart.commailto:support@cloudcart.com).