If you’re in marketing, product, or just trying to keep tabs on what your competitors are up to, you know how fast things change on their websites. One week, they’ve got a new feature front-and-center. Next week, it’s gone. It’s easy to miss unless you’re glued to their site 24/7—nobody has time for that. That’s where Crayon comes in. This guide is for anyone who wants a practical, no-nonsense way to keep tabs on competitor website changes and actually make sense of the noise.
Let’s break down how to use Crayon to spot, track, and act on what your competitors are doing online—without losing your mind (or your weekends).
Step 1: Get Your Crayon Account Set Up Right
Before you start analyzing anything, make sure your Crayon setup isn’t half-baked. You don’t need to monitor every competitor on earth—just the ones that matter.
- Identify your true competitors. Pick 3-10 direct competitors. Don’t waste time tracking global giants if you’re a local player.
- List their primary websites. You’ll want to track the main .com or .co.uk, plus any microsites for important products.
- Avoid tracking every landing page. Crayon can get noisy if you try to monitor every nook and cranny of a competitor’s web presence.
Pro tip: If you’re not sure who your real competitors are, ask your sales team who comes up in deals, or check who’s bidding on your branded keywords.
Step 2: Set Up Website Monitoring in Crayon
Once you’ve picked your competitors, it’s time to tell Crayon exactly what to watch. Resist the urge to “set and forget”—a little setup now saves a ton of headaches later.
- Add the main homepage and key product pages. Start simple. You can always add more later if you see gaps.
- Choose monitoring frequency. Daily is usually enough. Realistically, most competitors don’t update their sites hourly.
- Tell Crayon what NOT to monitor. Ignore pages like careers, investor relations, or legal disclaimers unless they’re relevant to you. Otherwise, you’ll drown in irrelevant alerts.
What works: Focusing on high-traffic, high-impact pages—home, pricing, product features, customer stories.
What to ignore: Obvious fluff. Unless you’re in HR, that new “We’re hiring!” banner isn’t going to move your strategy.
Step 3: Filter the Noise—Set Up Smart Alerts
Crayon can flag every tiny change, but that doesn’t mean you want it to. The real value is in actionable, not just any updates.
- Customize your notification settings. Decide which types of changes are worth your attention—headline changes, pricing updates, new product pages, etc.
- Set up team alerts. Not every update needs to hit everyone’s inbox. Route pricing changes to sales, messaging changes to marketing, and technical updates to product folks.
- Use keyword filters. Want to know when a competitor mentions “AI” or “integration”? Set those up as triggers.
Pro tip: Start with fewer alerts, then tweak as you go. You can always add more, but it’s a pain to undo a flood of useless notifications.
Step 4: Analyze the Changes (Don’t Just Collect Them)
Gathering data is the easy part. Making sense of it is where most teams fall short. Here’s how to actually get value from what Crayon collects:
- Look for patterns, not just one-offs. Did a competitor quietly remove a feature, or did they just reword it? Are they A/B testing new messages?
- Track pricing changes closely. This is usually the first place competitors try to get an edge. If you see price drops or new plans, dig deeper—is it desperation or strategy?
- Watch for new product launches and positioning shifts. If a competitor suddenly highlights a new pain point, they might be targeting your turf.
- Screenshot comparisons are your friend. Don’t just rely on text diffs—visual changes sometimes reveal more (like new branding, or a product suddenly getting top billing).
What’s not worth chasing: Tiny cosmetic changes, like button colors or hero images, unless you’re in a cutthroat consumer space where branding is everything.
Step 5: Share Insights with Your Team—Quickly
The point isn’t to hoard knowledge; it’s to help your team respond before it’s old news.
- Summarize, don’t forward. Nobody wants a raw feed of every website tweak. Instead, send a weekly or bi-weekly summary of what matters and why.
- Highlight actionable takeaways. “Competitor X dropped their starter plan—could mean they’re focusing upmarket. Should we revisit ours?”
- Use screenshots and before/after snippets. Visuals make it real and cut through the “so what?” factor.
Pro tip: Set a recurring calendar invite for a 15-minute team review. Keep it focused: what did we learn, and what (if anything) should we do next?
Step 6: Integrate with Your Other Tools (But Don’t Overcomplicate It)
Crayon offers integrations with Slack, email, Salesforce, and more. These can be handy—but only if used with restraint.
- Pipe key updates into a dedicated Slack channel. But mute or archive it if it turns into a firehose of trivia.
- Connect with CRM only for high-impact changes. For example, alert reps if a competitor launches a new product relevant to their accounts.
- Don’t get lost in integration hell. More connections mean more noise. Integrate only what your team actually uses.
What’s not worth it: Automating every single update into your project management tool. You’ll just create more busywork for yourself.
Step 7: Review and Refine Your Monitoring Regularly
Website monitoring isn’t a “set it and forget it” game. Competitors change, your business changes, and what mattered six months ago might be irrelevant now.
- Quarterly review: Check which pages and competitors you’re tracking. Prune the list to keep it relevant.
- Refine your alerts. If you’re ignoring 80% of notifications, tighten your filters.
- Solicit feedback from your team. Are the insights actually useful? If not, change your approach.
Pro tip: Sometimes the best insight is what doesn’t change. If a competitor’s messaging is stagnant, that can be a sign of trouble—or an opportunity for you.
What to Watch Out For: Common Pitfalls
- Alert fatigue. More isn’t better. Too many notifications and people start tuning everything out.
- Confirmation bias. It’s easy to read too much into small changes. Look for real trends, not just evidence that fits your narrative.
- Shiny object syndrome. Just because a competitor changes their site doesn’t mean you need to react. Sometimes, the best move is no move.
Wrapping Up
Using Crayon to track competitor website changes isn’t rocket science, but it does take some discipline. Start simple, focus on what actually impacts your business, and don’t drown in data for its own sake. The goal isn’t to win a spreadsheet contest—it’s to spot important shifts before your competitors get the jump on you.
Keep things lean, review regularly, and don’t be afraid to ignore the noise. The best insights are usually the simplest ones.