Business

Why Your Competitive Advantage Should Come Before Your Growth Plan

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Published 10/22/2026 9:30:00 AM

Your Growth Plan Means Nothing Without a Way to Protect It

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Key Takeaways

Ask “can I defend this?” at the idea stage, not after competitors show up.
Score your moat honestly on a one-to-five scale and pick one action to move up a point in the next 90 days.

When entrepreneurs come up with an idea, they usually start with the exciting questions: How big is the market? How fast can we grow? How much money can we make? I ask those questions too, but years of starting, scaling and exiting companies have taught me to add another one very early: Can I defend this thing?

Think about building a castle. You can spend years making it bigger and more impressive, but once people see there’s something valuable inside, they’re coming for it. Business works the same way. Success attracts competitors, and some will have deeper pockets than you.

That’s why defensibility should start at the idea stage. Your moat might be a brand, intellectual property, distribution, a niche you dominate or operating systems that took years to perfect. The strongest businesses often combine several.

When evaluating an idea, ask two questions together: Can this scale, and can I defend it long enough to scale?

Identify what competitors can’t easily copy

There’s a strange thing that happens when your startup begins working: success can make life harder. You prove customers want what you’re selling, and suddenly everyone else can see the opportunity.

Being first can give you a head start, but what matters is what you do with it. If a well-funded competitor launched against you tomorrow, what would they have the hardest time copying?

If you struggle to answer, you’ve identified an important weakness.

Treat your brand as a strategic asset

One company I’ve been involved with started as Treat-a-Dog. In 2018, we acquired Paw.com and reinvented the company around that brand. Buying the domain was expensive and time-consuming, but in the year after the rebrand, the business more than doubled in sales and profitability.

Competitors could make another dog bed, buy digital ads and build attractive websites. They couldn’t own Paw.com.

Before choosing a name, consider whether customers will remember it, whether you can control the important assets around it and whether it will still work if the company becomes 100 times larger.

You don’t need an expensive premium domain in every case. You do need to think of your brand as an asset competitors might someday wish they owned.

Protect the assets worth copying

Brand was one layer of our moat at Paw.com. Intellectual property became another. Once you create products customers love, copycats tend to appear, and patents, trademarks, copyrights and other protections can make copying more difficult.

Take inventory of what your company owns: its name, product names, inventions, designs, software, content and other proprietary assets. Then ask which would become strategically important if the company grew 10 times larger.

Imagine your biggest competitor looking through your business for something worth copying. Whatever makes you most nervous deserves closer attention.

Turn competitors into customers

Hostopia taught me one of my biggest lessons about defensibility. When we launched in 1999, we sold web hosting directly to small businesses. Competition was intense, customer acquisition was expensive, and we were fighting companies with more money.

So we changed the model. Instead of battling telecom companies, cable companies, internet service providers and hosting companies for individual customers, we sold our platform to those businesses as a private-label service.

We turned potential competitors into customers, and that became our distribution moat.

As we expanded internationally, every new relationship strengthened the business. A competitor would have to recreate years of sales relationships, integrations, trust and distribution to catch us. Technology could be rebuilt. The distribution network was much harder to reproduce.

Before spending another dollar fighting a competitor, consider if they could become a customer, distributor or partner instead.

Dominate a narrow market first

Founders love huge markets, but there’s another side to a huge opportunity: everyone else can see it too.

A narrow market can allow a smaller company to develop expertise, products, relationships and brand recognition that require significant effort to reproduce. I saw one version of this with .club domains, where exclusive rights to the .club domain extension created an inherent defensive advantage. Even a technology giant couldn’t offer the exact same extension.

Ask the question: what is the smallest market we could dominate that could still become a meaningful business? Become the company customers associate with one category, problem or type of customer. Once you own that position, you can decide where to expand.

Build systems competitors can’t see

Competitors can study your products, website, pricing and advertising. What they have a much harder time seeing is the machine underneath.

How do you generate leads? How does your sales team convert them? Which suppliers give you an advantage? How do you retain customers? Hundreds of small improvements can eventually create an organization that executes faster and more profitably than someone copying it from the outside.

Document important processes, give each an owner, measure performance and keep improving. A competitor may copy what you sell much faster than it can copy how your company works.

Score your moat

I use a simple one-to-five scale for defensibility. A one means you have no clear moat strategy. A two means you have ideas but little action. At three, you’ve taken a tangible step. At four, several defenses work together. A five means multiple meaningful advantages reinforce one another.

Score your company today and be tough about it. What can you do during the next 90 days to move up one point?

Secure a brand asset. Pursue intellectual property protection. Sign a distribution agreement. Deepen your niche. Document your sales system. Formalize a strategic partnership. Pick an action, assign an owner and give it a deadline.

Build a company that is harder to beat than buy

For entrepreneurs who eventually want to sell, the advantages protecting your company today may eventually become the reasons another company wants to acquire it.

A buyer may be capable of developing a similar product, but recreating your brand, customer relationships, intellectual property, distribution, niche leadership and operating systems could take years. At some point, buying the company becomes more attractive than trying to reproduce it.

That’s why I see starting, scaling and exiting as connected. The defenses you begin building during Start can become stronger during Scale and more valuable at Exit.

Before you fall in love with your next idea, here are some questions to mull over: What brand can we own? What intellectual property can we protect? What distribution advantage can we build? What niche can we dominate? What systems will grow stronger as we scale?

Here’s the question that brings everything together: If we become wildly successful, what will we have built that makes it easier for a competitor to buy us than to beat us?

Build your company with that answer in mind, and start digging the moat early.

Effective product pages help online shoppers decide whether an item fits their needs and what buying it involves. A beautiful photograph gets attention. Product details such as dimensions, available sizes, delivery details, and a clear price help turn that attention into a purchase.

Even established retailers miss these basics. In its benchmark of leading U.S. and European retailers, updated in March 2026, Baymard Institute rated 52% of desktop sites and 62% of mobile sites “mediocre or worse” for product-page usability¹.

Product-page changes can affect revenue, too. In a 27-day test for Life Pro Fitness, agency Media Contour made product images, key details, and buying buttons visible without needing to scroll. Testing vendor Wingify reported that the revised page generated $0.67 more revenue per visitor than the original².

If you are building a new store, follow the five tips below as you create your product pages. Have those pages ready before running ads that send shoppers to them.

If you already have an online store, choose one product page to improve. Reference these steps to check whether it answers shoppers’ questions and lets them add the right item to their cart.

1. Answer shoppers’ questions in the product description

Identify the main question a shopper needs answered before buying. Look for questions customers ask repeatedly or misunderstandings behind returns. For a new product, start with fit, compatibility, or what is included. Confirm the answer against your product specifications, then put it near the start of the description.

For example, consider a pet-supply retailer selling a dog harness. Someone choosing their first harness needs measurements and adjustment details to judge the fit. Someone replacing a harness they already own needs to recognize the same model and size. The page should make both tasks straightforward.

Also, use consistent labels and units across similar products to make comparisons easier. Include limitations, such as incompatible models or items sold separately, so shoppers can rule out an unsuitable purchase.

In e-commerce platform BigCommerce, for instance, online sellers can use the product description and custom fields—additional facts such as material or compatibility—to present these details. Preview the product page to check that shoppers can find the information they need.

Then, use those same facts to help shoppers recognize the item in search results. In BigCommerce’s page title field, use the product name and a relevant detail, such as its model or material. Avoid repeating keywords or giving every product the same title.

2. Give every product image a question to answer

Plan your gallery around what someone needs to inspect. Show the whole product, a useful detail, and the product in use. For example, a lighting retailer could photograph a lamp beside a chair to show its scale and how it lights a reading space. A close-up of the switch shows how someone would operate it. Together, these images help shoppers picture using the lamp at home. Keep written dimensions available as well.

The same Baymard overview describes how shoppers use images to judge size and can struggle when photographs lack a familiar reference.

If you sell a bundle, make clear which pictured items are included. For products that need assembly or demonstration, you might even consider creating a short video. Add alt text: a short description of the useful information in an image. Screen-reader software can read that description aloud or present it in braille. Keep essential instructions available as text as well.

BigCommerce supports product images, images for variants such as different colors, and YouTube-hosted product videos. Check that your gallery presents the right item as shoppers change their selection.

3. Make choices, prices, and recurring charges clear

Keep size, color, quantity, and purchase options close to the buying button. Label them plainly, show the current selection, and make unavailable choices recognizable. If the size options fit on the screen, show them as labeled buttons, such as S, M, and L. This lets shoppers see which sizes are available without opening a menu, as the Baymard overview explains.

Place helpful links beside the choice it explains. For the dog harness, for example, consider putting a measurement guide beside the size selector so shoppers can check the fit before choosing. Keep it visible or provide a clearly labeled link that works by touch and keyboard.

In BigCommerce, online sellers can configure choices such as size and color through product variants and options. Then check that the displayed price and availability match the shopper’s selection. For multipacks, show both the pack total and the unit price. Make the full pack price easy to find so shoppers know what they will be charged.

If you offer subscriptions, let shoppers explicitly choose between a one-time purchase and a recurring order. Put the recurring charge, delivery frequency, and change or cancellation terms beside that choice so shoppers can compare the commitments before selecting. Confirm that these terms match how your subscription service works. Select a subscription yourself and verify that checkout shows the plan, price, and frequency you chose.

4. Make sure delivery, returns, and reviews are easy to find

A shopper who needs an item by a particular date wants to know whether it will arrive in time. Show a delivery estimate for their destination. Put a short explanation of shipping and returns near add to cart, with links to the full policies.

Show shipping fees or explain how they will be calculated. Clearly describe return windows, fees, and exclusions that matter for the item. If pickup is offered, distinguish stock at the selected location from stock elsewhere. Avoid presenting an estimate as a confirmed promise.

Also consider making reassurances that are specific to the purchase. Using the dog harness as an example again, you’d want to explain whether a shopper can exchange it if the fit is wrong and which conditions apply. That answers the practical concerns that a badge saying “Shop with Confidence” leaves unresolved. Use only promises your business can honor.

Customer reviews provide another way to assess the product. Show the review rating, text, reviewer’s display name, and date on the relevant product page. If reviews come from another service, name that service. These details help shoppers understand whose experience they are reading and how recent it is.

5. Test the path from product page to cart

Shoppers need to know that the page has registered their choices and whether adding an item succeeded. Open your chosen product page on your phone. If a required option starts unselected, try adding the item before choosing it. The page should tell you what to select or explain why “Add to cart” is unavailable.

If the product has options, choose them, then change one selection. Check that the price, availability, and any option-specific images match. Add the item. While the request is processing, the page should make that clear. Once it succeeds, a confirmation or the cart itself should show what was added. If an error occurs, it should explain how to continue without losing other selections.

From there, make sure to check the item’s quantity, options, and price in the cart. If you chose a size or color, return to the product page and check whether it still shows that selection. These checks help catch a wrong selection or an uncertain result before a shopper encounters it.

Shoppers who cannot use a mouse need to select options and add products using a keyboard. To check that they can, repeat the steps above on a computer without the mouse. Use Tab to move forward between controls and Shift+Tab to move back. A visible outline or other marker should show which control you are about to use. Press Enter to activate links and Enter or Space for buttons. In a drop-down list, such as a size selector, use the arrow keys to move through the options.

Shoppers who need larger text must still be able to read product details and reach Add to cart. Use the browser’s Zoom control to enlarge the page to 200% and try the same steps again. Check for overlapping text or controls that disappear. Across all these checks, record anything that prevents choosing the product, adding it, or correcting a mistake.

Keep improving one page at a time

Clear facts and images help shoppers judge the product; clear choices, terms, and working controls help them act on that decision. Choose one issue from your review to fix first. Give priority to a problem that prevents adding the correct item to the cart. If shoppers can add the correct item, address an unanswered question that could lead someone to buy the wrong product.

Record what you changed and when. If you have sales reports, compare purchases and revenue for the product over equal periods before and after the change. Note any promotions or changes in visitor numbers that could also explain the results. Customer questions, order corrections, and return reasons can help you check whether the same misunderstanding persists.

For more examples, explore BigCommerce’s product-page guide, then apply the same review to the next product page.

¹^{Product Page UX 2026: 10 Pitfalls and Best Practices}^{(Baymard Institute)
2}^{Media Contour uses split URL testing to improve the revenue from product pages}^(Wingify)