When the competition is checking out your site, should you respond?

I would proceed as if you did not know they were already looking at your site. If you have plans to contact them, do so, but not because they accessed your site. It may have strategic value to know that X executive already knows all about your site, but I would not change my plans because of that fact.

Competitors looking at you is not something you can avoid (or should even try to avoid). These guys accessed it in a way that you could find out who they were, but they could just as easily have created a new Hotmail account and accessed very much anonymously under that.

If anything, give yourself a pat on the back that you are attracting attention from high-ups at competitors (and more than one, at that), I suppose it could be taken as some sort of benchmark for your business :-).

I think you should not contact them unless you really know what are you going to say. Like, if you have an offer which can be interesting to them, then approach them as in any other case.

Or, maybe, you'd like to meet some startupers competing with you - to raise probability that at least one of your companies will survive.

Good answers above (+1!), but I disagree that you shouldn't contact them.

I've had wonderful results from calling competitors. In some cases we ended up becoming partners instead of competitors, to the benefit of both. In other cases we parted with mutual respect.

In some cases the other guys were assholes, but still in that interaction we learned interesting things about their culture, hubris, and expectations for themselves which still is useful competitive information.

One of those competitors might buy you one day, for example, so it'd be nice to be friendly with them and show them how smart, thoughtful, and nice you are.

There's really no downside so long as you don't tell them secrets, but there could be an upside.

Go check out your competitors sites - see what they're offering, how it differs, and how you can improve your own product accordingly. You should run your site as if all your competitors are watching your every move, and you should be watching your competitors' every move.

If and when they do contact you, you'll be prepared, knowing what you have to offer, and how it differs from what they already have. Don't chase them, however, let them come to you.

You should take it as a compliment - you're interesting enough to check out.

I'm a Product Manager at Atlassian (makers of JIRA and Confluence). I've been contacted or followed on Twitter by potential and actual competitors. Likewise, it's part of my job to check out competitors and their products.

If we're checking out your site and signing up for your offerings, it doesn't mean we're going to a) crush you, or b) try to acquire you. It just means that we need to understand what's going on in the market, and part of that is understanding who else is in the market and why they're different.

If competitors have signed up, feel free to drop them a friendly mail to say hi. They're just people, after all. However, if you feel uncomfortable with the idea, there's no need to feel you have to. If they want to purchase or partner with you, they won't be waiting for you to mail 'em ;-)

the reason to contact them would be???? There are a number of reasons that they could be checking you out. They could feel you "breathing" or they could be looking to see if you copied anything that they are doing or to see what you are doing to see how they can improve themselves.

Contacting them to say that you noticed that you know that they are checking you out may put them on the defensive and wonder why you would be calling. Think about what purpose your call to them would be. What do you want to know from them - why they are checking you out? Do they feel threatened? Do they want to buy you?

Move on and carry on with what you are doing as seems like you could be on the right track.

Why would competition come to your site? To find out the feature set you have - and if it's public, no big deal - they will get to know about those features anyhow. Or, maybe it's to evaluate if there's something your other users are saying that they can use to improve themselves - good strategy, and you can do the same thing as well.

Or it's to see if you're a worthy acquisition. I doubt this would come in through just a registered user, so it's probably an unintended consequence.

Lastly, it could be to see who's doing something better in the space. Then, you might even be able to hire them.

If you contact them directly, what would you say? Hi, I know you're on my site, and I know you're a competitor... (by this time you've flagged privacy concerns, made them uncomfortable if they're just looking around, and gained nothing much in return) You might as well do what you're doing without giving them undue importance. At the same time, you will ensure you don't reveal sensitive information (but then you know that already even if they weren't competition).

The old standard for having made it was to see if your software was being pirated actively. With web sites it's probably how many competitors are on your site :)

So what is your business strategy? There's something to be said for market intelligence (for you and your company to know what's going on) and for your competition to do the same. Monitor your competitors just like they're monitoring you (and remember that you don't always know who a "competitor" is. Does your business strategy call for you to partner with "competitors"?)....I've worked for (and with) technology companies in the past that have put product ideas and prototypes out to market just to get a reaction or to get potential partners to contact them...