Building a comparison page is a Skill-shaped job you can finish in an afternoon: give the AI both websites and the questions your buyers ask, get a side-by-side table back, then check every cell against the source. Most of the afternoon goes to copying the competitor's pages and checking the table, because the table is the page. This page covers one thing: building an honest you-versus-them table with AI, using our own comparison set and our vs pages as live examples. If the reader is still choosing among several options rather than two, that is a different page, and our alternatives pages job covers it. The AI builds the table. You decide what is true and what is fair.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because the value is in judgment, not in any tool. The table itself takes seconds to generate. What takes skill is choosing the rows, keeping both columns honest, and saying who should pick the other option.
A comparison page has one reader: someone who has already narrowed the choice to you and one competitor. That reader often knows the competitor well, sometimes better than you do. They will check your table against what they already know, and the first wrong cell ends the visit.
So the habits matter more than the prose. Rows come from the decisions a buyer makes, not from your feature list. Every cell about the competitor comes from their own pages, copied and dated. Some rows go to the competitor. And the page ends by telling each kind of buyer which option fits.
A good brief carries those habits, so the AI applies them every time, and your second comparison page starts from the same brief as the first. Nothing needs setting up: a chat with ChatGPT or Claude, two websites and an afternoon is enough.
What that means for you: plan an hour to gather and date the source text, fifteen minutes to paste the brief and get a draft, and an hour or more to check each cell and add what only you know.
What you give the AI
Give it these, by name.
- The two names and the exact search. For example, "Acme Booking vs Your Business." One competitor per page.
- The competitor's homepage, product page and pricing page text, copied by you today. Open each page, select the text, paste it into a document, and write the date at the top.
- Your own homepage, product page and pricing page text. The same treatment, so both columns come from the same kind of source.
- The five to eight questions buyers ask when they compare you. Pull these from sales calls, inquiry emails and the questions people ask before they sign up. These become the rows.
- What the competitor does better. Write two or three honest sentences yourself. If you cannot name anything, say so in the brief, and the AI will look for it in their own material.
- Who should pick the competitor. The kind of buyer who is better served by them.
- Why customers who used the competitor chose you, in their words. Notes, reviews or replies. If you have none, say so instead of letting the AI invent reasons.
Leave out their logo and screenshots. Text is enough, and the page will not use their branding.
What comes back
Paste this brief into a new chat, then paste the material below it.
You are building an honest comparison page for a small business website.
The reader has narrowed the choice to two options: [competitor] and us.
The goal is a table that a person who uses [competitor] would agree is fair.
Our business: [one sentence: what you sell and to whom].
The search this page answers: "[competitor] vs [our name]".
Material, below this brief:
1. [Competitor] homepage, product and pricing text, copied on [date].
2. Our homepage, product and pricing text, copied on [date].
3. The questions buyers ask when they compare us.
4. What [competitor] does better, in our words.
5. Who should pick [competitor].
6. Why some customers chose us, in their words.
Build the page in this order:
1. Two sentences on what [competitor] does well, taken only from their material.
2. A comparison table. One row per buyer question from item 3.
Columns: the question, [competitor], us.
Each cell is one short factual phrase, not a tick or a cross.
3. Under the table, a source list: for every cell about [competitor], quote the line from their material it came from.
4. A short section on the biggest real difference, in plain words.
5. "Pick [competitor] if" and "Pick us if", three lines each.
6. Five questions a buyer would ask, each with a short, plain answer.
Rules:
- Every fact about [competitor] must come from the material. If it is not there, write "not stated" in the cell.
- Every price carries the date it was read.
- At least one row must favor [competitor]. If none does, tell me instead of writing the page.
- Describe, do not judge. No words like clunky, outdated, overpriced or confusing.
- No invented numbers, customer stories, quotes or results.
- Mark every sentence about our business that the material does not support with [CHECK].What comes back is a draft in six parts, in the order you gave. Read the table first, then the source list under it. The source list is the part that makes this brief work: it puts a quote next to every claim about the competitor, so a cell with no quote is a cell the AI guessed.
If the table came back as ticks and crosses, reply: "Rebuild the table with a short factual phrase in each cell." If every row favors you, reply: "Add the rows a buyer of [competitor] would add."
For live examples of the form, look at two of our own vs pages. Buffer vs Boomp opens its table with the product model and best fit for each side, then gives a whole section to what Buffer does well before it explains where the two differ. Boomp vs Later has a section titled "When Later Is the Better Choice," which is the line most comparison pages leave out.
How to judge it
A good comparison table reads like something both companies would sign. Read it as a happy customer of the competitor would, and stop at the first cell they would dispute.
A bad result looks like one of these:
- Your column wins every row. That is an ad wearing a table. Ask for the rows a buyer of the competitor would add.
- Ticks and crosses instead of words. A tick hides what the feature actually does and how well. Each cell should be a short phrase a reader can check.
- A cell with no source. Pick three cells about the competitor and find each one in the text you copied. If one is not there, that cell is a guess, and it goes or becomes "not stated."
- Rows that are your feature list. If the rows read like your product page, they were chosen to win. The rows should be the questions buyers asked you.
- A price with no date. Prices change, and an undated price will be wrong one day without anyone knowing which day.
- No "pick them if." If the page cannot name a buyer who is better off with the competitor, it is not finished.
- Loaded words in the prose. "Clunky," "outdated," "frustrating." Those read as spite, and the reader discounts everything near them.
If the draft passes those checks and every [CHECK] mark is resolved, it is ready for your final read.
What stays with you
The AI builds the table from what you pasted. It does not know either business beyond that.
The facts are yours to check. A comparison page makes claims about a real company, and their pricing and features change. Read their pages again on the day you publish, fix anything that moved, and keep the date beside every price.
The rows are yours. Only you know which questions buyers actually ask when they weigh you against this competitor. If you let the AI pick the rows, it will pick the ones that look like a comparison, not the ones that decide a sale.
The concession is yours. Saying where the competitor is stronger, and who should pick them, is a business decision, and it is the line that makes the rest of the page believable.
The legal line is yours. A truthful, factual comparison is common practice, but some industries have their own advertising rules. Use their name as plain text, never their logo, and ask a lawyer if you are unsure.
And the upkeep is yours. Put a reminder in your calendar to reread the competitor's pages every few months, and update the date on the page when you do.
An editorial example
This is an invented example to show the job, not a real business.
Say you run a two-person bookkeeping practice for restaurants, and prospects keep asking how you compare with a large national online bookkeeping firm. You copy the firm's homepage, service page and pricing page, and write the date at the top. You add your own pages, and you list the six questions prospects ask on calls: who does the books, how often you talk, whether payroll is included, how tips are handled, what happens at tax time, and how fast questions get answered.
The table comes back with those six rows. The national firm wins two of them in plain words: it includes payroll in its package and answers by chat in the evenings, both quoted from its own pages. Your column wins on knowing restaurant tip reporting and on a named person who answers the phone. The "pick them if" section says a restaurant group that wants payroll and books from one provider, with chat support at night, is better served by the firm.
There is one [CHECK] mark and one cell with no quote. The [CHECK] mark says you answer within an hour, which you do not promise anywhere. You change it to "same business day," which is true. The cell with no quote is about the firm's tax filing, so you read their page again, find it is an add-on, and correct the cell.
The page took an afternoon, and the firm could read it without objecting to a single cell.
Which comparison to build first
| Your situation | The comparison to build first |
|---|---|
| Prospects name one competitor on most calls | That competitor, with their questions as the rows |
| Two competitors come up equally | The one whose buyers are closest to your best customers |
| The competitor wins most of the rows that matter | Hold off, and write about the job you do well instead |
| A competitor just changed its pricing or plans | That one, with the change and its date in the table |
Before you build the table, the competitor analysis job helps you read their site and find where the two of you actually differ.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
