A rival’s tick is a pointer, not a source
Another comparison site ticked five features for a company we also compare. Checked against that company’s own pages, four held and one did not.
There is a quick way to fill a comparison table and a slow one. The quick way is to read somebody else’s table. On Thursday we read two comparison pages published by a rival of ours, each setting them against a company we also compare, and each carrying a twenty-row tick table dated August. Their column for that company ticked five things ours left blank: kiosks, kitchen screens, stock, offline trading and loyalty.
Five ticks from a company that competes with the one it is describing is not evidence. It is a list of five places to go and look. So each one was checked against the described company’s own site, all 83 pages of it fetched and read as text, with the sentences printed rather than the hits counted.
What the pointers found
Four of the five pointed at something real. Their kitchen display system is named in one sentence of a funding announcement, which is thin, but it is their site stating the feature exists and that is what a tick means in our table. Offline trading is described in four case studies with a number attached. Stock is described in two. Loyalty is a half: the home page names voucher and promotion management and loyalty programmes appear only in a news post, with no page of their own.
The fifth pointed at nothing. The only kiosk mention on their site is an industry article from 2020 that lists self-order kiosks among trends. The other comparison site ticked it. Our table leaves it blank, because a trend article is not a company saying it sells the thing, and the rule for a tick is that they say so.
Why the slow way is the only way
Had we copied the five ticks, four cells would have been right for the wrong reason and one would have been wrong. Nobody reading the table could tell the difference, and neither could we a month later when the question came up again. A cell that was read from the company’s own page can be defended, dated and re-checked. A cell copied from another table inherits whatever that table got wrong, plus whatever has changed since its author looked.
The same applies to anyone shopping for a till. A supplier’s comparison of itself against others, ours included, tells you where to look. The place to look is always the other company’s own pages, and if they do not say a thing there, ask them directly rather than trust a competitor’s cross.