Understanding Your Dashboard

The KompWatch dashboard is your central hub for tracking competitor activity. Here's how to read and use it.

Getting Started Checklist (New Accounts)

When you first sign up, a Get started with KompWatch checklist appears at the top of your dashboard. It guides you through three setup steps:

1. Add your first competitor — paste a URL to start monitoring
2. Set your alert threshold — choose which severity of changes appear in your digest
3. Connect Slack or Teams — set up a webhook for real-time alerts

A progress bar tracks how many steps you've completed. The checklist disappears automatically once all three steps are done, or you can dismiss it early with the × button in the top-right corner.

Demo Competitor (New Accounts)

If you've just signed up, your dashboard includes a pre-seeded demo competitor called Acme Analytics. It contains sample snapshots and changes so you can explore the interface immediately — no waiting required.

Once you're ready, delete it from the Competitors page and add your real competitors. The demo entry does not count against your plan limit.

Dashboard Overview

When you log in at kompwatch.com/dashboard, you'll see:

• Total Competitors — how many competitors you're currently monitoring
• Changes This Week — the number of detected changes across all competitors in the last 7 days
• Digests Sent — how many digest emails have been delivered to you
• Active Monitors — how many of your competitors are actively being tracked

The Changes Timeline

The Recent Changes timeline shows the latest detected changes across all your competitors, ordered by most recent first.

Each change card shows:

• Competitor name and URL — which competitor changed
• Change type — one of:
  • Pricing — a price, plan name, or trial offer changed
  • Feature — a product capability was added or removed
  • Blog — a new blog post or announcement was published
  • Jobs — a job posting was added or removed
  • Tech — a technology stack or integration changed
  • General — a miscellaneous page change
• Severity — how significant the change is:
  • CRITICAL — major change requiring immediate attention (e.g. drastic price cut, product pivot)
  • HIGH — significant change (e.g. new pricing tier, product launch)
  • MEDIUM — notable change (e.g. updated copy, new feature)
  • LOW — minor change (e.g. small wording tweak)
• AI Summary — a plain-English description of what changed, generated by Claude AI
• Why this matters — a strategic context line explaining what the change means for your positioning, pricing, sales, or roadmap. For example, if a competitor drops their free tier, you might see: "Competitors on tight budgets who relied on that free plan are now in the market — a strong moment to run a targeted trial offer." This is generated automatically; no setup required.
• Detected at — when KompWatch spotted the change

Expanding a change row: Click any change row to expand it inline and reveal the full AI factual context — the raw "what changed" detail that underlies the AI summary. This is useful when you want the exact wording difference, not just the interpretation. Click the row again to collapse it.

Activity Heatmap

The Activity heatmap near the top of your dashboard shows a 26-week (6-month) view of competitor change volume — styled like a GitHub contribution graph.

• Each cell represents one day. Hover over any cell to see the exact change count for that date.
• Color intensity reflects how active that day was:
  • Light (faint brand color) — 1–2 changes
  • Medium — 3–5 changes
  • Dark — 6–10 changes
  • Darkest — 11+ changes
  • Gray — no changes detected
• Axes: Days of the week (Mon–Sun) run vertically; weeks run left-to-right with month labels above.
• Future dates appear blank — only past and present days are shown.

Use the heatmap to spot patterns at a glance: a competitor that's been quiet for months but suddenly lit up last week is worth a closer look.

Competitor Detail Page

Click on any competitor's name to open the Competitor Detail Page (/competitors/[id]), which shows:

• Status badge — whether the competitor is Active or Paused
• Snapshot and change counts — total number of snapshots taken and changes detected
• Tracking flags — which signal types are enabled: Pricing, Features, Blog, Jobs, Tech
• Full change history — a timeline of all detected changes (up to 50 most recent), with severity, type, AI summary, Why this matters strategic context, and a link to the specific page that changed
• "Tracking since" date — when you started monitoring this competitor

Use the detail page to quickly audit a competitor's history before a sales call, board meeting, or competitive review.

Managing Competitors

The Competitors page (kompwatch.com/competitors) lets you:

• Add a competitor — click Add Competitor and enter a name, URL, and optional CSS selector
• Edit a competitor — update the URL or selector at any time; monitoring continues automatically
• Pause/resume monitoring — toggle a competitor off if you want to temporarily stop tracking it
• Delete a competitor — removes it and all associated snapshots and changes

Plan Limits

The number of competitors you can track depends on your plan:

When you're one slot away from your limit, or have reached it, a upgrade prompt appears at the top of the dashboard. Clicking it takes you directly to the pricing page to upgrade. If you've reached your limit, the Add Competitor button will also be disabled until you upgrade. Upgrade your plan →

First-Change Upgrade Prompt

When KompWatch detects your first competitor change on the Free plan, a celebratory banner appears at the top of your dashboard: "Your first competitor change detected!" This is just a nudge to let you know the monitoring is working and to show what's available on Pro (10 competitors, daily digests, Slack/Teams alerts).

You can dismiss it at any time with the × button — it won't reappear on the same browser. If you upgrade, it disappears automatically.

Exporting Your Data

Use the Export CSV or Export JSON buttons on the dashboard (all changes) or on any competitor detail page (per-competitor) to download your detected changes. CSV opens cleanly in Excel and Google Sheets; JSON is structured for scripts and BI tools. See Exporting Your Data →

Tips

• Focus on high-value pages. Monitor /pricing and /features pages specifically rather than homepages — they change more meaningfully.
• Use CSS selectors. Targeting a specific section (e.g. .pricing-table) cuts noise significantly. See CSS Selectors FAQ.
• Check severity filters. If you're seeing too much noise, note the severity rating — LOW changes are often minor cosmetic tweaks.

Questions? Email support@kompwatch.com and a team member will follow up within 24 hours.