SWOT Analysis Examples and a Free Template (2026)

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis is a planning tool that assesses these four factors in your business.

It’s a process to help you figure out where your business will be tomorrow and create a strategic plan for it. Use it to decide where to take your business next and build a plan to get there.

This guide shares how to conduct your own SWOT analysis with a simple SWOT template and examples to illustrate.

What is a SWOT analysis?

A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool that assesses internal strengths and weaknesses (factors you can control) alongside external opportunities and threats (market-driven realities). It’s laid out as a two-by-two grid.

Businesses use a SWOT analysis as a starting point for decision-making, not as a strategy or action plan on its own. The analysis helps evaluate new business ideas, anticipate external challenges, and improve existing business models. You can also use the SWOT framework for side projects and personal career planning.

Why is SWOT analysis important?

A SWOT analysis is important because it shows where your business stands. If you’re starting a new business, it can help you understand your market position and pressure test a business model you’ve already sketched. It can form the competitive analysis part of your business plan, which you’ll need if you’re looking for funding.

The US Small Business Administration’s competitive analysis checklist asks for your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, your window of opportunity to enter the market, and any barriers to entry. A SWOT analysis gives you the raw material for each.

The US Chamber of Commerce recommends updating your SWOT analysis at least once a year or after major changes to your business or market conditions.

A SWOT analysis helps you: 

• Anticipate problems
• Work on necessary changes or improvements
• Develop new product lines or services

A SWOT analysis works best when it uses real data. “Research is important to do for any business,” says Susie Harrison, cofounder at Hearth Display, in a Shopify Masters interview. “Any problem you’re trying to solve, you need to validate that the problem exists and that it’s a problem people want to solve so much they’re willing to pay for the solution.”

SWOT analysis examples

Here’s a sample SWOT matrix for an online T-shirt business. Each quadrant outlines the business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Read the top row as internal factors you control and the bottom row as external factors you don’t. The left column helps you; the right column holds you back.

Brainstorming can surface many more factors, but this example lists the most important:

Here’s another SWOT analysis example, this time for a luxury fragrance brand preparing to launch: 

How to do a SWOT analysis

You can do a quick SWOT analysis with a pen on the back of a napkin when inspiration strikes, or use an editable SWOT analysis template to create a professional-looking document you can share with team members or potential investors. You don’t have to fill out the quadrants in any particular order.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Set the objective

Decide the goal of your SWOT analysis. 

If you’re evaluating a new business idea, for example, the objective may be understanding your market position and pressure testing the business model. If you’re doing a SWOT analysis for a side hustle, it may be exploring which side gigs you’d be best at. 

2. Decide who to involve

Involve others with your SWOT analysis to get multiple perspectives and a diverse mix of opinions. They don’t have to be internal stakeholders.

Amy Liu, for example, brought in a medical advisory board to help strengthen Tower 28 Beauty’s value proposition. “I’m not spending all day thinking about what the next ingredient is that’s going to be an endocrine disruptor,” Amy says in a Shopify Masters interview. “That’s just not my skill set. But somebody else is, so I lean into those people.”

Pia Mance, founder of Heaven Mayhem, invites customers to give their feedback through regular Zoom meetings. “We go through our recent launches or what’s coming up and show them special information. Then we ask for feedback,” Pia says on Shopify Masters.

3. Fill in the four quadrants

Once you’ve gathered your data, fill in each section of the SWOT analysis: 

Strengths (internal)

Strengths are internal advantages or resources that help the business achieve its objectives, also known as competitive advantages.

To identify your organization’s strengths, ask yourself:

• What does your business do well?
• What resources do you have?
• What advantages do you have over your competitors?

In a 2025 Shopify survey of store owners, 48% of merchants named product quality as a competitive advantage, the most common answer, followed by brand reputation at 43%.*

Weaknesses (internal)

Weaknesses are internal factors that put the business at a disadvantage or limit its ability to achieve its goals.

To identify internal weaknesses, ask yourself:

• What areas of your business need improvement?
• Where do you lack resources or capabilities?
• What are your competitors doing better?

Some examples of a company’s weaknesses include:

• Limited market presence
• Unclear target market
• Outdated technology
• Poor customer service

Opportunities (external)

Opportunities are external factors a business can capitalize on to grow or improve its performance. They can result from market changes, technology advancements, app modernization, or new competition.

To identify opportunities, conduct a gap analysis and ask yourself:

• What emerging market trends or technologies could benefit your business?
• Are there any gaps in the market that you could fill?
• Are there any new markets that you could enter?

Some examples of opportunities include:

• Expansion into new territories with Shopify Markets, which lets you sell in multiple markets, languages, and currencies from one store
• Acquiring a competitor
• Adopting new technology to improve operations

Threats (external)

Threats are external factors that could negatively impact a business’s performance or success. These can include changes in the market, the competition, or the regulatory environment.

Pair your threats list with a PEST analysis, which breaks the external environment into political, economic, social, and technological factors. A PESTLE analysis adds legal and environmental elements, useful if you sell in regulated categories or across borders. Findings from either feed your opportunities and threats quadrants. 

For example, a drop in disposable income fits the threats quadrant, while the trend toward founder-led storytelling on TikTok could be an opportunity.

To identify external threats, ask yourself:

• What external factors could harm your business?
• Are there any new competitors entering the market?
• Are there any regulatory changes that could negatively impact your business?

Some examples of threats include:

• Increased competition
• Economic downturns
• Changes in consumer preferences

4. Test each point with evidence

Use data to help you test each section of your SWOT analysis: 

• Website analytics: Shopify’s Behavior reports show how shoppers interact with your online store, from landing pages to on-site search. Ask Shopify Sidekick, the AI assistant built into Shopify, to find and explain these reports. Maggy London uses Sidekick to reduce weekly reporting time by more than 80%. 
• Market trends: The US Census Bureau’s Business Trends and Outlook Survey, Pew Research Center, Forrester, McKinsey, and Gartner all publish market research to spot broader market trends. 
• Customer feedback: Mine Shopify Inbox conversations and Shop product reviews to see how existing customers perceive your brand and its current positioning.

Run ongoing SWOT analyses as your business grows. Tique Chandler, founder of Chandler Honey, found evidence that her honey products’ price point was too high for traditional grocery stores. 

“They take such huge margins,” Tique says on Shopify Masters. “They’re asking for free fills. If it doesn’t move in a certain amount of time, they’re sending it back to you. It’s often damaged product. It just wasn’t a good fit for me. And it was an expensive lesson trying to push myself into these grocery stores and have it go quite badly.”

Tique used this evidence to tweak her business model. Chandler Honey now sells in small businesses like gift stores and souvenir shops, and in her online store.

5. Turn it into a plan

Turn your SWOT analysis into an action plan or marketing plan that helps you act on the strengths and opportunities, and combat any weaknesses or threats.

Read across the quadrants to find your next steps. Pair strengths with opportunities to decide where to grow, use strengths to blunt threats, and fix the weaknesses that stop you from seizing opportunities.

Coop Sleep Goods’ plan tied back to one primary objective: to become the Kleenex of pillows, a strengths-meets-opportunity move. 

“The focus was always: If the pillow is good, people will trust our brand, and that will spread into other products,” says Cofounder Jin Chon in a Shopify Masters interview.

Competitive analysis helped Coop Sleep Goods refine the materials they used inside their pillow. They spend 10 times more on materials than the competition. 

“A pillow is a rectangle. That part seemed easy,” says Jin’s brother, Cofounder Kevin Chon. “The harder part was understanding the feel side of things; it’s a totally different industry than fashion. But we were thinking as outsiders, and that ended up being the advantage.”

Free SWOT analysis template

Here’s a free SWOT analysis template that outlines the four quadrants in a two-by-two competitor matrix. Write your objective at the top, fill each quadrant using the questions in step 3, then use step 5 to turn the finished matrix into a plan: 

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.