What is a SWOT analysis?

A SWOT analysis sorts what you know about a business into four boxes: strengths and weaknesses, which are internal and inside your control, and opportunities and threats, which are external and are not. Its value is not the grid — it is that separating what you control from what you do not stops a plan from resting on something you cannot influence.

How do you write a good SWOT analysis?

Make every entry specific enough to be arguable. 'Strong brand' belongs in nobody's SWOT; 'the only supplier in the region with next-day delivery' is a strength you can build a message on. The commonest failure is putting an external fact in an internal box — a competitor's price cut is a threat, not a weakness — which quietly turns the analysis into a list of things to worry about rather than a set of decisions.

What is the difference between a weakness and a threat?

A weakness is inside the business and you can act on it directly: a gap in the team, a slow process, a product that is missing something. A threat is outside and you can only respond to it: a new entrant, a rule change, a shift in what buyers expect. Mixing them up matters because the fixes are different — weaknesses get a plan, threats get a contingency and a trigger to watch for.

What do you do after a SWOT analysis?

Cross the boxes rather than listing them. The useful moves come from pairing: which strength can be aimed at which opportunity, which weakness would be fatal against which threat. A SWOT that ends as four lists has produced no decision; one that ends with two or three sentences of the form 'because we have X and the market is doing Y, we will Z' has produced a strategy.

Free tool

SWOT analysis generator

Build a SWOT analysis in your browser — four questions, a matrix you can copy, and the honest limits of what a SWOT can tell you. Free, no sign-up.

A SWOT analysis sorts what you know about a business into four boxes: strengths and weaknesses, which are inside the business and yours to change, and opportunities and threats, which are outside it and are not. Fill in the grid below — it works straight away, nothing is sent anywhere, and you can copy the result when you are done.

Strengths

What do you have that rivals cannot easily copy?

Weaknesses

What inside the business is holding it back?

Opportunities

What is changing outside that you could use?

Threats

What is changing outside that could hurt you?

Nothing saved anywhere — this stays in your browser.

What each box actually means

Most filled-in SWOTs go wrong in the same place: an external fact ends up in an internal box. "Competitors are cheaper" is not a weakness — it is a threat, because you do not control their pricing. The distinction matters because it decides what you can do about it. Internal items are things you can change this quarter; external items are things you can only prepare for.

Strengths— internal and helpful. What you have that rivals cannot easily copy. "We reply within the hour" counts; "we care about quality" does not, because everyone says it.
Weaknesses— internal and harmful. The honest ones, not the interview answer. "One person does both sales and delivery" is a real weakness with a real consequence.
Opportunities — external and helpful. A change in the world you could use: a rival closing, a rule changing, a cost falling.
Threats — external and harmful. The changes that would hurt whether or not you notice them.

A worked example

A two-person bookkeeping firm, filled in honestly. Notice that every line is specific enough to be wrong — that is the test of a useful entry.

Strengths: clients keep us for years; we file on time without being chased; the owner is a qualified accountant.
Weaknesses: all new work comes from one referral source; nobody has time to market; we cannot take on a client with more than fifty invoices a month.
Opportunities: two local firms stopped taking small clients; digital filing rules push sole traders to look for help.
Threats: cheap automated bookkeeping apps; our referral source retires within two years.

The honest limits of a SWOT

A SWOT is a sorting exercise, not a decision. It will happily hold four boxes of true statements and still leave you with no idea what to do on Monday, which is why so many end up in a drawer. Three things it cannot do:

It cannot rank anything. Nothing in the framework says which weakness costs you most, or which opportunity is worth the quarter.
It cannot check itself."There is demand for this" sits in the Opportunities box looking exactly as solid as a measured fact, whether or not anyone has checked.
It is a snapshot. The threats box is the one that ages fastest, and nothing prompts you to revisit it.

The useful move after a SWOT is to turn the two or three entries you actually believe into decisions with numbers against them — which customer, which channel, what it must return, and by when. That is the method in how to build a marketing strategy for a small business, and the seven-question form of it is the marketing plan template.

Common questions

What does SWOT stand for?

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. The first two are internal to the business; the last two are external to it.

How many points should each box have?

Three to five. A box with fifteen entries has stopped being an analysis and become a list — if everything is a strength, nothing is.

Is a SWOT still worth doing?

As a first pass, yes: it is quick, it forces the internal/external distinction, and it surfaces disagreement fast when two people fill one in separately. As a plan, no — it produces no priorities and no numbers, and treating it as a strategy is the mistake it is most often blamed for.

Does this tool store what I type?

No. Everything stays in your own browser — there is no account, no upload, and no email address. Clearing the grid or your browser data removes it.

Common questions

What is a SWOT analysis?: A SWOT analysis sorts what you know about a business into four boxes: strengths and weaknesses, which are internal and inside your control, and opportunities and threats, which are external and are not. Its value is not the grid — it is that separating what you control from what you do not stops a plan from resting on something you cannot influence.
How do you write a good SWOT analysis?: Make every entry specific enough to be arguable. 'Strong brand' belongs in nobody's SWOT; 'the only supplier in the region with next-day delivery' is a strength you can build a message on. The commonest failure is putting an external fact in an internal box — a competitor's price cut is a threat, not a weakness — which quietly turns the analysis into a list of things to worry about rather than a set of decisions.
What is the difference between a weakness and a threat?: A weakness is inside the business and you can act on it directly: a gap in the team, a slow process, a product that is missing something. A threat is outside and you can only respond to it: a new entrant, a rule change, a shift in what buyers expect. Mixing them up matters because the fixes are different — weaknesses get a plan, threats get a contingency and a trigger to watch for.
What do you do after a SWOT analysis?: Cross the boxes rather than listing them. The useful moves come from pairing: which strength can be aimed at which opportunity, which weakness would be fatal against which threat. A SWOT that ends as four lists has produced no decision; one that ends with two or three sentences of the form 'because we have X and the market is doing Y, we will Z' has produced a strategy.