from assignment 2 research

I finally finished my questionnaire and posted it for peer feedback in webct, I put the following in assignment 2 about the questions asked and why:

1.What the name of your business? This is a social question.

2.What is the service your business provides? To help define how different sectors of business may answer the questions or how expectations of websites may vary across industry.

3.Do you currently have a business website? To define their status at the moment in relation to the following questions.

4.Do you have a website for any other reason? To find out if they have other business interests or personal interests on the internet as this may affect the answers they provide.

5.What do you think a website would or does achieve for your business? People have different expectations, some may believe the internet in capable of more (or less) than possible for a business. For a business with a site already their answer could show if some of the sites on the web are not achieving what they could for business.

6.Which of the following services would you be prepared to pay a web design company for? (Website creation, Regular updates to optimize search engine ranking, Updating business information, for example monthly specials, logos, graphics, Advertising your business through banner advertising, Graphic design services, Other (please specify))? To ascertain what service people are in the market for, which are of the most interest to those who do or do not already have a site or a site that is or is not achieving for their business.

7.Would you prefer to update your website yourself or have a business provide that service for you? Again to ascertain the market preference

8.How much would you expect to pay for a five page website? An open question to ascertain if there are any general misconception about web page pricing.

9.How much would you expect to pay for advertising on the Internet? An open question to ascertain if there are any general misconception about web page pricing.

10.What would you look for in a web design company if you were going to have a web site created for your business? To get a general idea of what is expected from a web design business.

11.Any additional comments? Place here for respondant to place any information they feel appropriate.

I had originally planned to ask a lot of usability questions like “how do you rate yourself as an internet user”? But this questionnaire is aimed at customers for a web design company and as such is not about usability, yet, but to analyse what the potential customers require and expect from a web designer as a business provider, and to see what services they are in the market for and how much they expect to pay, for example if plumbers, in general, only expect to pay $500 for a website they would not be a viable market to target en masse, however, if photographers are prepared to pay a few thousand for a site then it would make more sense to target them. If plumbers are prepared to pay more for internet advertising then the banner ad service could be aimed at them.
I see the above questionnaire as stage 1, next would be to research the business groups the web design company plans to target and ask them more details of what they expect from a web design company and so on and to look at usability issues in their sites context.
Usability, in general has been well researched from people like Steve Krug (Krug,2006) to Jakob Nielsen (Nielsen, 2007), there is a lot of general information available to be applied to the design process and usability can be tested on websites that have been created. In this stage of the development the web design business has no web site to test so only a general usability knowledge can be applied until the site is created and site specific usability issues arise.


Nielsen, J. (2007) Current Issues in Web Usability,
Retrieved from: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
March 16, 2007.

Krug, S. (2006) Don’t Make Me Think, A common sense approach to Web Usability, Second Edition, New Riders Publishing, Berkeley, Californis USA.