Market Research

found the following advice at http://www.inc.com/articles/2000/03/19094.html

"Determine Your Market
-Three key questions to answer when starting a company are:
1.Who, if anyone, has a real need for the thing I propose to sell, and how many of those potential customers are there?
2.How much, if anything, are they spending to address that need today?
3.Does my product meet that need in a manner that either saves or makes them substantial amounts of money?"(Mann, D. 2000)

my answers to above:
1. Lots of business, individuals, charities, government agencies etc.. have web sites. In fact anyone with a need or want to promote, sell, publish, display and so on.. information online. Some may already have sites that need updated and revamped others may need their first site or different site for a different aspect of their business, for example I was asked to update my sons school P&C website which is separate from the schools site. The actual market is quite huge, if you however decided to just make websites for small business in your city (there is potential here to nationalise and even go global with your market) one would narrow their markets range.
2. Some don't spend a cent on design, for example the school P&C site is compiled by donations of time from parents. Others spend thousands. It is a question of getting what you pay for, usually. An electrician I know was quoted a thousand a year to have a web site. Some sites are large and complicated, others small. Some designers charge by the hour others for the site first and then an ongoing fee to maintain the site.
3. My product (web design) would solve this need (for a website) for smaller style web sites within my own area. I would also create charity style (like school P&C) for free in order to gain recognition and work to display in my own site. My product price would be competitive and similar to the prices charged in my area.

Having read Mann's article I have decided to adapt questionnaire to help me know my customers (potential market) more and ask some questions along the lines of;
"if you were searching for a wed design company, what would you be looking for"
"how much do you think a web site is worth "
"what do you think a web site would do for your business/product" etc...