6:  Know your online business customers?

It is true that the online businesses which understand their customers better, comes up with better service/offers.  “Customer needs” are going to play an integral role in day-to-day online business decisions/strategy formulation.  Having a better overview/understanding of your customers will help you to stay ahead of your competitors.

What do you want to know about your online business customers?

• Who are your potential customers and what group they fall into?
• What is there income range and how much will they spend?
• How many potential customers are there?
• What do they currently buy from your competitors?
• The criteria on why they make there buying decisions?
• What it would take to get them to buy from you?
• What developments they expect in your product or service?
• When and where they prefer to buy?

It is all nice to hear, but where exactly do we find the information.  Well, the Internet is big enough to provide us these information for free.  Some of the best resources includes

• http://www.alacrawiki.com – A guide to business information companies, publishers and databases. The Alacra Industry Spotlights in particular are extremely useful in providing reviews and commentary on industry specific web sites that have statistics, market research and news.
• http://www.marketresearchworld.net – This site gives free access to various industry information including research findings, articles written by industry professionals such as market research in general, qualitative research, quantitative research, survey methods and statistics. In addition there is career and job related information, book lists and up-to-date news.
• http://www.researchrecap.com – Alacra's Research Recap pulls together industry, economic, academic, market, investment and credit research reports. It concentrates on free content but also offers links to selected paid research deemed of relevance to the topic.
• http://www.free-research.com – Browse and display free market and statistical data resources.
• http://www.marketresearch.com – Provides access to over 120,000 market research reports from 500 content providers. Priced pay-as-you-go service.
• http://www.datamonitor.com – Datamonitor produces reports on International business and consumer markets.
• http://www.eiu.com – Produce country and market reports as well as economic data, analysis and forecasts. 
• http://www.euromonitor.com – Euromonitor concentrates on consumer goods and services sectors globally. This site allows you to view the contents listings for the market reports free of charge.
• http://www.frost.com – Frost and Sullivan are well know for their reports on technology markets. As well as the reports, this site offers free access to press releases, seminars, details of conferences and their newsletters. All sections are searchable free of charge but you have to register to view them.
• http://www.ebusinessforum.com – Produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), this site looks at the commercial, regulatory and legal issues affecting ebusiness in approximately 60 countries.
• http://www.forrester.com – Market research reports covering the Internet and IT.  There are some free summaries and Internet reports but you have to register. Some free information but registration required.

I guess that is a good amount of website links to kick-start your online business customer research process.  While doing the customer research ask yourself what exact data do I require and why?  There is no point in having lot of data without knowing what to do with them. 

Summary of online business customer research

• “Customer needs” are going to play an integral role in day-to-day business decisions/strategy formulation
• Before starting with the customer research, ask yourself what exactly you need to know