Market Research - Websites

Before I create my website, as well as looking at existing websites, I need to get people's opinion on what is a good website. To do this, I have conducted a survey asking people what a good new website should be, and from this I can design my own website accordingly.

First, I asked how often my participants visited news websites.

As we can see, most of the people who completed my survey do visit newspaper websites, which puts them in a good space to answer my remaining questions. This means the results I accumulate will be valid and therefore reliable.

Next, I asked whether people prefer the idea of reading a news website was more appealing than the paper itself.

Six out of seven people voted for newspaper websites being more appealing than the newspapers themselves. This suggests that there is a big market for online news and perhaps signals a new era for journalism, where people are more inclined to go onto the internet for free to read news than to go into their local shop and purchase a copy of the corresponding newspaper, especially in these tough times. Similarly, the layout, speed and quality of online news is such that it is superior to its 2-dimensional sister, and this survey poll suggests this further.

I wanted to know to what extent should a local newspaper delve into the news using its website?

 Contrary to what I thought, five out of seven people thought a basic website would be adequate to local news, giving me hope that the newspaper could live on after all. With most of those surveyed being media students, one can assume they identified the problem of many getting their news online and not being loyal to their newspaper as per days gone by, and suggest to let people buy the newspaper itself. This may be a good idea; tease the reader with some information, but let the newspaper give a more extensive coverage of stories, thus raking in the money.

Finally, I wanted to get some ideas about the colour of my webpage.

Clearly, colours attract people, so I will not be going black and white for my website.





I am pleased with how my survey went, I now have a good idea for when it comes to flat-planning my website as to what colours to use, and for the depth for information I will put on my articles in comparison with my newspaper.