By Elizabeth

To get to product/market fit, essentially a point where you have a solid group of core users who love your product, we'll first have to narrow down to the kind of customer who will love our product. 

To this end, we'll want to explore a range of customer types.  For example, when we were building Shiny Orb, our social shopping site for wedding apparel, we weren't initially sure who would be our target audience. We could have said in an offhandish way that our target market was web-savvy people buying wedding apparel.  But, that really wouldn't have been specific enough.  Was our ideal customer-profile a 29 year old busy I-Banker bride-to-be with no time?  Or a 60 year old retired mom who was planning her daughter's wedding?  Or a 24 year old web-savvy bargain hunter bride-to-be who had ample time?  Or a younger teenage sister of the bride, who was a constantly online through her phone?  Obviously, we had no idea, so it was important for us to explore a variety of plausible customer-types to learn who would be a best fit for our proposed product.

When you're in the very early stages doing your business research, you'll want to:

1) Write down a list of ~5 specific customer types you'd like to interview and learn more about.  This is key.  Most people we speak with tend to interview just a few of their friends.  It's important to be strategic in thinking about the range of different customer types who may be a good fit for your product.

2) You'll need to figure out how you'll vet people to make sure you're able to interview the customer types you're looking to speak with.  Write a survey with questions that will help you filter between people you do and don't want to interview. 

3) Lastly, what do you want to learn from these people you interview?  Write out interview questions that will help you learn who would be most likely to be your ideal customer.

Note: none of these steps require use of the internet or coding.  There is so much customer research that needs to happen before you're even ready to launch your website for your business.

For more tips and resources on starting a web business without coding, visit LaunchBit.