Well, as my business comes close to launching date, I have more and more concerns about targetting the customers you want.

After doing a large amount of research with paying people to look for a web hosting company, while being videotaped, and then, writing a small report afterwards about what each one thought of each company they found in their search for a web host.

The conclusion was very different from person to person, some choosing hosts by the best deal, and others by their website design and professional appearance.

I am a teenager, and starting small, but because of that, my prices cannot be as low as the large datacenters that can host 100 MB sites with 5 GB of traffic for $2 a month. This kind of price must be sacrificed and replaced with support and one-on-one attention to the customer, so as to provide a better service.

My question boils down to this: Where should a small web hosting company market? I am a professional web designer, and was planning to make a very business oriented site, including a clean, professional look, and stock art of things that interest businesses more. In the study, many people who's objective was to find hosting for their family's website, turned away from these sites, and stated in reports that they looked too fancy for them. While those searching for their small/medium size business gave more consideration to those with professional web sites saying that they didn't think they could rely on someone who couldn't pay a designer for a site in their reports.

So, this comes down to: Do I have the resources to handle only small/medium businesses? Or, because I'm small, should I design an"ok" site, to target the small, mostly home customers.

I'm simply looking for some direction, as I'm sure other hosts have gone through the same problem.

Are there more home customer prospects in your market? or small/medium businesses? I'm assuming your market is the local town in which you reside.

If there are substantially more home customer type of prospects, than go with that angle. If the numbers are about the same or if the home customer prospects are only a little more than SMEs, you might be better off going with the SMEs. B2B commerce has higher potential in the short and long run, businesses are more likely to make large investments like expensive web design and development, e-commerce setups etc. If you offer that service on the side, that's additional revenue that you would not get with home customers.

There's nothing at all wrong with having two entirely different sites, one for individuals and one for small businesses. By targeting small businesses offline, we find that it is much better received than online marketing. The web-savvy small business owner is probably going to want to pay less for hosting (although not necessarily) and the ones that would like to completely outsource their internet presence are much more likely to pay more.

If you don't feel comfortable with having to independant sites, then maybe offer two different types of hosting so that small businesses can see that they will get something that they can rely on, and individuals feel like they can get something in their budget, and will justify it because they won't need the extras that the other plans will offer.

If your site is especially nice, you can certainly use it as a reference to what your high-end services will offer. The symbols used in your site will have a great effect on how they view what kind of business you are. You can have a nice site and still appear reachable to the common man.

Family websites are too easily lost to free sites or cheaper hosting IMHO. It's hard for them to justify the cost. Small businesses can use it as a tax writeoff usually and can justify it as a cost of doing business, and it can be shown to them that they will make money with it, and even lose money without it.

Basically, I believe the nicer site is justified because SME's allow you a greater margin.

how many peopel were interviewed in ur "study"?