I've been operating my ecommerce website for 3 years now but I've just realized that I really don't "know my customer". But I don't even know where to begin when figuring out the demographics of my average customer. How does a small business with limited resources conduct marketing research? How do I begin to find this information? Where do I look? How do I figure out her wants? Needs? Income? Spending habits? What does she read?

I have no idea where to start... Help!

Ask.

I know how you feel. But try asking. Add a poll or survey to your site and start asking questions. You can get some info from your analytics program as far as where your customers live, the browser and OS they use, etc. More expensive analytics programs can tell you more, but there's a lot to find in something like Google Analytics, which is free.

My business is service based and I get to speak to my clients so it's easier for me to learn some things directly from them, but you can still ask. People will fill out simple polls. If you add something to your site with a male/female option I bet a fair number of people fill it out. You can run that for a month and then ask another question.

Not everyone will fill it out and some people may not fill it out honestly, but if you continue to run the polls you will start to get some information.