If you ask the question among a group of web designers and developers, the most frequent answer you are likely to get is, “Not me.”
A recent piece in emarketer waxes lyrical about the continuing growth of broadband. Here is an excerpt from the article:
This year broadband users as a proportion of all Internet users increased an impressive 13 percentage points over the previous February, as 68% of all US Internet users reportedly connected via broadband.
Yes, 68% is a big figure. And broadband is great when you have big page files, want to show large images and have some streaming videos to share.
But if you subtract 68 from 100, you get 32.
That’s 32%. Just a hair’s width away of one third of all Internet users.
To state it bluntly, one third of web users still access your site through dial-up.
How well do you serve them? Is your site fully accessible to users on dial-up? That is to say, can people on dial-up enjoy your site and find what they want as easily as those with broadband?
If not, you may want to consider the likely losses in revenues when you effectively turn your back on one third of all your potential readers and customers.
You’ll find a lot of useful information and resources on page weight and download times, on dial-up and broadband, in our Page Weight Tested brief.
That’s a theme we all need to be reminded about every day. We always learn more from our failures than from our successes. The customer you just lost will give you much more useful information about how you can improve than the ‘satisfied’ customer.
It’s true in so many situations. The dial-up case is a perfect example. What could you do to hang on to more of those? Perhaps it’s just one image that is a little too big, but you could use a lower resolution. Attention to details can improve the percentages. It’s the customers on the edge of almost being won who can give you the information you’re looking for.