Jens Meiert

28.55 %: Focus on Modem Users

According to the June 2007 OECD broadband-related statistics and their broadband subscriptions data (XLS, 32 KB), 28.55 % of internet users of OECD member countries use a cable modem for internet access. This means a renewed, strong argument for continued focus on modem users.

It’s ironic to look at the priorities: Some site owners and developers make very sure not to forget browsers with 2 % market share, but ignore 10 % of their users using a screen resolution of 800 × 600 pixels, or said 20 % using a modem.

No matter that broadband access continues to spread and no matter that your site might not target a more or less international audience, low load time is and will remain important to offer consistently good experiences. The good news: Performance really isn’t rocket science to improve.

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• Meiert’s Law of Traffic Congestion
• 2007 Retrospective, 2008 Outlook

Comments

1. On November 27, 2007, 9:55 CET, Sebastian said:

   This means a renewed, very strong argument for more focus on modem users.

   What does that even mean? A modem is just a device for connecting to any kind of network, including broadband. All it does is translating an analog signal into a digital one and the other way ’round. Furthermore, cable modem usually means broadband access via television cable.

   Nevertheless I find short load times even on a phone modem very important, especially in the age of the mobile internet (which is in fact the strongest argument for lighter websites) but I think you always have to find a good balance based on the usage statistics of your site.

2. On November 27, 2007, 11:06 CET, Jens O. Meiert said:

   Sebastian, I intentionally use the numbers that way to make clear that even though “modem” not mean access via 14.4 connection, far from all people use a T1 line.

   I also intentionally skipped the “look at your stats” chit-chat since a) few analytics tools appear to show connection speed, and b) load time should be focused on and optimized in general; the key is real-time surfing.

   However, you’re right that the mobile market will only emphasize the load time problem—it does, fortunately, it has to, unfortunately.

3. On November 27, 2007, 17:33 CET, Duluoz said:

   I think it would be very interesting to see a cross comparison of OECD stats and a study on marketing design strategies - minimalism where low bandwidth would be required verses heavily graphic and “noisy” designs, for lack of a better description, which would target high bandwidth users. In my opinion - I feel minimalism, when done right, is a far more powerful approach. For example, in the newspaper business, if you take out a full page ad and only print one word on the entire page, most likely everyone will read it and most likely remember it. If you take that same full page and fill it to the brim with all different kinds of things people are programed to skim it and will not commit anything to memory.

   Getting back on subject - I think its very interesting how mobile users are starting to weigh more heavily as a viable target audience. Personally I feel the transition from tiny cell phone screens to larger devices such as the iPhone and other larger devices and the propagation of broadband cell networks and wifi will see the lower end of the bandwidth spectrum decrease to near irrelevance.

   But, until that day, being able to reach that larger audience equals a larger potential paying, ad clicking customer and I’m ok with that.

4. On December 2, 2007, 18:01 CET, Jens O. Meiert said:

   Thank you, David… indeed we’ll need additional data for comparison, must use what we have to promote the importance of performance, and generally watch the mobile market.

   Hopefully though, performance and load time will get more attention.

5. On December 10, 2007, 20:14 CET, Christophe Strobbe said:

   Interestingly, the biggest internet service provider in Belgium, Belgacom (which used to have a monopoly in telephony until it was privatized), will end its dial-in service as of 31 January 2008. The only cost of this service was the cost of the phone call, so it was a cheap but slow alternative to ADSL and internet through the television cable. Belgacom is ending the dial-in service because it has only 50,000 users, as opposed to 1.5 million clients who use ADSL. So people are expected to move on to an ADSL service (512 kbps) that costs 20 EUR/month. Some other ISPs in Belgium, like Tele2 and Scarlet, still offer dial-in subscriptions, but I think that most advertising in this area focuses on broad band.

6. On December 11, 2007, 11:49 CET, Jens O. Meiert said:

   Christophe, that is quite interesting… and I guess it’s a move quickly to be followed by other (Western) countries as well, so that we can look at a lot faster connections soon.

   What I find concerning is that this may confirm people in that focus on load time isn’t that important, then leading to ignore an international audience (if applicable) on slower connections.

7. On December 12, 2007, 20:23 CET, Aaron said:

   (Dial up) modem users aside there’s another market that’s exploding which many, if not most, designer/developer/decorators (including myself) ignore: the mobile market. According to this TechCrunch article, iPhone users already exceed in number all other mobile browser users combined. Download times should always be a priority. Even with high speed mobile data networks available, these devices have much less processing power than even a 5 year old computer. Add the average screen of 320×240 with optimized browsers stripping the rich content from the site and any site’s total KB size becomes an issue.
   Mobile embedded device usage is exploding and will continue to do so. Bloating sites with widgets, sloppy code, heavy javascript and flash will only turn away visitors if the page load time is too long.

   Even at home on 6 Mb cable I can feel the unnecessary lag of bloated websites. Many sites would be unbearably slow if I was burdened with a dial-up modem. I feel for users who have nothing but dial-up from which to choose.

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