E-Business
Issue No. 20 - December/January 2005
Web Work - compelling reasons to keep at it!
by Sean Heylen
According to recent surveys carried out by Sensis (www.sensis.com.au), it appears that an increase in consumer spending is likely over the next 12 months, with the Internet being the main source of information on products and services. The report surveyed 1500 Australians from all states and territories about a range of issues including economic conditions, voting intentions, concerns and sporting affiliation. The report shows that:
- 70% of Australians now use the Internet regularly
- usage is slightly higher among males at 72% than females at 69%
- the 30-39 years old age group has the highest use of the Internet at 84%
- while the 65+ age group has the lowest at 31%
- A staggering 95% of households with income over $85,000 use the Internet. Meanwhile, 46% of households that have income of less than $35,000 are online regularly.
The Internet now appears to be the main way that consumers do research on products and services at 43%. This compares with 2% of consumers that make telephone calls to companies for information. Further, the Sensis survey revealed that 76% of small and medium enterprises (SME's) regularly use the web to research products and services.
Another interesting statistic is that in its quarterly broadband survey, our consumer watchdog the ACCC said at the end of June 2004 the total broadband take-up was 1,047,800. As to definitions, it said broadband was taken to mean any high speed connection greater than 200kbits/sec over a mix of media.
So, for business people the fairly obvious conclusion is that virtually every serious business needs a website that, at the very least, provides information about its products and services. Not doing so will potentially annoy and frustrate at least 43% and possibly up to 76% of your potential customers.
Now that we've established at least two pretty compelling reasons that businesses need websi...
