The point is, if 66% of “rural America” doesn’t have broadband, you can very likely extrapolate that to other countries with large rural areas, though probably excepting the Scandinavian countries and Finland where Internet penetration country-wide has been a high priority (and apparently a right in Finland).
Think: China, Russia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This was pointed out in a recent set of slides by the Yiibu company (I believe this one), and something to keep in mind if your client’s site must have large market penetration, combines static sought-after information but also interactive elements (streaming videos or heavy Javascript and other bandwidth suckers).
It seems web developers with good internet connections forget how many people don’t have those, and they are not all necessarily “out of your target market” simply because they do not have fat pipes. One technique you can use is have parts of the site (or app) who asks users if they want to go further (with mention of the size of the data they’re likely to be loading). People with good connections may not think twice. People with bad connections may save the link and come back later when they have more time or have started a new month (or however their plans work). Somewhere else in that slide series I believe (if not then it’s in this one which I also recommend viewing) is some statistics (from Yahoo! shopping) about how often purchases are viewed on mobile versus later on PC or not, and how the purchase was made (online or in-store).
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Perhaps, with the rise of mobile browsing, this issue of page weight will be increasingly brought into focus. It will be interesting to see how things develop over the next year or so.
(Incidentally, a high speed fiber optic network is currently being rolled out in Australia that is designed to reach some 97% of the population, but there are doubts over whether many people actually will want it. Personally, if it ever gets completed, I’m looking forward to it, but I do wonder if it will encourage lazy web design habits. Only time will tell, but it seems the web is being pulled in different directions, with increased broadband capacities on the one hand and yet increased mobile browsing on the other.)
I grew up in a very rural area (the county I grew up in had one stop light), and going home I’m always reminded that broadband hasn’t spread everywhere yet. My parents are using satellite internet, which is a little better than the dial up that most people in the area are stuck with. But not a fiberoptic network is being installed in areas where cable hasn’t made any foothold. Hopefully that’s a sign of things to come.
[size=2][font=“comic sans ms”]* EDIT: I screwed up a statistic: it’s “60% of rural households use (have) broadband internet” not 66% don’t. Whoops.
Since I’m really uneasy about NYT, I’m going to post some paragraphs from the article here.[/font][/size]
[font=“georgia”]“You often hear people talk about broadband from a business development perspective, but it’s much more significant than that,” Mr. Depew added. “This is about whether rural communities are going to participate in our democratic society. If you don’t have effective broadband, you are cut out of things that are really core to who we are as a country.”
Affordable broadband service through hard wiring and or cellular phone coverage could revolutionize life in rural parts of the country. People could pay bills, shop and visit doctors online. They could work from home and take college classes.
Increasingly, interacting with certain branches of government can be done only online. And sometimes, a lack of cellphone or e-mail access can have serious consequences. Emergency alerts regarding severe weather, for example, are often sent only through text or e-mail.[/font]
They also mention a woman who, in order to meet with her governor, whom she could not call on the phone (only contact is via e-mail), had to drive 45 minutes to her daughter’s in order to email him. They can’t use effective satellite due to trees and cost, and her work has dial-up. Many people try to use their cell networks, but service is patchy and expensive.
You cannot even claim back VAT for your business in the UK without it being online nowadays - paper is not an option anymore: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/vat-online/moving.htm so it’s tough luck if your not connected basically.
[ot][font=“comic sans ms”]Rudy: Yup. I just ran into 3 sites this morning trying to force @ font-face on my browser. The worse my mood, the more Comic Sans Joy.
Besides, most people actually have me on ignore so I’m only impacting a lowly minority, which always makes it okay. Or, that’s what fellow web developers keep telling me…[/font][/ot]
That’s one reason I absolutely HATE the overuse of Javascript such as jQuery for stupid animation effects. That’s also a reason I browse the internet with Flash disabled. The first broadband I had I believe was 256 kbs. Then I upgraded to 1.5 Mbs three years later or so and even then it could take 10 seconds or longer to download the data just for a stupid Flash advertisement. So I disabled it to save time. Let’s not forget that mobile internet users don’t all have 3G or 4G plans.
If 15% of the population in America does not have broadband, that stupid jQuery library for some idiotic animation effects is going to take quite a while to download.
Unfortunately there is not a clean solution to detect bandwidth and serve up appropriate content, so the next best thing is to offer people choice ‘Go the low-bandwidth route and the higher-bandwidth route’. You could build a front-end that could test the speed of data packets being download and then offer the user a choice of high/low bandwidth options or just have a light ‘entrance’ page that gives the user a choice - kinda a throwback to visit the flash site or not, but I am not sure non-technical users would know if they need high or low bandwidth so one might have to describe why to choose one over the other?
The low bandwidth should be light on markup, CSS, no or little impact JS, small/highly compressed images, , no flash, no music or video streaming. Use sprites for menus. Use small compressed not-many-layered background images (if a background image must be used at all), keep fonts basic. Media queries might help further by specifying content for phones and smaller screen/browser sizes?
It is scary to think that because people that farm for our sustenance can’t take part in democratic practices or emergency warnings/weather. As designers we should make sure that this is available, maybe even if the customer is not wanting to ‘pay’ for the extra work needed to support this!
The low bandwidth should be light on markup, CSS, no or little impact JS, small/highly compressed images, , no flash, no music or video streaming. Use sprites for menus. Use small compressed not-many-layered background images (if a background image must be used at all), keep fonts basic.
[quote=““wilto on twitter””]
Mobile users want to see our menu, hours, and delivery number. Desktop users definitely want this 1mb png of someone smiling at a salad.
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If you do a Google search for the headline, “Digital Age Is Slow to Arrive in Rural America”, you can access the article without having to fight the paywall. I’ve used that to access stories from 20 years ago.
Off Topic:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, knowing the rotten tomatoes will fly: I LIKE Comic Sans as a small body font. Go ahead, throw it, I dare ya!
Originally Posted by wilto on twitter Mobile users want to see our menu, hours, and delivery number. Desktop users definitely want this 1mb png of someone smiling at a salad.
Yes and this is why a mobile user should have a choice of low or high bandwidth too.
<confession>I have clients who used Comic Sans for their publicity leaflet, so I used it for their web site - and I really like it. :o It seems to suit the site, which is for a quilting group.</confession>[/ot]
@TechnoBear; yes, tell us all your little secrets the bank account number and the login information could be good too… I need some cash to buy a new computer :D[/ot]
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