WWW Usage & Preferences Bulleted List

How Often Users Save/Print Documents (Archivability)

• For this question, users were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 9 how often they print pages or save pages.

• In general, users print and save documents fairly regularly (4.61).

• There were no significant differences between users from Europe and the US.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• There were no significant differences between genders.

Types and Regularity of Information Accessed

• For this question, users were asked to rate each category based on how frequently they access this type of information.

• The category with the highest regular usage score is "Replace Other Software" (6.789) which means using a Web browser to access FTP, Gopher, WAIS, etc. databases.

• Other types of information frequently accessed are: reference information (6.397), electronic news (5.820) and product information (5.496).

• Accessing the Web instead of watching TV also received a high rating for US users (6.197) but only a moderate rating for European users (4.776).

• The least frequently accessed is shopping (2.568).

• Weekend users reported accessing the Web instead of watching TV more frequently than Weekday users (6.587 Weekend, 5.902 Weekend).

• Females access product information less frequently than males do (4.658 female, 5.804 male).

Frequency of Browser Use

• For this question, we mean how many time you use your browser for a specific set of tasks or activities. We do not mean how many times the browser is launched per day.

• 45.79% of users use their browser 1 to 4 times a day. 32.60% use it more frequently (over 5 times a day), and 21.60% use it less frequently (less than once a day).

• More users in Europe use their browser a few times a week than do users in the US (22.07% vs. 17.94%).

• On the average, Weekend users browse the Web less frequently than Weekday users.

• Fewer females use their browsers on a daily basis: 67.41% of females compared to 82.83% of males.

Number of Items on Bookmark/Hotlist

• Overall, 44.30% of users have 11 to 50 items bookmarked/on their hotlist.

• More users from Europe have over 100 items bookmarked than users from the US do (6.59% more).

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• In general, females have less items bookmarked/hotlisted than males.

Number of Hours Browser Used Per Week

• The largest category of users spends 10 to 20 hours a week using their browsers (26.56). The next largest category spends 4 to 6 hours (22.34%).

• In the Third survey, 50.0% of users spent only 2 to 6 hours per week using their browsers indicating that on the average, users are spending more hours per week than they did previously.

• Users in Europe spend slightly less time using their browsers than users in the US, which is the reverse of the Third survey. 65.83% of European users spend 6 hours or less per week compared to only 59.44% of US users.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• Females reported spending fewer hours per week on the Web than males. 16.26% of males vs. 29.18% of females reported spending less than 4 hours per week.

Preferences Towards Different Media Types (images, sounds, etc.)

• For this question, users were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 9 how much they liked pages which contained these different media types.

• The most liked type is meta-indexes (7.68) followed closely by pages which are searchable (7.67).

• The least preferred media type is movies with a rank of 4.09, which is still quite high.

• Users in Europe preferred text slightly more and all other media slightly less than users from the US.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• Females indicated a slightly increased preference for meta-indexes and text over males, but identical preferences in other categories.

Primary Use of Browser

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• The most common use of browsers is simply for browsing (79.00%) followed by entertainment (63.63%) and work (51.81%).

• The category with the least number of responses is "other" (10.83%) followed closely by shopping (11.07%).

• Except academic research, a smaller percentage of users from Europe identify the above mentioned categories as a primary use of their browser.

• More Weekend users identified browsing, education, entertainment, and shopping as their primary uses.

• More females reported that their primary uses were education and academic research than did males. More males reported business research and work as primary uses.

• The difference in entertainment use between males and females in the Third survey (7.26%) is much less in the Fourth (1.38%).

Problems Using the Web

• For this question, users were asked which of the following problems they encountered when using the Web: not being able to find a page I know is out there ("find"), not being able to determine where I am ("lost in htext"), not being able to organize well the pages & information I gather ("organize"), not being able to find a page I once visited ("return"), my Web browser is poorly designed/does not work well ("software"), it takes too long to view/download pages ("speed"), not being able to visualize where I have been and where I can go ("visualize").

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• The most common problem was speed (69.11%) followed by being able to find pages (36.48%) and organize retrieved information (25.82%).

• The least significant problems were the quality of Web browsers (3.2%) and getting lost in hypertext (6.54%).

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• More females than males reported problems finding existing pages (6.88% more) and getting lost in hyperspace (5.65%).

Reasons For Saving Documents

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• The most common reason for saving documents was to use them off-line (59.70%), followed by reading them off-line (50.92%) and distributing them (45.24%).

• Users in Europe save documents less often for distribution and more often for archiving than users in the US.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• There were no significant differences between genders.

Browsing Strategies

• For this question, users were asked what strategies they use when browsing the Web: Hotlist (users revisiting pages they have added to their hotlist), Search (using search engines such as Lycos), Meta-index (using large indices such as Yahoo), Opportunistic (following links from page to page as they are encountered), and URL (typing in known URLs).

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• All categories had very high percentages. The highest was Hotlist (80.12%) and the lowest was URL (64.15%).

• Users from Europe reported using Meta-indices and Opportunistic strategies less frequently than US users.

• There were no significant differences between Weekend and Weekday users.

• Males reported using Hotlist, Search, and URLs more frequently than female users. Females seemed to favor Meta-indices and Opportunistic strategies.

How Users Find Out About WWW Pages

• For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer.

• Most users find out about WWW pages from other Web pages (94.28%). Other popular sources are friends (53.12%), magazines (64.94%) and Usenet (46.13%).

• More users in Europe find out about pages from Usenet than do users in the US (4.32% more). More users in the US find out about pages from friends (7.36% more) and other sources (4.32% more).

• Fewer Weekend users find out about Web pages from friends than do Weekday users (5.01% less).

• A smaller percentage of females find out about pages from Usenet (37.06% vs. 50.07%) and magazines (59.12% vs. 66.88%) than do males.

Speed of Connection to Internet

• The most common connection speed is 14 Kb/sec (33.70%) followed by 28 Kb/sec (26.63%). 14.53% of users are unsure of their connection speed.

• Many more users have 28 Kb/s than in the Third survey (14.56% more) but the percentage of users with speeds less than or equal to 28 Kb/s is the same across surveys (approximately 61%).

• In general, users in Europe seem to have faster connections than users in the US.

• Weekend users tend to have slower connections than Weekday users with 74.59% of Weekend users having connections under 28 Kb/s compared to 57.58% of Weekday users.

• A higher percentage of females than males are unsure of their connection speed (31.84% vs. 8.44%).