Use Bulleted List
Browser You Expect To Use In 12 Months
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Both European and US users expect to use a Netscape browser in the next 12 months (80.45%), with 12.18% stating Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This represents a 9% decrease for Netscape from the Fifth Survey (89.4%) and an increase of 9% for Microsoft. Since Netscape provided a link to the surveys, we inspected the results to look for a corresponding bias in preferences from Netscape users. Close inspection revealed a small (2.4%) but statistically insignificant effect. The reliability of the results can further be increased as none of the various segments (Location, Gender, Age) differed in their responses.
Browsing Strategies
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- For this question, users were asked what strategies they use when browsing the Web: Favorite/Bookmark (users revisiting pages they have added to their favorite/bookmark), Index (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.
- Once again, all categories had very high percentages. As in the Fourth Survey and Fifth Survey, the highest was Bookmarks (82.69%), followed by Index (78.1%) and URL (69.44%). The percentages for Metaindices (59.45%), Opportunistic (64.16%) and URL based (69.44%) strategies have dropped somewhat since the Fifth Survey. Younger users are less likely to use bookmarks (74.41% 19-25 vs 86.11% 50+), though differences for other strategies across age are not significant.
Connection Speed
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Modems still dominate the day for Web users, with just over half of the users (51.40%) using 28.8 Kb/sec modems and 19.69% using 14.4 Kb/sec modems. This represents a significant shift from the Fifth survey, where only 39.0% were using 28.8 Kb/sec and 25.5% were using 14.4 Kb/sec modems. The trend for increasing number of respondents connecting at speeds less than or equal to 28.8 Kb/sec is still occurring, with 71.59% of the respondents using 28.8 Kb/sec or less, up from 65.5% in the Fifth and 61% in the Fourth Survey.
- European respondents, in general, have faster connection speeds. A higher percentage of respondents over age 50 are connecting with speeds under 28.8 Kb/sec (86.3%). Also, a higher percentage of respondents between 19 and 25 years old are unsure of their connection speed (16.24%), though those that do know, report fast speeds, most likely due to educational infrastructures of over 1 Mb/sec. These differences across strata are basically identical to the Fifth survey indicating relative stability in this characteristic.
Electronic News
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- A drop occurred in the frequency of people accessing electronic news on a daily basis (18.95% Sixth vs 21.8% Fifth). The number of users accessing on a weekly basis though has remained about the same (22.94% Sixth 22.1% Fifth) along with the number of respondents who have never accessed electronic news (14.15% Sixth vs 13.9% Fifth). Females, in general, seem to access electronic news less frequently than males. As reflected in studies of news consumption in other mediums, e.g., television and newspapers, the younger generation consumes less news and on a more infrequent basis. This trend is reflected in online newspapers as well where 41.07% of 50+ yr olds access enews at least weekly compared to only 31.14% of the 19-25 yr olds.
Favorites Bookmarks Usage Patterns
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- The purpose of this question is to begin to understand what behaviors people use to manage their personal Web information via favorites/bookmarks. This is a new question to the surveys, originally developed by David Abrams of the University of Toronto as part of his research into personal information management. Nearly all users (86.25%) create new entries, with 69.07% deleting entries and 59.08% rearranging entries. Slightly more than half of the users (58.11%) create folders, with 42.49% creating sub-folders (folders within folders). A fair number of users change the titles of their entries (44.61%) though not may users annotate entires (17.44%). Only 5.54% claim not to use this facility of the browser. Males engage in more favorite/bookmark activities than females. The baby boomers, 25-50 yr olds, who have more items in their bookmarks also tend to utilize more aspects of favorite/bookmark functionality.
Financial Material
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Just over a third of respondents (33.89%) reported that they never use the Web to find economic information. This translates to an increase of 5 percentage points in the amount of users accessing financial data online since the Fifth Survey where 38.0% had never accessed financial data online. Part of this increase was in daily users, where 11.78% of the users currently access this information compared to 8.96 in the Fifth Survey. More females than males report never having used the Web for economic information (42.98% female vs 29.82% male), which is much less than the Fifth Survey (49.9% females, 32.6% males).
Frequency Of Use
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- For this question, we mean how many time you use the Web for a specific set of tasks or activities. We do not mean how many times the browser is launched per day. Usage remained quite consistent with the Fifth Survey. 45.92% of respondents use the Web 1 to 4 times a day, 35.96% use it more frequently, and 18.1% use it less frequently. This stability in the past year indicates that the Web has settled into regular and steady daily use, with 81.88% reporting using their browser at least once a day in the Sixth Survey.
- Female users are less likely to be heavy daily users than males and the 19-25 age group tends to be the heaviest users with the elder group being the least frequent users. Still, 77.52% of the users 50+ yr old report using their browsers daily.
Hours Used
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- While the number of times browsers are used per day has remained stable since the last survey, the number of hours people user the Web has increased, with one in five users (20.05%) reporting using their browsers over 20 hours per week. Just about one third (30.01%) spend 10 to 20 hours a week on the Web, with 17% spending 7 to 9 hrs/wk and 17.76% spending 4 to 6 hrs/wk. Casual use of under 5 hours per week is down from 16.87% in the Fifth Survey to 15.18%, further emphasizing the trend towards increased usage. For comparison, in the Third Survey conducted in April of 1995, only 28.46% of the users spent more than 10 hrs/wk on the Web. Eighteen months later, nearly twice as many users (50.06%) spend more than 10 hrs/wk! US, female, and older users are more likely to spend less time on the Web than their counterparts.
How Users Find Out About WWW Pages
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer. The primary method people find out about other sites is via search engines (87.71%) and other Web pages (86.92%). This is a reversal from the Fifth Survey, where 90.7% reported finding out about Web pages from other Web pages and 83.1% from search engines. Printed media (67.95%), friends (56.66%), TV (35.54%) and Usenet Newsgroups (34.25%) remain other popular methods for finding out about other pages, though the use of Usenet has declined 10 percentage points from the Fifth Survey (44.4%). The younger generation is more likely to find out about other pages from friends, while the older generation make more use of printed media.
Image Loading
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- This is a new question to the surveys, but one that we've been meaning to ask for quite some time due to the numerous queries we field about how often people surf without images being loaded for each page automatically. This is a big concern for graphic designers who are faced with the opposing goals of producing media rich content that everyone can access quickly. Most people surf with images loaded automatically as 85.40% report turning image loading off under 25% of the time. The remaining 14.57% report not loading image anywhere from 26 to 100% of the time. As one might expect due to the slow transoceanic connection between US and Europe, more Europeans turn image loading off. Differences between gender and age were not observed.
Instead Of Watching TV
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Almost 37% of respondents claim that they use the Web instead of watching TV on a daily basis. An additional 29.03% say the Web replaces TV on a weekly basis, usually more than once a week. This pattern almost exactly mirrors the pattern found in the Fifth Survey. These number when used in conjunction with the use of the email as being on equal par with the phone paint a tremendously strong picture of the rapid integration of the Internet and World Wide Web into the fabric of the lives of those who currently use it. This is truly an amazing time.
- Respondents from Europe are far less likely to use the Web instead of watching TV; 32.88% say they have never used the Web instead of watching TV. Males and 50+ yr olds supplement TV watching with Web surfing more so than the other segments of users.
Intranet Use
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Just about a third of the users (31.13%) report the presence of Internets within their organization, though 19.43% stated that this question was not applicable to them (users not affiliated with an organization, company, etc.). European users have a higher incidence rate of Intranet use (39.46%) vs their US counterparts (30.95%). Many female and 50+ yr old users found the question not applicable.
Monitor Color Support
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Of equal importance to the size of the screen users employ to experience the WWW is the monitor's color support. While many users are unsure of their monitor's color support (34.76%), 38.16% claim to have 24 bit deep color and 20.19% claim to have 16 bit deep color. Less than 1% of the users have monochrome monitors. Europeans were more likely to have 8 bit color (8.94%) compared to the US users (3.77%).
Monitor Resolution
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- To complete the picture so to speak (puns are a terrible thing to waste!), knowledge of the resolution of monitors is also necessary. Again, a fair number of users were unsure as to what their monitor characteristics are (26.95%). The remaining users report having 1024 x 768 resolution (22.21%), 800 x 600 resolution (17.67%) and 640 x 480 (19.95%).
Newsgroup
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Just about one third of the users (32.81%) access Usenet Newsgroups at least weekly, with 46.1% either having never access newsgroups of only accessed them a few times. This distribution of usage is quite similar to the Fifth Survey. Females and the 19 - 25 yr old group tend to access newsgroups less frequency than their counterparts.
Number Of Items In Favorites Bookmark
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- The largest category of users has 11-50 items in their favorites/bookmarks (37.64%), and 77.3% have over 11 items. The percentage of respondents with over 100 items in their favorites/bookmarks is 18.7. The distribution of items is nearly identical to the distribution in the Fourth Survey. As in the Fifth and Fourth Surveys, more European respondents than US respondents had over 100 items in their hotlist (24.96% Europe, 18.51% US). In general, females have fewer items than males, The respondents with the highest number of items in their favorites/bookmarks are users in the 26-50 age range: 44.59% have over 51 items in their list.
Primary Use Of Browser
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- For this question, users were allowed to mark more than one answer. These responses are almost identical to the responses for the Fifth and Fourth Surveys. The most common Web activity is simply browsing (77.08%) followed by entertainment (63.79%), education (53.29%), and work (50.9%). Shopping is up to 18.83% from 11.1% in the Fourth Survey and 14.91% in the Fifth Survey. This represents a moderate and steady growth of the Web for shopping, a trend that is expected to continue as online transactions become easier and more choices become available. Europeans tend to report less recreational uses of the Web than do US users.
- As with the Fifth Survey, males reported slightly more work-related uses of the Web: work (53.18%) and business research (44.61%) while females reported more educational uses (58.46%). Also mirroring the findings of the Fifth Survey, the 26-50 age group reported significantly more work (58.11%) and business research (47.99%) being done on the Web than other age groups. Those aged 19-25 report more entertainment uses (75.85%) and academic research (51.18%).
Problems Using Favorites Bookmarks
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Everyone complains about how difficult it is to manage all the information found on the Web, but exactly what are their complaints about? This is a new question to the surveys, originally developed by David Abrams of the University of Toronto as part of his research into personal information management. Users were able to select more than one answer to this question. A fair number of users claim not to experience any difficulties using favorites/bookmarks (45.64%), though if the number is reversed and non-users excluded, half of the users do have problems using favorites/bookmarks! The biggest problem is in making changes (25.97%). About one in four users complain that they are not able to quickly store items away (23.52%) and organize the contents (22.67%). Another 15.81% expressed that the inability to see all the content of their favorites/bookmarks was a problem. The 50+ yr olds (52.86%) were more likely to not think there was a problem with using the facilities than the 19-25 yr olds (40.45%).
Problems Using The Web
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- 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 known info"), not being able to organize well the pages & information I gather ("organize"), not being able to find a page I once visited ("revisit"), it takes too long to view/download pages ("speed"), not being able to visualize where I have been and where I can go ("visualize"), and it costs too much ("cost"). Users were allowed to mark more than one answer.
- Speed continues to be the number one problem of Web users (76.55%), and has been since the Fourth Survey when the question was first introduced. This is not to say that the problem has been getting worse, as the number who complained of speed is down from 80.9% in the Fifth Survey, but still higher than the 69.9% in the Fourth. This effect is most likely due the the changes in connect speed of users to the Internet (See: Connection Speed).
- The next big problems are "finding known info" (34.09%), organizing collected information (31.03%), and being able to find pages already visited (13.41%). Cost does not seem to be an issue, with only 7.75% reporting this as a problem. Given that the average household income of Web users is well above the normal population, this is not very surprising and cannot be taken to mean that the Web is currently affordable for all. The only notable difference between genders was the problem of finding information: 31.01% of males, and 40.33% of females reported this problem. This difference was found in the Fifth Survey as well. No major differences were reported across age groups.
Product Information
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Product information remains one of the most popular types of information accessed. A surprisingly small 7.83% have never accessed product information on the Web, while 30.1% access it on a weekly basis and 25.89% on a monthly basis. This is nearly the exact distribution as found in the Fifth Survey indicating the stead-fast utility of the Web for production information gathering. Males access product information more regularly than females do: 33.42% of males access it on a weekly basis compared to only 23.02%% of females. This does represent a 3 percentage point increase in weekly access of product information by females. Only 12.95% of females have never accessed product information on the Web, a 3 percentage point decrease since the last survey. There are still no clear trends for use of product information with respect to age, although there are noticeable differences in many of the frequency categories.
Reasons For Saving And Printing Documents
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- For this question, users could mark more than one answer. By far the most widely cited reason for save and printing documents is to use them off line (62.32%). Not surprising given the poor resolution of current monitors, 52.57% store/print documents to read offline. There seems to be a far amount of sharing of the online world with those without access, as 49.28% distribute the documents to others not online. This ranking and percentages are nearly identical to the Fifth Survey. One area that showed a slight increase was in the saving/printing of documents for archival purposes and due to fear that the content would disappear (24.20%). The 19-25 generation us less likely to read the content offline (41.42% 19-25 vs 63.28% 50+), but more likely to mimic the format used in other pages.
Reference Material
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- Reference information continues to be the most frequently accessed category of those we inquired about. 19.61% of respondents reported using reference information on a daily basis and 39.71% use it on a weekly basis, up from 33.8% n the Fifth Survey. Only 1.74% have never accessed reference information on the Web! It seems reasonable that part of the reason for the increase in the number of hours people use the Web is reflected in the increased utility as measured by accessing reference material. Note that this is an area that is highly dependent upon useful content, much of which is has seriously started to emerge. The world of information has essentially become one's bookshelf (well almost). There is little difference across gender in the use of reference material.
Research Material
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- A quarter of the respondents (22.5%) reported using research information "a few times", with only 12.79% reported having never used online research information via the WWW. 39.16% of the users reported using research material at least weekly. European respondents reported more frequent use of research information. Males and the 26-50 yr olds are more likely to access this type of information than their counterparts.
Shopping
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- For this question, shopping refers to actually making purchases over the Web. A high percentage of users (41.16%) still have never used the Web for online shopping, though this number is lower than that found in the Fifth Survey of 46.4%. An even higher percentage of users in Europe have never used the Web for shopping (57.34%). Over a third of the users report having used it for shopping a few time (36.64%). There is almost no daily use (1%). Males are more likely to have used the Web for shopping than females. The 19-25 generation has made significant less use of the Web for shopping.
Use Of Communication Technologies
Graphs: [Location] [Age] [Gender]
- With the purpose of gaining a better understanding of how Web users utilize other communications technologies, we asked users to report their use of these other technologies. Just about all (98.21%) of Web users have and use email. This is the same utilization as the phone (97.24%), an amazing acceptance/internalization of this new medium by the user community. Even more startling is that only three out of four people (74.17%) report using traditional mail, read: email surpasses use of traditional postal mail amongst Web users! Email is truly the killer application of the 90's and the Internet. It is interesting to note that these percentages are nearly exactly the same as reported six months ago in the Fifth Survey.
- As far as for other communications technologies, Web users are technically savvy, with 70.29% using faxes, close to half using wireless phones (46.34%), and 33.35% using pagers. Europeans are less likely to use pages and voice mail than their US counterparts. Use of communications technologies is quite similar across gender however. As one might expect, the 26-50 generation is the heaviest users of technology, with the 19-25 yr olds being the least heavy users (though this is not true for pagers).