WWW Usage & Preferences Bulleted List
How Often Users Save/Print Documents (Archivability)
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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.)
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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
Graphs: [Location]
[Access Time]
[Gender]
[Table]
- 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%).
For more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.
GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280