New Website Report Worth Studying

The UCLA Internet Report, "Surveying the Digital Future," is 'must reading' for CEOs and CIOs as well as information technology, marketing and sales professionals. UCLA spent four years planning the report, which includes annual updates that will involve as many of the original 2, 096 households across America originally surveyed.

Here are some highlights, categorized a bit, followed by some comments.

Internet Use - High and Growing

• 17 years passed before television reached 30 percent of American households; only seven years passed before the Internet reached 30 percent of American households.
• In 1997, some 19 million Americans were using the Internet. That number tripled in one year, and then passed 100 million in 1999.
• In the first quarter of 2000, more than five million Americans gained Internet access. That's about 55,000 new users each day or 2,289 new users each hour.
• More than two-thirds of Americans have some type of access to the Internet.
• 41.4 percent of non-users say they are likely to access the Internet in the next year - that would be another 13+ percent of American households gaining Internet access.
• Only 9.1 percent of non-users say they don't use the Internet because it is "too expensive."

The question I'm frequently asked is "How many people really have Internet access?" The answer is now that two-thirds of us or 67.1% have access. That's impressive. During the 2001 year, that percentage will grow to about 80%. That high percentage of use should get businesses and organizations motivated to launch a Website or improve an existing one. It's hard to imagine nearly any business that could sensibly choose to be without a Website - if only a one-pager, "business card" kind of site. Now, what does the UCLA report say about online purchasing?

E-Commerce Already Impacts Retail Stores

• 50.7% of all Internet users have purchased online.
• 65.1% of Internet purchasers say that online purchasing has at least somewhat reduced their purchases from retail stores.

Retailers - national and local - will continue to see a gradual erosion of in-store sales. It's entirely possible that our thriving economy is masking the impact that the Internet is having on in-store sales. If the economy tightens up, will people choose to cut down on their online purchases, their in-store purchases, or both? All retailers -- local and national, should think deeply about these questions, and more.

Never Underestimate Email!

• 42 percent of Americans use email every day.
• The number of electronic mailboxes worldwide jumped 84% to almost 570 million in 1999.

If your business has sales people who talk with customers and prospects who are online, then you must have email addresses for everyone in your company with whom your customers and prospects might need to be in touch.

A man I know recently tried to work with a sales person at a highly respected Tucson company. The email this customer sent to the sales person was rejected because the company had only one email address, and that mail box was full. Email is fast becoming more popular than the fax machine, and businesses without email addresses are, as each week passes, at risk of seeming out of touch, being out of touch, failing to service customers and just plain losing sales.

The excuse I most frequently hear from sales managers and CEOs regarding their sales people not having email addresses is that "my sales people wouldn't use them" or "they'll have to pay for email themselves, and they don't want to." I'm no sales expert, but is that what these sales managers said when fax machines started to be prevalent? Did they say, "My sales people won't use 'em" or "they'll have to buy their own fax machine"? I doubt it.

Email is one of the single most powerful one-to-one, or one-to-one million communication tools we have in the world today. Email is more convenient than a phone call and cheaper than five cents a minute for long distance. Organizations without email addresses will pay the price, and the competition will be collecting the bill.

One last note. A special thanks to Chris Ousley at The University of Arizona's Extended University for bringing the UCLA report to my attention. For the complete UCLA report, visit www.ccp.ucla.edu.

This article first appeared as a column written by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Inside Tucson Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.

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