Internet Connections – What’s Your Speed?

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It turns out that most Americans do not know the speed of their internet connection. Do you know the speed of your internet connection? In the interest of honesty, I had to poke around and ask a few questions to find out. And our family has had everything from mid-range to turtle-slow to smokin’ fast connectivity over the years. We’re a little above average these days, but that’s due to a lot of work done from home.

I was not the least bit surprised to find out from Mike Sachoff’s article “Majority of Americans Don’t Know Their Broadband Speeds” that the Americans surveyed were woefully lacking in knowledge on this front. (Don’t get smug if you are a Canadian reading this, because I would bet our numbers are pretty similar.) Before reading the article, I guessed that younger people and men would have a handle about this statistic, just by virtue of what kind of information interests those groups. And this thought seems to be true: 29% of men know their broadband speed, compared to only 10% of women, while 27% of people in the 18 to 29 age range knew, versus the 12 percent in the 54 and over age category.

The most striking news is that the knowledge or lack of knowledge of broadband speed does not seem to impact the satisfaction rates on connectivity. As Sachoff points out, “Most Americans are satisfied with the broadband speed they are getting. Ninety-one percent of broadband users say they are “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with the speed they get at home.” The crux of this is that most people are unlikely to seek out increased bandwidth any time soon.

It comes down to this: most of your customers don’t know their broadband speed and they generally don’t care. Most of them are happy with what they have. What does that mean when you are making online marketing plans? You have to keep in mind that your clients have to be able to access your online marketing. There is nothing worse that trying to load webpages that take forever (read: more than a few seconds) to load on your machine. If the PPC link you’ve developed leads to a page that takes the intended audience more than a moment or two to load, that audience will click away before the load is done, rendering your marketing useless.

I’ve talked about specific steps that make for good online marketing practices, there have been times when I’ve talked about knowing your audience, but even more basic than that is that it is important to not be part of the crowd that is ignoring broadband speed. In this business, it’s all about having your message accessible and seen. Your customers aren’t concerned about their speed, but you need to think about it and make sure that your audience can see your messages.