tedster - 11:26 am on Dec 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

most surfers are still using modems. 56k with a subpar connection at that.

The broadband industry really pushed some disinformation in this area last year last year - it made many developers feel they could ignore the needs of the 56K connection.

The milestone that was widely touted in the press was the moment when over 50% of the US connection time used broadband access. But, since so much broadband is "always on" -- whether anyone is active on the connection or not -- that is a deceptive statistic. It doesn't mean that 50% of actual Internet USE happens over a broadband connection - not even close.

If a good amount of relevant content in the area "above the fold" doesn't load within 15 seconds on a 56k connection I'm gone. (along with thousands of others)

I couldn't agree more. I aim for 5 seconds to have usable content rendered on-screen.

It's going to be this way (56k limitations) for a good while to come. The broadband infrastructure build-out has slowed to a crawl. All the easy locations have already been wired, and the rest of the geography has a long wait, especially in the wake of funding limitations since the dot.com bubble burst.

EVEN SLOWER DIAL-UPS
Here's another tidbit from my niece who is in the US Navy and gets to a lot of countries in a year. Inexpensive connections at 56K can be hard to find, even in parts of Europe. If you can make it easy for a return visitor to transact their business with you quickly, you'll get more business.

She highly values one site that sells consumables. They give her a page with the item's she recently purchased. She can click on the boxes she wants and send the order, all within a minute of connection time. Her eyes sparkle when she talks about this vendor!

[edited by: tedster at 11:38 am (utc) on Dec. 2, 2002]