Sampling STC Internet Use

By: Peter Eisenhut, Eisenhut & Associates (www.eisenhut-associates.com)

At this spring’s STC conference I conducted a brief survey on Internet usage. I handed out 50 survey forms. I received 32 responses, including 20consultants and 12 sales/marketing people.

On the average, all respondents said that they used the public Internet 17.1hours per week. A total of 13 respondents reported 20 or more hours per week, with 5 reporting access between 30 and 50 hours. On the low side, 8 of the 32 respondents (3 of them consultants) reported 5 hours or less of Internet access each week.

Overall, consultants reported spending an average of 6.4 hours per week specifically on Internet search activity. The same figure for non-consultants was 4.0 hours. The graph shows the proportion of Internet access time estimated to be spent on search activity, by respondent group.

I found these numbers to be much higher than I would have expected. (Are any of these hours billable?). Also surprising to me was that respondents perceived very little value in a customized portal of web page links related to their work (I hypothesized that this could have lessened the time spent searching the web).

Perhaps a conclusion that may be reached (after more study, of course) is that there may be value in developing more accurate and faster search engines. Yet there appears to be little value in developing web portals. Such a conclusion could be of interest to the STC Internet and web site committee.