Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Australian Internet use and spending is echoing online growth internationally, as Simon van Wyk writes.

Although Internet usage and spending statistics for North America and Europe are reliable indicators of trends in Australia, it’s a continuing source of frustration that there is so little Australian-based data readily available.

Fortunately, several recently released reports show what’s happening in Australia, and they clearly show the Internet revival is in full swing in our part of the world.

A report from technology analysts Frost & Sullivan has revealed that spending on Internet advertising climbed nearly 50% last year to $605 million, with the report’s author, Foad Fadaghi, predicting 25% annual growth for the next four years, bringing total online advertising spend to more than $1 billion a year in Australia by 2009.

He said Internet’s share of spend will top magazine and radio advertising by the end of next year, catching up with newspaper revenue in 10 years and commercial television in 15 years.

“What we’re seeing here is a generational change with the Internet,” Fadaghi told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Ultimately, what we will treat as normal TV in 15 years’ time will be delivered over the Internet.”

While the average Australian home buys only 3% of its consumer goods online, Frost & Sullivan predicts this will grow to 7.5% by 2010.

Broadband moves

Meanwhile, as the number of broadband subscribers approaches double the number of pay TV subscribers in Australia, broadband providers are stepping into the ring against their television counterparts by offering premium video content.

BigPond has signed a deal with Sony Pictures for the debut of the country’s first internet-based video-on-demand service in March, while a Sydney company, ReelTime is using a network of internet service providers to roll out a movie download service for 20th Century Fox titles that connects to consumers’ televisions via a set-top box.

BigPond is also offering a package of sports highlights, music videos, and game and film trailers in a four-hour bundle updated every week. The packages will be available to both BigPond subscribers and the general broadband public.

On the mobile front, Telstra has done a deal with John Fairfax to offer material from the Sydney Morning Herald and Age websites on Telstra’s i-Mode and Hutchison’s 3 3G mobile phone service. This follows last year’s deal between Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd and Optus mobile’s 3G service.

You have 1/20th of a second to impress me

A problem common to websites in Australia and around the globe is capturing viewers’ attention. Canadian researchers are now claiming in a new study that Web surfers make up their minds about whether they like a Web site or not within 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second) of viewing the home page.

In the study, published in the Behavior and Information Technology journal, volunteers were shown images of Web pages and asked to rate the pages’ visual appeal. They were then asked to re-evaluate the same pages after studying them for a longer period of time.

The study found that the participants’ snap judgments lined up well with the more detailed examinations: opinions formed on seeing the page for just 50ms were very similar to their opinions after a more-measured read.

The researchers reported that the consistency of the subjects’ snap judgments and their detailed examinations of pages may be attributable to a “halo effect,” where an appealing, attractive design may make users more inclined to regard the rest of the page positively, where an unappealing design may cast a negative pall on even the most engaging and relevant content.

They said people enjoy being right, and tend to look for things which reinforce their first impressions before admitting their impression may have been wrong.

“Unless the first impression is favorable, visitors will be out of your site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors,” said report author Gitte Lindgaard.

“It really is just a physiological response. Web designers have to make sure they’re not offending users visually.”

Not everyone agrees with Lindgaard. Within days of the survey being published, Web content management expert Gerry McGovern wrote in his email newsletter that, “Not many people would say that eBay is a pretty website. Nor would many defend the visual appeal of Amazon, MSN, Yahoo or AOL. I remember the original Napster website looked like it was designed on the back of a beer mat.

If first impressions are so important on the Web, then why have all the above websites been so successful? Perhaps the answer is that the look of a website comes second to the function of the website.

It is not advisable to ask anyone to judge the visual attractiveness of a website until you have discerned their opinion in relation to how the website allows them to carry out basic tasks.

McGovern concludes, “Function and visual appeal do not have to be in conflict. However, it is clear that websites that are making the most money are focusing much more on function than visual appeal.”