Canadian Web Surfing Facts

I saw these interesting facts from Statistics Canada last week and thought I'd share them.

• 68% of adult Canadians used the Internet for personal non-business reason in 2005


• In Toronto, that number rose to 75%


• Almost two-thirds of adult Canadians who used the Internet from home used it every day during a typical month


• About six in 10 Internet users used it to read news or sports, or to conduct their banking online.


• More than 50% used the Internet to check weather conditions, make travel arrangements, to search for medial or government information and window shop.

I found the last point most interesting especially on the point about "to window shop". While it is always easy to see and measure the direct benefit ("ROI") of a web site sells something or has various on-line conversion points, it is difficult to measure the success of window shopping. Yet there is a benefit and we all know it. Think about how many restaurants have web sites. If they don't provide takeout and merely have a web site for promotion and letting people check out the menu then this site is purely for window shopping.

What about stores which operate both on-line and in the brick and mortar world. There must be some residual value of people merely window shopping on the electronics side to review product offerings and price. From the benefits side, this needs to be taken into account when assigning a true value to the company web site.