The Internet's hidden costs: March 17, 1997 issue of New Thinking

March 17, 1997 New Thinking:
The Internet's hidden costs

Website content management

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March 17, 1997

The Internet's hidden costs

By Gerry McGovern

If time is money, then the Internet costs.

Let’s say that you use the Internet as an information resource to help you do your job better. Let’s say that if you were charged out to a particular client it would be at 90 US dollars per hour. Every minute of your time is potentially worth $1.50 pound.

If you have to wait one minute for your emails to download in the morning, then that has a time cost of $1.50. A number of factors can contribute to the one minute wait. These will include: the computer quality, the modem speed, the access speed, the general quality of the Internet network at the moment of download, the quality of your ISP, the numbers of emails you were downloading.

To reduce the time cost, you could buy a better computer and modem, get a better line to your ISP and/or change your ISP. However, the reduction in time costs here must be measured by the extra actual costs involved in doing the above.

You can’t do much about the general quality of the Internet network. However, it is still a time cost incurred, and it may be that you will decide to use the Internet less as its general download rates reduce, and more as they increase.

The number of emails you receive is partly within your control. However, there is also the possibility of spam or other unnecessary mail. If we assume that 30 emails come down in one minute, then each spam has a 5 cents time cost.

(We are not, of course, counting other very real costs such as: the line connection charge, the monthly ISP charge, the purchase cost of the computer and modem, which all need to be added to the equation to achieve a total cost.)

If you type in the address for a website and you have to wait 15 seconds for the page to appear, it has cost you 37.5 cents in time. If you have to wait one minute it has cost you $1.50. If the website does not have a logical and efficient information navigation structure, and it takes you 5 minutes to find what you want, that has cost you $7.50.

We need to remember that though we may be giving away ‘free information’ on the Internet, we are in fact ‘charging’ people for their time to access/download this information.

From an email point of view, we should be thus careful to keep our messages brief. When replying to an email, we might make sure that we do not respond with the entire original email, but snip out the unnecessary paragraphs, signature files, etc. A leaner email will download faster and read easier, charging less time in both instances.

A website which downloads fast and is well organized from an information access point of view, charges less time also.

On the Internet of 1997, value must be measured at least partly in how it saves time. That large graphic or animation is costing $1.50 in your viewer’s time.

Think about it: Saving time saves money.

By Gerry McGovern

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A website which downloads fast and is well organized from an information access point of view, charges less time also.