Here's why I don't cater to dial up users...

My nephew & niece went to Africa to help build a school. The village they stayed at for 6 months at had no running water or sewage. Electricity worked roughly half the time. The buildings were less than 'huts'. They did however have broadband wireless that worked 99.9% of the time flawlessly.

No wonder you do not cater to dial up.

Don't be dissin' the C64 now. It still runs a rockin' game of Bard's Tale.

But yeah, the acoustic coupler modem can KMA.

Actually, it doesn't offend me that you don't cater to dial-up users. I have a valid reason for being one. You can read it at hughesnetripoff.com if you choose to ... if it's actually worth your time to do so.

I am not technically challenged, or ignorant, or uneducated. I live on 7 acres in the country, down a dirt road. Some call it beautiful.

I don't need to "catch up with the times" as I have been self employed for around 12 years and earn a comfortable living online without videos. Prior to that, I was an IT consultant working for other companies. Your lack of concern for my needs only keeps money in my pocket instead of yours, so I'm not concerned about not seeing your videos.

Edit: There have been two WSOs that I was keen to have that were video based. CDarlock (Caliban) and Gene Pimentel's. They were both gracious enough and technologically advanced enough to burn a DVD for me and send it via US Post Office. Both excellent WSOs.

Hey, hey, hey...
Suzanne's no idiot and the 'sticks' are the best place to be living these days! (Over 775 feet in elevation in case the ice caps all melt and away from the rogues that would kill you and eat you if the economy collapses. which it came close to doing in the recent past!)

Hahh I didn't even know that there was still dial-up!! We do get that complaint sometimes so its good to see that its not a huge part of the market. But I think for my specific market (older women) that its a bit more...but still not enough to worry about!! So thanks for this!!

Its easy to get caught up in the complaints of just a few (for anything!), but its NOT worth it!

Sometimes, I remember growing up in the pre-internet days. Had as good a time then as now. When I was living in western South Carolina, I hardy got on the net at all. It was so much more relaxing and satisfying to sit on the back porch and watch the leaves change color or the grass grow. I think cutting the grass was my favorite thing to do. (Almost bought the neighbor's field, just so I could spend more time cutting grass!)Lol. OK, proves I ain't right.

Funny, I was in NOVA for 32 years. Now in the BW corridor, but disabled, so no more fast lane or cutting wood. I am with you, rather be in the country and wait a little longer for a page/video to load than this ADHD Rat Race crap! Ain't worth it. Rather have slow internet and be happy than cut my life by 10 years on the go, Go, GO, GO!

I was on dial up for quite a while and it wasn't a problem. I don't care much for videos. Do like reading.

If I remember right, Open Office was about a 6 hour download. I started it when I was ready to turn in for the night. Didn't get a single wrong number call that night.

Tabbed browsing took care of all my slow connection problems. I'd go through a forum and open up all the topics I was interested in. At least a few pages would be loaded by the time I was ready to start reading them.

Doing it that way, there was no more delay going through the tabs than there is on hi speed.

If I did want a page to load, it wasn't like I sat around bored, lonely, and with absolutely nothing to do. Usually there was hardly even enough time to pour a double brandy before it was loaded.

Honestly, is it really that hard to have your audio transcribed and presentation slides inserted into a pdf? I find DNS good for this type of work.

And Steven, do you really play online mmorpg games like WoW?

Chris

It would be literally impossible for me to work on dial up. So it would make no sense to sell a product to someone teaching them how to work online with dial up, there's no way they could get anything done.

Maybe in another niche or something, but I still love using video, so I'm with j-mo on this one get with the times or get left in the dust.

I don't think I'd bother either to be honest. Going to the trouble of shipping out a DVD to someone because they can't download them, maybe I would if there were multiple users, but not just for one or two people. I find it astounding that "Internet marketers" have slower Internet speeds than most of the population though.

Mountain life or DSL.......wow, that's what people consider a decision these days?

I've had dial-up that worked better than the DSL I'm on now. The connection out here stinks...........I'm in CA right now...that stinks, too. I can hardly wait to get back to the Mts in Idaho where I can have seclusion...and probably will have dial up again depending on in which metropolis of 300 people I find the best place to drop for a couple years. Hell, I already had to buy the modem so I might actually keep using it. It works in Idaho. I'd rather be on dial up here.

While I don't agree with the full line of reasoning, Jason does have a point. However, it's not just dial-up users; it's any segment of visitors that only comprise 1% of your traffic.

Should you cater to the 1% who use some OS you're not familiar with?

Should you cater to the 1% who use an odd screen resolution?

Should you cater to the 1% who have monitors that only display 216 colors?

...and so on.

First, let me say that I have no problem whatsoever with people who are on dial-up, whether by choice or necessity (I used to live in the contry, and loved it). You will also note that Jason said he understood some people are in locations where dial-up is the inly option, he's not arguing that point.

However, if you dig a little deeper into the responses, you will notice that you are actually supporting Jason's point. How? By explaining ways that you adapt to being on dial-up. In other words, Jason doesn't have to adapt to dial-up users because they already know how to adapt to him.

At the same time, I can see how he maybe went a bit too far and came across as condescending. But put that part of the post aside and look at the bigger picture. We can't make everybody happy, we just can't. We can try, but at some point we have to decide how much the experience of 99% of our visitors should suffer at the expense of 1% (again, regardless of what differentiates that 1%).

As far as sending DVDs of videos, I see no problem with that and would be happy to do it myself. All it would really take is a line of text that says "Dial-up users click here" and an explanation of how to get the DVD version. I'm not sure if Jason would do that or not, but that leads me to my final point...

Where Jason saw 1.05%, I saw 149 potential customers, and that's also something worth considering.

All the best,
Michael

Can't send a DVD of Kid Rock's 'All Summer Long'... Copyright violation and all, but it is worth waiting for it to load.:rolleyes:

make a sales page and spend hours sending traffic to it for a 1% conversion (or maybe better) but not 5 minutes to burn and address a CD to retain 1% of clients?

Makes no sense to me, but then I am one that is not in the position to be able to eliminate 1% because of monitor color, 1% because of OS, 1% because of screen resolution, 1% because of dial-up and 1% for 57 other reasons, thus cutting sales in half, 1% at a time!

OK, If you want the Kid Rock video, I'll mail it to you, just PM me an address or PO box. (& don't tell anyone!)

Only because I respect you as well, although I don't sell stuff here.

(BTW- By looking at your avatar, I am surprised to learn you do not wear lipstick, Michael!)

Lol. Huge difference. Sorry,
Mark

Back in the 90's I had 128 kilobits per second ISDN and was paying $400/month when dial up was $20/mo. Well, I was working with a catalog company. I was able to get their internet sales from $50,000 mo to $200,000 and rising. The owner said "Text sux!" and decided he wanted the site to be re-written in flash. He had a $1000/mo T1 connection. The site looked beautiful in flash, but using dial-up it loaded slower than grass grows.

I told the owner, only 10% of our users have broad band (most were still using 28.8 modems) - big mistake for me. He was FLASH crazy. Well, sales crashed and he blamed me. The site was even slow in ISDN. I mean unless you had like a T1 line it took forever and ever.

Well, the company was gone. The owner wanted to force his users. Competitors quickly move in. The rest is history as they say.

There's no arguing that feeling insulted is a choice. The more
restating a position continues, the emotional investment grows
larger and deeper.

Who knows why the OP was created. Perhaps Jason knew it could
polarize opinions/discussion, and for whatever reason that's what
he wanted.

Who knows, maybe he really doesn't feel that way. Maybe he has
shipped DVDs to people who requested them. And I'm not asking
him about it, just stating some possibilities.

Ken

PS - Jason, your post wasn't up when I wrote mine.

I'll add my opinion here too, if I may,

I have broadband, it's unlimited and it's fast, but if I click onto a sales page that is only video - forget it, I'm out like there is a revolving door.

How much time do you want me to spend on your page, 1 minute - 20 minutes, doesn't matter, if I want to watch a video, I'll put the tv on and put a disc in the dvd machine.

Don't assume because I've received your sales pitch, I have time to watch yet another presentation for 30 minutes, that's like 1/16th of my sleep time gone! (I'm sure you'll work that out !)

I am stunned by this statistic. I would never have guessed there are still that many people in the U.S. that do not have high speed Internet. I am using AWStats right now not Google analytics and it does not give stats for broadband, dial-up, etc.

What fascinates me though, is that the OP only had 1% of his visitors using dial-up. Apparently dial-up users don't surf or respond to IM the same way. It is one thing to make a choice not to cater to them but why are they not even visiting? Would catering to dial-up users almost be its own niche?

There were some passionate comments in this thread. A "dial-up" membership site or a forum might be very popular. A place where people could share tips, shortcuts, and recommendations for sites that do send CD's etc....

As all of us in this thread, am assuming for most of us that using dial up to run are businesses would be pretty stupid.

As the internet gets more advance most dial up user cant access most of the info on here.

As you provide Jason why waste your time thinking about that user.

Dial up will not be around much longer.

Regards,
Robert

JASON,

I'M not on dialup, and I have trouble watching videos. Some ****FAST**** connecttions have firewalls to BLOCK streaming info. AND if someone had a 1PB/s(ALL the connections on the planet TOGETHER are not that fast!) connection, it would STILL be subject to various things to slow it down to a very low speed.

If you have a 100Mbps interface, probably the most common, your TOP speed is about 10MBps. After collisions, etc... it may be 8MBps! SO, if 8 people wanted to watch a 10MB video, it would take a full 10 seconds to load it. 80 people would each take over 1.3minutes. suppose you had 800 people? Almost 17 minutes! Of course, I am talking about POTENTIAL.

Realistically, it could take MUCH longer! And that limit is from YOUR side assuming no downstream limits, etc... MANY connections may be 10Mbps, for example, and some end poinnt connections are a tenth of THAT!

Your position on this is MYOPIC!

Steve

I never thought of dial-up users being behind the times. I just considered dial-up a cheaper Internet options for people who have limited funds.

Not worth catering to dial up users. Besides, there are cheaper prepaid broadband (USB) even in third world countries these days so there's no excuse to not having a high-speed internet.

Yeah but doesn't that require having a virtual assistant licking a stamp?

"Dial-up is declining overall"

I think that's the key phrase there. Meaning it will keep declining until broadband completely takes over due to once "rural" locations being connected up.

Not disagreeing with your overall point, but your statistics may not be telling the story you think - maybe you have so few dial up users because they've already filtered your site from their "browsing" habits because they have difficulty with the delivery of the content...

Ya know, 14 million people that more and more marketers decide are not worth 'targeting' makes for a pretty large niche.

Key word... 'dial up'? Lol.

In any case, Suzanne, I see your point. There was some 'political incorrect' overtones, but they are no more worth the free rent in your head then the KKK spends in some other group's head. (several groups actually).

Just know you are well respected and your thoughts make a favorable addition to this place. (unlike some...)

Starting a pain management class 9/21 in Springfield. I certainly hope you are far away from there.
Know someone in Madison county that loves it there. Thats 5-6 hours from me & a bit too much snow for my taste. That's why I bought the South Carolina house before my car accident. Lousy health-care system in that state makes living there now impossible. Dad lives in San Diego. Health-care there is good and if I was close, that would extend his ability to maintain his independence a bit longer. He is 89! So that maybe my next stop. Lol.

There's another group which hasn't been mentioned here: Those people who do have broadband, but have very low bandwidth caps.

In countries like Australia most people have plans which offer just 2-5GB of bandwidth per month. Do you think these people are going to watch long videos online? I don't think so.


Andrew

Who or what is "dial up"???

j/k

I've read the entire thread and have digested most of it. Might need some Pepto-Bismol soon, but that's a story for another time

So lots of people don't like sales videos. Lots of people can't and/or don't want to watch videos at all online.

Some think it would be worth trying to please as many people as possible (within reason) in order to maximize one's bottom line.

I've got no problem with that, but it does raise a concern.

Let's take sales videos for example, since everyone seems to love to hate these things.

As a side note, "your" opinion and preferences don't matter. When I say "your", I mean "you", the individual consumer/prospect.

You can hate sales videos all you want, but at the end of the day, if they bring in the dough, you can bet your ass they'll continue to be used.

When you post in a forum, especially one as big as this one, that you hate sales videos (or gurus, or high-ticket products, or forced opt-ins, etc.), you get a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon of hate.

As such, it seems like everyone hates sales videos.

But really, you're asking the wrong people.

That's what I mean by "you don't matter". Nothing personal

Ok, so back to my original point.

Say you want to please as many people as possible in order to raise your bottom line.

What would you do to a video sales page (for example) to please more people (or rather, to piss off fewer people)?

Well, you could add a sales letter at the bottom, or at least some text that summarizes the video contents.

You could add a PDF, you could turn the auto-play off, you could enable video controls (volume, navigation), you could disclose the price upfront, you could skip the hype and the personal story...

But my concern is: what would this do to conversions?

I know that sounds kind of cold because individual consumers don't factor into this equation; it only comes down to money.

But let's put this another way: say you had a sales page that was putting up some good numbers. Would you add something such as a link to a PDF, or modify something like the video controls, to please some people, knowing full well that it would likely hurt your conversions?

In a way, you'd actually be doing your prospects a disservice because while you'd gain a few customers, you'd lose out on others who would have otherwise bought (or taken the desired action) if you hadn't made the changes.

All that said though, there's obviously nothing wrong with making exceptions for people, like in Suzanne's case, where the vendor(s) was in personal contact with her in order to get her what she wanted. Vendors should be willing to accommodate people as long as it's not much of a hassle (e.g. shipping out a DVD, providing an alternate DL link).

I would just be concerned if vendors started making changes on the sales pages in order to accommodate more people without thinking of the consequences to their conversions.

I suppose most of us know this already because it seems like common sense, but businesses (and marketers) shouldn't change the way they do business simply because someone wants/asks them to.

Curtis

Suzanne, You ever need a disc burned and sent to you, just let me know. I'll buy the product, download it and burn it for ya.
Problem solved

Occasionally some of us hear complaints from people on dial up saying things like... "I'm on dial up and can't see your videos.

Well, if you're on dial up it pretty much rules out viewing videos and flash content without tearing your hair out waiting for things to load, and I'd say that practically all the major websites of any importance out there have one or the other. In my opinion, it'd just be way too much of a headache to cater to that small (but usually very vocal!) minority who are still on dial up.

With Web 2.0 it's impossible to do anything with a dial-up connection. In Google Analytics Dial-Up is dead for me like IE6 under Browsers.

As a product vendor, I like to keep things simple and mainstream my offers to the market's mass public. That means that in my opinion it's usually not worth introducing tweaks and modifications for 1% of your potential customer base. It's better to use up that time in creating your next product that will cater to 99% of your audience instead.

A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that some U.S. Internet users might be sticking with dialup not because they don't have broadband options available to them, but simply because they aren't interested in faster Internet access.

According to the survey of 1,553 U.S. Internet users conducted in April and May of this year, about 55 percent of adult Americans now have some sort of broadband Internet connection at home, which up from 47 percent at the same time in 2007. These figures have been accompanied by a sharp decline in the number of users who only have dial-up Internet access at home: according to the survey, just 10 percent of Americans now rely on dial-up Internet connections at home.

Although the report notes that the limited (or non-existent) availability of broadband Internet access in rural and outlying areas is one limiting factor on broadband adoption--along with service pricing that excludes many poor Americans--some 62 percent of current dial-up users say they simply aren't interested in switching from their current connection methods to broadband. Asked what it would take to get them to switch to broadband Internet, 35 percent of dial-up users said broadband would have to be less expensive and 14 percent said broadband would have to be available where they live (this number jumped to 24 percent amongst rural users. But 35 percent of dial-up users said nothing was going to convince them to get broadband service.

The study also found that about 27 percent of adult Americans are not Internet users at all; these non-users tend to be older Americans and have lower incomes than online users. Only 10 percent non-Internet users say they're interested in getting online, with a third of those users saying they're just not interested.

I think Bill Cosby said it best when he said:

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

Hahahahha, some funny responses in this thread.

I am curious to who these marketers on dial up really are. It is 2010!!! Geez!

If you are serious about marketing than you are missing out on tons of quality information. Videos, audios and large packages are an everyday thing now.

There is no way in hell I could spend days waiting for stuff to download.

Dean

You know, it is INCREDIBLE! Even after all I said, I doubt anyone thought about it. I remember being at 1200 baud, and seeing things come back FAR slower because of noise or the computer not being able to handle the load. TODAY, I can connect with EVDO. EVDO can go as high as 4.9.

BUT, AS HIGH is an UPPER LIMIT, NOT a lower floor. Some providers may throttle it, or not be able to support it.

If I connect up to youtube, the EVDO doesn't do too well. WIFI at the hotel here doesn't do well! Comcast, over wifi on the SAME computer, is about 10 times as fast, and does FAR better. BTW APPLE IPAD, IPHONE, BLACKBERRY, etc... use EVDO! Some call EVDO 3G, and 4G is only now ramping up.

But even 4G must STILL succumb to the same laws of physics. Whether it is GAS, WATER, ELECTRICITY, DATA, etc... for everything to have a CHANCE to work at its maximum limit, the sources ability to provide the service must be at least as high as the AGGREGATE requirement of the targets to receive it. THAT is why those huge power transformers handle FAR more power than you will ever use, why incoming water pipes are SO huge, why sewage lines are SO big, why many people using power can affect the total power available, why a short will hurt power elsewhere, etc.... It is ALSO why "unlimited" plans aren't unlimited, why companies throttle, why some people here have had their accounts cancelled or limited because of over use, etc...

SO, if you don't want to consider the dialup users, FINE! You don't want to consider throtteled users, OK. You don't want to consider the slower broadbands that have more capacity than the T1s ISPs used to use to provide data to ALL their customers, FINE! Can you at least support the fact that your little system can't handle a lot of high bandwidth users at once?

You know, it is reasoning like yours that companies like Google are using to try to support net nuetrality. Last I knew, one part of the US had only about 6Tb, or was it 6TB, to communicate. That is enough to support 6000Gb or 60000 100Mb or 600000 10mb connections. And that would be best case, though 6TB would be 10 times as much. But that is theoretical limit, in ONE area. Other areas weren't covered as well. Various hiccups and collisions could reduce that a lot, and the more users you have the more likely such problems will be. It's a good thing that maybe only 20% of the US can use those connections, because they can only support like 2% of the US at 10MB/s.

And GRANTED they have upgraded some connections since then, but files have gotten a LOT larger and more people are using them.

When I first got interested in the internet, my goal was to have MY websites load in less than 3 seconds. Holding others to the same standard, a website that took much longer than 3 seconds caused me to generally LEAVE! Today, that limit would be considered LOW!

WIKIPEDIA, about 3 seconds!
YOUTUBE, about 12 seconds! First video about 10 seconds, and every 10 seconds of video requires a 5 second pause! And that was a GOOD video. Some are higher resolution and slower.

SO, when IE 9 comes out will you only support v9!?!?

steve

how do you know the users you spoke with is using dial-up connection?