I found this kind of interesting, so I’m sharing it. Pew Internet says that adoption of broadband is slowing quite a bit. About 53% of home internet users now use broadband, up from 50% last December. This is greatly slowed from the year before.

Why does this matter to your business? The demographics are quite interesting. Most people starting out on the internet start out with dialup, then go broadband as their skills and needs increase. Those who stay on dialup tend to be older and poorer.

The thing to remember is that this is not a license to design websites that require broadband to load in a decent time. If your target market is more tech savvy, you might have a reason to do bandwidth-intensive projects, but if you want a more general appeal, be careful. And if you expect older customers or those with less money, definitely watch your download times.

No matter how encouraging it is to see that more than half of all users will probably have broadband, remember, that’s nearly half that DON’T. Broadband users don’t expect every site to have tons of features that require the speed they have, but dialup users can’t be expected to cope with features that do require broadband. Keep your customers in mind when you create your website.