How long will it take the next billion internet users to search your site?
As the internet becomes more embedded in every facet of life. People who are not yet online come under more pressure to connect.
The majority of these new internet users come from low income backgrounds. For many, their only choice of device is a feature phone.
These phones retail at around $15 - $20. They’re stripped of many features we’re used to having on our smart phones, but they can actually do a lot.
Counterpoint Research estimates that there will be over 1 billion feature phone users by 2021. One Billion!
As web developers we need to get serious about making sure our websites work well on these devices.
Performance optimizations are super important to users of feature phones. They have low powered hardware. They often live in rural areas with slow internet speeds. Downloading a bloated website could even hurt them financially.
Some Web Developers obsess over optimisations that make their sites load milliseconds faster. (And they should, that stuff adds up). But one aspect of site speed has gone under the radar.
So, how long does it take to search the name of your brand?
In English on a regular keyboard or smartphone the keys map to one letter of the alphabet. So, one key press to type one letter.
But on a feature phone keypad, it can take a lot more key presses and a lot more time.
I recently got a feature phone for testing, and the first thing I did with it was try to look at this site. It took over thirty key presses just to google ‘beautiful dingbats’.
I really wish I hadn't named my website something so long. So I made a tool that calculates how long it takes to type phrases on a feature phone.
