With DSL and high-speed cable connections now common in homes across this country and the world, it would seem that Webmasters and designers are moving towards more graphics-heavy, broadband-based site designs.With DSL and high-speed cable connections now common in homes across this country and the world, it would seem that Webmasters and designers are moving towards more graphics-heavy, broadband-based site designs. I have questioned many times if this way of thinking may be causing some of the lost sales that have been seen over the last year or so. I have a few personal views on this subject, not only from a standpoint of a designer and Webmaster, but also from the standpoint of one who must deal with dial-up from home.

First let me take you back almost seven years to when I first started in the adult industry. I began building sites for UGAS, a site that is part of the Tri Tech AVS Network, home of both Cyberage and Cybersex Network. I signed up with them and participated in their free hosting program, where I met a very helpful man, David R., who trained me in the art of building an AVS site that would sell. Back then the rule of thumb was that a page should load in at least 30 seconds on a dial-up connection. He harped over and over about how important it was that a person was seeing the goods in that 30 seconds, otherwise they were likely gone, moving on to other sites that would load in that time. I don’t speak to him as often as I used to, but to this day I believe he is still preaching that line, and I think there is good reason.

Those surfers who have moved on to high-speed connections no longer care about load times. Their concerns now, especially when visiting galleries and free sites, is that they are getting a ton of content. Their porn consumption rates continues to increase with each day because the fifteen-second clip that they used to watch over and over now has evolved into full-screen streaming movies.

However, there are still plenty of people using dial-ups, and those people still need the 15 second clips in order to watch video. A person on dial-up is used to seeing smaller versions of the images to assist with load times. Minimum image sizes these days seem to be around 800 pixels on the long side. That was unheard of in the AVS industry six or seven years ago when the standard length was 550 or 600 pixels.

So who is driving the change? Is it the surfer/consumer who has changed over to high speed connections and now needs more content to get off? Or is it the designers and Webmasters who have upped the bar – and in that effort to compete, actually eliminated some of their market? My thought is that both are true.

An average surfer who was on dial-up would never have known about 1-Meg video clips if the TGPs had not started requiring them. They used to ask only for 15-second clips. But once they realized that they could get these huge movies and larger-than-life images, the smaller-sized files were just not acceptable anymore.

I suppose that in everything technology touches, changes must occur. For that reason the birth of the graphics-intense adult sites happened. I don’t know why we as Webmasters are continually trying to raise our costs, in this case bandwidth, while consumers are continually trying to lower theirs. On the heels of free hosting and very affordable hosting, I guess it was the natural progression of things. In my opinion, though, it has left a big portion of the market behind. Instead of competing in ways that would be beneficial to all Webmasters, we simply started competing by using a “shock and awe” campaign. The bigger the boom the bigger the “ahhhh.” The poor guy still on a dial-up had to revert back to Penthouse and Hustler, I’m afraid.

As designers we are all on some sort of high-speed connection. Or at least most of us are. Amazingly we have forgotten the dilemmas that graphics-heavy sites pose to the poor surfer who lives in a part of the country where the only Internet connection available is through dial-up modems that top out at 32 KBS. If you think that cannot happen then think again; that’s me.

Living in the countryside is beautiful, peaceful and quiet, but it has its drawbacks – connection speed is one of them. People, I am not alone in being forced to use dial-up, so some of the posts that I read on YNOT give me a scare. Many Webmasters assume that the only reason a person would be on a dial-up connection is because of an inability to afford broadband. This is not the case most of the time. The location where a surfer lives determines the availability of services offered.

In addition, a person who lives in the countryside to avoid the hustle and bustle of the city life probably does not want to go get a high-speed connection. We live in the country for a reason. Be careful not to assume that someone on dial up isn’t your concern because he or she can’t afford to buy anything. I would think along the lines that someone living in the country would be more apt to buy something from you because there is less to do; no bars, no nightclubs, and hell, I travel thirty minutes just to get to the grocery store.

Now, I must admit that I am as guilty as the rest when it comes to design. I too am building flashier, more graphically-intense sites in order to compete with other Webmasters. Trust me, a text-based Web site won’t hold up well against the products of a major design house. But I have to wonder how many sales I lose because people just don’t want to wait for my flashy sites to load. I looked through all of my stats reports hoping that one of them would break down what connection speeds people connect at, but I guess that is something that cannot be tracked.

In reading Connor’s post last week it really started occurring to me that we could very well be causing the slump in sales, as if the season and the economy needed any help. I have watched the appetite of the TGP sites, for example, grow larger and larger when it comes to videos. Has anyone every tried to download a 1-Meg video on a 32 K connection? It isn’t fun. If I was a surfer with the need to complete a job, well, I am quite certain the mood would be gone long before that first clip arrived.

So what about the possibility of building sites that answer the needs of both types of surfers? Some do it already, but mostly those are people with big flash tours. That is done more for the people who don’t want to deal with flash, and of course load time is a major factor. I know that when I am working from home and someone sends me to look at a site that is flash-based I usually tell them it will have to wait because it can take a long time for some of these sites to load. So I am going to try an experiment and build a site that is graphically intense, then build a version that is done in the old style. Then I’ll watch the stats to see which site is getting more traffic. If nothing else, it should give me a fairly good idea of how many visitors are indeed still using dial-up accounts.

I hope a few of my readers will do the same. We can start a dialogue on YNOT about any results we are finding. As always I love to see conversations start from my articles. I always enjoy writing articles and it is a definite plus when I see conversations starting up as a result. As a writer, if that is what I am, there is nothing more gratifying than to know that what you wrote sparked interest and made people think. When the thinking starts, the sharing of ideas and different opinions arises, and that is my goal. I have never claimed to have all the answers, but with dialogue and debate, conversation, and the sharing of ideas, everyone can get the answers they need.

Again, as I do every week, I wish you all the best in your endeavors and of course look forward to any dialogue started on the boards, or if you are shy, by email. Through conversation we all grow, and that is what we all strive to do every day.

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