Selling online? Good news: More consumers are buying!

October 24, 2008 • Glenn Murray

If you’re selling online, then this post will certainly be good news. Recent research by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) shows that more of your target customers are online, and they’re buying more often.

Here are some of the more relevant stats from their report, Telecommunications Today (2008).

• 73% of Australian households are connected to the Internet
• 6.21 million households are active on the Internet
• Nearly 5 million household are on broadband
• 2.7 million households have a broadband connection of 1.5Mbps or greater
• Broadband use is more than double what it was just 3 years ago
• Households earning $2,000+ per week are 3 times more likely to have broadband than those earning $600 or less
• Postgraduate degree holders are 83% more likely to have broadband than those without tertiary quals
• Families with kids under 15 are 3-4 times more likely to be online than other families
• 55% of people are heavy users (online 8+ times per week), compared with 44%, 3 years ago
• Broadband users are more likely to be heavy users (61% are online 10+ hours per week)
• 18-34 year olds are more likely to be heavy users (62% are heavy users)
• Higher income earners are more likely to be heavy users (60% of users earning $40,000+ are heavy users)
• 64% of heavy users have a diploma or degree
• 61% of users purchase or order goods and services for private purposes
• 54% of users bought a product online during Jan-Mar 08 (up from 46% in 2006)
• 10% say they shop is stores less often
• OECD results show 25% more online purchases in 2006 than in 2000
• The value of e-commerce more than doubled from 2003-2006 ($24.3 billion to $56.7 billion)
• Nearly 25% watch less TV and 18% read magazines less
• Internet users now spend about 33% less time watching TV and listening to radio