Is your website visible to local access browsers?

A test conducted by the company for a provider of a popular local consumer site revealed that the site was 600% slower for users with local-only access compared to consumers with international internet access.

South African organisations that use the Internet to communicate and interact with their customers can expect an increasing number of complaints about the performance of their website as more consumers opt for low-cost, local access only or free local access top-up broadband packages.

Indeed, if website providers do not take steps to accommodate this growing band of internet users, they could find their customers clicking over to competitors' sites, which do take cognisance of the growing local-access trend.

Tired of being ripped off

"Consumers are tired of paying high prices for internet access and growing numbers will find it hard to resist packages that offer 1GB broadband access for only R16 per month or 10GB free local access once they've used up their 1GB, 3GB or 5GB international cap,” says Brown.

"What many of these consumers and many local businesses with websites don't realise is that very few local websites are 100% local. The reality of a truly connected world on the Internet means that sites use services and content from all over the world to deliver value to customers. A truly local only site is rare in the B2C environment and hence a full understanding of the impact of this on performance is critical."

According to Brown, most local websites incorporate international content data that is served from overseas such as banners, links or RSS feeds. International content could even be invisible to the user, eg if the website uses international analytic providers (such as Google analytics) to measure and monitor usage of the site, that's ‘international content' and it could make the site inaccessible to customers with local-only access.

All this translates into an extremely poor internet experience for ‘local-only access' users with apparently local pages timing out, loading incorrectly or with gaps, or simply not downloading at all.

Analyse your site thoroughly

Another issue for organisations that use their websites to generate revenue from advertising on their sites is that these advertisements are usually hosted internationally. "However, the ads won't download for the local access only consumer and the click-throughs on which revenue is calculated won't work," he adds.

In order to avoid becoming an inadvertent victim of local only internet access, Brown recommends that every business with a locally hosted website conduct a thorough analysis of their site.

"Don't presume that there isn't international content on your website, it could be hidden in any number of ways. Check how much international content there actually is on the site and either eliminate it or look for local alternatives. At the very least it is important to understand your customers and what they purchase for broadband and then to build your site accordingly," he concludes.