In a recent study, a random sample of Web users living in the major metropolitan areas of Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban were interviewed. Some of the main findings of this regularly conducted syndicated survey are as follows:

• South African Web users consist mostly of upper income earners compared to the South African population 
• However, the number of Web users with lower monthly household incomes is increasing in each study, indicating that the WWW is becoming accessible to more people 
• Every year the number of women has increased. Fifty-one percent of the random sample were women in November 2000 compared to 38% in March 1999 and 40% in November 1999 
• Web users claim to work on average 8.9 hours a day and 29% work over 10 hours a day 
• Eighty-four percent have mobile phones 

South Africans are using the Web more and more… 

• The number of people who access the Web every day from home and from work has increased with each study 
• the number of days per month that the Web is accessed has increased. However, work users access the Web more often than home users, and they spend more hours online than home users do. 
• Seventy-four percent of work users say that their companies do not restrict the amount of time they spend online 
• About a third of Web users have been connected to the Internet for three years or more 
• The Internet is used mainly for email and secondly for searching for specific information 
• More people are using the Web for job searches than before 

Shopping Online 

• There are also more people shopping online; 23% of home users had bought online in March 1999, 31% in November 1999 and 37% in November 2000 
• The corresponding figures for work users were 25% in March 1999, 29% in November 1999 and 33% in November 2000 
• A positive sign for e-tailers is that 94% of those who have shopped online said they would purchase online again 
• Books are still by far the most popular items to buy online and are most likely to be the next item bought online 
• Convenience is still the dominant reason for shopping online. 

(Source: Webchek)