Editor’s note: Chris Grecco is director, quantitative & Internet research, and Hal King is managing partner, at King, Brown & Partners, a San Francisco-based full-service research firm.

Industry analysts estimate that more than a third of U.S. households currently have and use an Internet connection. When home penetration is added to work-based access, at least half the adults in America use the Internet on a regular (daily or weekly) basis for a growing variety of information communications, entertainment, and transaction purposes. The Internet is now much more pervasive than televisions or telephones were at a similar stage in their development, and is clearly becoming much more of a part of people’s daily lives than could have ever been imagined by its inventors.

Until recently, much of the Internet’s appeal has been based solely on e-mail communication and searches for personal and professional information. Indeed, many people only use the Internet to receive and send e-mail. For example, AOL’s chat rooms are among the most popular of its many services. Our own Web usage surveys now find "personal research" as a leading application of the Internet. Increasingly, the Internet is used as source of "pre-transaction" information to discover details about products and services even when the actual purchase is made through traditional distribution channels. However, using the Internet routinely for broad scale e-commerce and entertainment purposes still lags information and communication applications for important reasons.

While the Internet - and specifically the Web - has held the promise of delivering highly interactive multimedia content, until recently these widely publicized benefits were simply not available because of reliability, bandwidth, privacy, and security constraints. Even though leading-edge Web sites began delivering audio and video files three or four years ago, including on-line gaming and music "channels," most Internet users did not have fast enough modems or pipelines to have realistic access to this rich multimedia content. What Web designers and developers discovered is that no matter how cool or interesting a digitized two-minute video clip might be, most mainstream users were loath to wait an hour or two for downloading.

Playing with fat pipes

Now, cable, telephone, and other communications companies are ramping up to deliver new transport technologies as quickly as possible. Their aim is to provide Internet users with the richest experience possible - a full VDV (voice, data, and video) Monty. In the coming years, more and more people will subscribe to high-speed cable modem services like @Home and Road Runner or telephone based services like DSL, joining businesses and institutions that have dedicated Internet connections through high capacity T1 or T3 lines.

All of this is especially important as we consider the changing composition of the Internet audience. While these high-speed services will certainly be of interest to current users, they will also be important in bringing the next wave of customers to the Internet. Today’s Web surfers have accrued their experience using personal computers at work and at home, but most of those who initiate access in next few years will be PC novices at best. Many others may not use PCs at all and instead will employ any of a number of alternative devices like WebTV, Worldgate, or gaming platforms like Sega’s new Dreamcast to access the Web.

Multimedia research needs

High-speed access will necessitate a substantial reconfiguration of the Internet’s content. Multimedia files will certainly become much larger and more complex. Currently hundreds of companies provide special software or browser plug-ins that allow Internet users to access any number of advanced applications like large audio and video files, 3D graphics, and streaming media. In most cases, plug-ins must be downloaded and installed before certain multimedia and graphics files can be viewed or heard. An increasing number of standard plug-ins are already included with the latest versions of Web browsers, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Netscape’s Communicator.

Keeping track of plug-ins is a job in itself. The number of choices has literally exploded, as have sites where they can be obtained. Netscape lists more than 200 in its browser plug-in download area.

As bandwidth and available media options continue to increase, it becomes even more important for companies of various types to understand what multimedia capability users have. Further, companies will need to know how the needs and motivations of Internet use affects how sophisticated users’ multimedia capabilities are.

Examples of companies that need information on users’ plug-in capabilities include:

Portals and directory sites - Web sites that accept advertising from many different clients need to know what kinds of multimedia ads they should be willing to accept since they will not be able to accept all formats.

Web advertisers - companies that use the Web as an advertising medium need to know what multimedia formats can be seen and heard by users so they can distribute resources and efforts accordingly.

Content providers - Web sites that provide content to users need to know what types of audio, video, and streaming media their site users can access.

Browser companies - companies like Netscape and Microsoft need information about what the most popular multimedia applications are so they can make decisions about which plug-ins to include with their browsers and which to offer as separate downloads.

Users don’t know

Our company, King, Brown & Partners, has been conducting on-line surveys for three years, and many of our projects have focused on helping Web sites and Web content providers understand who is visiting their site, how satisfied they are with the content, and how the content could be improved. In addition to needing demographic characteristics for crosstabular or audience segmentation purposes, many sites would like to know details about how users are accessing their sites. Thus, we have been asking questions about modem speed, browsers, and types of plug-ins users have installed.

In many cases, the results of these inquiries have been less than satisfactory since most users simply don’t know or care about the internals of their Web browsing software. In many of the studies we conduct for Web sites, "Don’t Know" or non-response is in the range of 30 to 40 percent for these configuration questions. Trying to obtain detailed and accurate plug-in information is especially difficult since even sophisticated users rarely remember which plug-ins they have downloaded or know which came pre-installed with their browsers. Further still, obtaining information on which versions of browser or plug-in software is virtually impossible. Even people who know their browser brand (i.e., Netscape or MS Internet Explorer) have little idea of its vintage. Many assume they are using the most up-to-date browser because they have a fairly new computer. What they don’t realize is that new browser versions can be released several times a year.

To obtain more accurate and actionable information about plug-in use, we have worked with clients and outside programmers to devise new ways to obtain important configuration data. The following are a couple of examples of our new approaches.

Example 1: obtaining active information - taking the plug-in test

King, Brown was approached by a client that wanted to know what proportion of Internet users could use various multimedia plug-ins and needed to be able to compare that information against several demographic and behavioral characteristics.

Because of the dismal response levels we experienced in asking detailed plug-in configuration questions, we decided to structure the questionnaire as an on-line multimedia test. Web-based survey pages were created using a series of selected images in a broad range of plug-in file formats for the test. After giving the page a few seconds to load, users were asked to answer a very simple yes-or-no question: Can you see an image? In this way, users who could see the image after it loaded clicked "yes"; those who could not see the image clicked "no" without ever having to know or report any technical details about their browser’s configuration.

After each response, the site visitors were moved automatically to the next question, that is, the next plug-in test. Because browsers notify users if they do not have a plug-in installed to play a certain multimedia file, the survey programming included detailed instructions so that respondents would not download the media players they needed, to ensure an accurate determination of what capabilities were actually installed.

We also experienced some of the highest survey completion rates that we had ever seen. Clearly, viewing the plug-in images made the survey much more entertaining and interesting, helping to accelerate response rates.

Example 2: Obtaining information passively

Much of our Web-based research is used to build behavioral profiles that help determine the utility and appeal of site content, as well as navigation and performance reactions. When this information is combined with other assessments, we are able to provide our clients the resources for creating useful "knowledge bases" about site visitors’ interests, usage motivations, and overall satisfaction. When that learning is matched with demographic descriptors, a much more complete picture of a site’s appeal can be developed.

We have now begun to apply and refine a process that goes well beyond collecting data by just using a Web survey. Depending on how they are programmed, Web servers can pull information from users’ browsers when they visit a site. Browsers can reveal important and useful information about how a site is being used. When a user visits a Web site, properly programmed sites can determine user information such as which Web browser and version they are using and which, if any, plug-ins they have installed.

We have used a process that will "poll" survey respondents’ browsers when they enter our survey and will attach information about their browsers and plug-ins to their individual survey data files. Attaching this information allows us to obtain information on multimedia use for frequency and crosstabular purposes without having to worry about whether respondents know which browser or plug-ins they currently have installed. In addition to the increased accuracy, collecting this usage data then becomes a continuous process, rather than a random event. We believe that fully half the value of Web site market research is revealed in analysis of trends, for which this information is a key contributor.

Looking forward

We used to be more cautious about forecasting the rate of technology innovation, but Web capabilities have continued to develop at an astounding pace. Still, the speed of innovation far exceeds adoption rates, especially since nascent technologies are often expensive and unstable. In the near future, high-speed Internet connections and server-based software capabilities will sharply reduce reliance on users to download and install new resources. Automated updates will certainly become pervasive as Web marketers build more substantial franchises that rely upon sophisticated multimedia delivery systems.

The rudimentary nature of Web-based market research is also destined to change in response to these new capabilities. Researchers will need to be as creative and informed about Web technologies as their clients in order to provide pacing market intelligence.

In our practice, Web designers and developers are moving from project-based outsource relationships to full-time staff members. In the near future, we expect to deploy fully instrumented servers that can be used as real-time, interactive laboratories to test all or part of a client site. Market research has been criticized as being too expensive, slow and difficult to apply. We expect that the Internet will allow firms to finally deliver timely, high-quality, and low-cost market information.