Viewpoint: It's Time the Net surf hit UK turf

True to form, the Brits seem reluctant to embrace the change the internet could bring

If you believe the internet is going to be really really big, you are wrong. At least, according to the Credit Card Research Group (CCRG) you are. It says you should be taking the predictions about the internet with a very large ladle of salt and that pundits who speculate that it will soon be routinely used for commerce and business have got it badly wrong.

Well, it?s one point of view. Mine is the absolute opposite. I think the Net is going to become very widely used, very quickly, very soon. All we are waiting for are domestic units with push technology so that the internet is as easy to use as a VCR (yes, I know, find me a seven-year-old child) and Web technology will become as commonplace in homes and offices as the TV and telephone. Like France, where every home has a Minitel which people use for shopping, booking travel reservations and entertainment, the internet in the UK is a boom about to explode.

Already many people have email addresses and communicate through the email system. Business managers and executives routinely use email, and messages are not restricted to business-related content. Anyone who has been involved with an academic establishment or with tertiary level education will be used to email as a means of keeping in touch. At squash clubs and golf clubs, members communicate with email, and it only takes a small leap before the take-up among the non-IT literate starts rising. As with the telephone and fax, it inevitably takes a critical mass of subscribers before the snowball takes on a momentum of its own, and email is poised ready about to hit the crest of that wave.

How do I know this with such certainty? Because it is already happening in the US. The easy familiarity with which the great majority of Americans use email and look up information on Web pages is quite a revelation. It makes us Brits look quite primitive. There, almost all advertisers and commercial organisations give a Web address, and, here?s the big difference, people use them. In Europe an increasing number of advertisers of consumer products give a Web address but they don?t really expect many hits. In the US, it already a common way for interested potential customers to respond There are cultural differences to which we can attribute America?s advanced acceptance and use of internet. First, the distances are far greater between towns and people, and email and internet commerce makes more sense. Second, they are more used to catalogue shopping. But it also suits the kind of fin de siecle mood which is growing around us, and this is why I think it?s going to hit the UK all of a sudden and very hard. It will take off as a fashion. It means that people can communicate without face-to-face contact, which, like it or not, is a very Nineties thing to do.

The CCRG says that people are not going to stop face-to-face shopping, because they like the experience. Some might, but an increasing number get no satisfaction from shopping and are glad to use the time for something else. The CCRG says people are too concerned about fraud to give their card details over the internet ? in my view a spurious argument, as most will give the same information over the telephone. It is only because more people don?t have an easy to use internet device handily located that we don?t use the internet more.

The use of the internet as a marketing and sales tool will take a little longer to become common lingua franca in the UK than in the US. But underestimate it at your peril. For reseller businesses the internet remains a crucial technology, for everything from selling your message to supporting your customers and finding staff. Not just for your own businesses but for your customers? businesses too.

It will be used as a marketing device before its applications for remote retailing catch up, and more importantly it will be an extremely useful promotional medium first. Already in business, managers will research information before purchase by trawling the internet, and push technologies will make that process far easier. The consumer units which double as TVs and make internet access a living room activity will be here by the end of the year. Once they are available, the base of users will suddenly explode and Web site browsing and email communications will become routine almost overnight. Don?t think I?m exaggerating ? I?ve seen it.

So far, the internet has been limited to the adventurers and the pioneers, and its real arrival at the consumer level has yet to come, in the UK at least. But come it will, and far, far sooner than many people seem to think.