Time spent on the Internet is leveling off because users are more savvy  and more familiar with it.

The time spent on the Internet was less than 6 hours per week in 2004.  That time has been increasing until this year.  Now the average time spent per week on the Internet is 12 hours but it is leveling off and not increasing according to Forrester’s Annual Survey.

Are consumers losing interest? Hardly.  The time spent online is leveling off because they understand the web better and know where they want to go.  Consumers in their early days of usage explored, searched, played and experimented with the web.  As they learn and gain online experience they become more efficient.  Less time is spent just surfing and most of the time online is well defined because the user knows where they want to go or search engines help narrow the search to be more targeted. 

So a hospital’s online strategy is even more important.  The competition on the web increases everyday, but the average amount of time spent online is not increasing.  And with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter, is now consuming a significant amount of a person’s online time. 

The good thing however is because consumers are more focused and their choice of sites visited is much more narrow; the efficiency of web marketing is greatly increasing.  By knowing demographics, social graphics, and psychographics of the target audience, it’s easier to find where those people are on the web.   Web marketing becomes less about mass numbers of people on the web, but more about knowing the target audience well enough to know where specifically to find them on the web. 

Internet users are becoming more efficient with their time spent on the web, which enables marketers to be more efficient as well.