In their Social Trends publication, released today, the UK’s National Office for Statistics paints a convincing picture for the virtues of promoting your business online. Among a lot of other interesting facts and staggeringly large figures (in 2007, British people collectively travelled 508 billion miles by road, rail and air), there are some very clear indications of the growth of the World Wide Web.

Social Trends publication '09

In the past decade, household ownership of a computer has almost doubled, going from around 29% to 70%. The number of households with an Internet connection has risen even more sharply – in the late 90s, only 10% of people had an Internet connection, whereas in 2007, over 60% were online.

On the other hand, in 2008, well under half the population bothered to read newspapers, compared to 72% of people in the late 70s. With growing concerns about global warming, this trend looks set to continue, as the benefit of publishing news stories online as opposed to printing millions of copies of newspapers every day is blatantly obvious. Especially as it’s now getting easier and easier to pull up websites on your mobile phone to check out the news.

Speaking of which…

Around a quarter of people had a mobile phone in 1999, whereas now it’s more like 80% of us, so that pushes up Internet access numbers, too. Interestingly, a household land line is beginning to become less common – 89% now, down from 94% in the late 90s. I wonder if BT are panicking yet?

Either way, if you’re running a business and don’t have one yet, it might be a good idea to start thinking about starting a website.