Boosting business with broadband
| Boosting business with broadband | |
11 April 2006
It is easy to overlook the possibilities when the biggest and most immediately obvious impact of switching to broadband is its speed and ‘always on’ access. Best described as a quantum leap over the glacially-slow dial up connection, broadband is undeniably a revelation for those raised on screechy 56k modems.
Once in place and the novelty wears off, companies – even those that are small to micro-sized – must see the maximum return on investment by exploring to what innovative uses they can put their high speed communications. How much faster, by way of diversionary and shakily analogous example, would science have advanced in the past 40 years had Neil Armstrong and buddies taken time out from playing golf and noticed water ice deposits lying at the bottom of lunar craters?
We really don’t know. What we do know, though, is that when presented with a new and unfamiliar landscape we ought to take a jolly good look around for potential possibilities. If only a lunar golf ball had landed in the rough, there might today be a human settlement on the moon that taps into ancient ice deposits for drinking water and generating its own electricity.
Back here on Earth, broadband can help companies of all sizes make giant leaps of their own, and all without multi-million dollar budgets.
Take online trading, for example. One of the major bugbears of taking credit card transactions, apart from security, has been the slowness of online shopping. But with the increasing number of broadband connections in this country and globally, this is becoming much less of an issue. Indeed, the online shopping market is booming due to the growth of broadband and this is borne out in countless studies.
From PayPal to WorldPay, there is now a payment provider to suit just about any company and every volume of online business. The obstacles and expense of setting up to take credit card payment on the web are now less onerous than ever before. Taking online payments is now quite definitely something that everybody can incorporate within their website. The major banks and other traditional institutions no longer dominate. There are now a multitude of online payment providers specializing in this area.
Most of the better-known providers can get companies up and running with secure card transactions within days, if not hours. Some provide a straight-forward service where buyers are taken off-site to a secure server to complete the check out process. Others offer packages that include the entire catalogue and shopping trolley process, allowing customers to seamlessly browse and purchase your products or services online.
At the other end of the scale, secure online transactions can consist of simply raising an invoice via a payment provider such as PayPal or Nochex.com once an order has been received.
Useful links
http://www.electronic-payments.co.uk/ - tool providing impartial advice about taking payments through your website and help with choosing a suitable payment solution
Payment providers | |