Develope for Broadband ?

Status
Not open for further replies.
BOSS

BOSS

FlowerChat Administrator
Oct 31, 2002
19,394
8,269
113
68
Midland
www.smithsflowers.com
State / Prov
MI
There has often been talk around our community about how we should be developing our sites. Optimize for broadband or not? And I think the concensus is/was to optimize for dial-up.

I ran across a study, that may suggest differently. It was done by Forrester Research and another by eMarketer...

2005 households with internet access 73.4%
2006 75.6%
2007 80.2% projected
2008 85.7% projected
2010 90% projected

Households with Broadband
2005 51%
2006 69% projected
2007 75% projected
2008 82 % projected
2010 84 % projected

These numbers would lead me to thinking about building a richer environment site, myself.

This growth in broadband, has moved some sites toward adding more features, and abilities to their sites. A study by E-tailing Group of 100 retail sites:

Alternative views 2004 21% and 2005 48%
Zoom function 2004 70% and 2005 80%
Streaming Video 2004 8% and 2005 19%
Audio clips 2004 8% and 2005 14%
Color Changes 2004 24% and 2005 34%

Canadian Numbers
households with internet and then broadband
2003 4.4MM 35.8% broadband
2004 5.3MM 42.7%
2005 6.1MM 48.4%
2006 6.6MM 52% projecyed
2007 7.1MM 55% projected
2008 7.5MM 58% projected

Seems that many are going this direction....with our products, I'm kind of changing my feelings on optimization for broadband...

The other biggie is an RSS feed from your site to auto-notify customers about specials etc...since RSS does not require an email address, there is less chance for the notices not getting through.

Just thought I'd pass this along....
 
Food for thought...

Late afternoon Saturday...
20 members logged on to flowerchat...
only 4 with Broadband cable

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) adds a few more, but is much slower than cable.

Also we have 38 surfers reading the flowerchat blog that not only are using dial up but are also using windows 98.
.
 
mlou said:
Food for thought...

Late afternoon Saturday...
20 members logged on to flowerchat...
only 4 with Broadband cable
Click to expand...

Maybe florists are behind the curve ? Behind the times ? Nah, couldn't be that:rolleyes:
 
Maybe florists are behind the curve ? Behind the times ? Nah, couldn't be that
Click to expand...

Understatement of the year so far.(2006)

The only thing I could see a florist using their website where the customer would need high bandwidth would be flash/webcam/video. Other than that, dial up should be fine if pages are kept at a decent size and images are formatted right. Right now 88% of my traffic is cable or faster.
 
mlou said:
Food for thought...

Late afternoon Saturday...
20 members logged on to flowerchat...
only 4 with Broadband cable

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) adds a few more, but is much slower than cable.

Also we have 38 surfers reading the flowerchat blog that not only are using dial up but are also using windows 98.
.
Click to expand...

Hey, DSL is much better than it used to be.
11406_speed.jpg
 
In Canada DSL is typically more reliable and provides faster transfer rates, even though cable has a higher capacity. By it's design, cable is easily bogged down with too much traffic.
 

Attachments

  • dsl.gif
    dsl.gif
    4.2 KB · Views: 10
Hey oh Infinite One....

What's the URL for that gizmo you used??

Have a nice day!
 
Back to the original question.........I did read somewhere (can't put my fingers on it just now) that faster loading pages will always get better page rank with most search engines, so that being the case I would not design the home page for high speed just yet.
 
In Canada DSL is typically more reliable and provides faster transfer rates, even though cable has a higher capacity. By it's design, cable is easily bogged down with too much traffic.
Click to expand...

It also has a lot to do with the people in your area (node) and who use the same type of service.

P.S. Ryan, Can you answer my PM plz? :)
 
Video on your site?

I have been noticing more and more video clips on all kinds of sites.
Anyone doing this or thought about it?
It would be great for testimonies (if your customer was up to it).
You could actually put an arrangement together.
You could show what a Floral Shop owner really does, things like scrubbing buckets.
It would be great for a walk through of your shop.
You could do a mini commercial showing a recipient receiving a bouquet from your shop starting with your van driving up.
 
Dazeal said:
P.S. Ryan, Can you answer my PM plz? :)
Click to expand...


Hm??? errr, umm.... Yes! I mean yes, the answer is no. Maybe. Dang it, no idea. Let me go check.
 
BamaE4U said:
It would be great for a walk through of your shop.
You could do a mini commercial showing a recipient receiving a bouquet from your shop starting with your van driving up.
Click to expand...
I think this will be coming very soon to more and more sites......the walk thru the shop thing is where I'm headed soon as I find the time....
 
I talked to a guy about 3 years ago and he had this special video thing that records your shop in the middle and does a 360 that people on your site can zoom around and take a look. It wasn't in real time and he wanted $500, so I politely declined.

http://www.easypano.com/index_google.htm has what you need. $2100 for the software and hardware. $1k for the software.
 
Do not build for broadband. While a higher percentage are using broadband all the time you can't use the same principle when deciding how to design.

For instance lets assume even a whopping 80% of visitors are on broadband.

Design for dialup and you aren't designing for 20% as the entire 100% have no trouble viewing your site.

Design for broadband and you just alienated 20% of your potential customers.

Also you should note that simple sells. There is a very good reason big sites like google, yahoo, msn, ebay, etc are simple designs with a white background.
 
Infinite said:
In Canada DSL is typically more reliable and provides faster transfer rates, even though cable has a higher capacity. By it's design, cable is easily bogged down with too much traffic.
Click to expand...
From someone who uses both (DSL at work, Cable at home) I would totally agree with what Ryan says. Also, Daz has a good point too about who is on that node with you...you get some clowns who are downloading huge files all the time, and speed will drop...

I did notice that (via dslreports speed tests) the cable drops quite a bit during the evening hours, where the DSL is pretty steady. Looked into this about 6 months ago, when I was debating to switch to cable at the shop. Decided to keep the DSL for now... after all, it works fine and is dirt cheap....

Also would not just develope the site for broadband...still too many dial up users out there.

- H.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom
Back