Keeping everyone happy
Besides scoping out how to cost-justify broadband content and make money off it, e-businesses will need to determine how to best integrate video and other bandwidth-hungry features into existing sites.
That means finding a way to make features such as video available to users with broadband connections while not alienating the majority that are still connecting via dial-up connections, experts say.
Since most e-businesses haven't deployed tools that can allow them to dynamically distinguish one group from the other, the key, experts say, is to ensure users have options as to what types of content they want to access.
BET.com, for example, makes sure that someone on a 28.8K bps dial-up connection can read an article, while also providing a DSL user the opportunity to click a music stream or watch portions of a BET cable show, Williams said.
Sites, in most cases, should emulate BET.com and integrate broadband content into the overall design of a site rather than create a separate broadband-only site, Wigder said. Addition of broadband features remains new to most e-businesses, and the number of broadband users is still limited.
More often than not, Wigder said, today's broadband users are looking to do similar activities as narrowband users but at faster speeds.
"One of the mistakes over the last couple years is that people thought their broadband offering was an all-or-nothing proposition," Wigder said. "Now they're coming to the realisation that they can add applications incrementally, and that's a step in the right direction."
NBC Internet, for instance, is planning to merge a separate broadband site, speed.nbci.com, into the main NBCi site. Currently, NBCi links to its broadband site from the NBCi.com portal. Once connected to the broadband site, users get a new interface that includes broadband-oriented navigation features such as Flash graphics, more photos and access to streaming video and audio.
In conjunction with the move to integrate broadband features back into the main site, NBCi plans to deploy technology it developed to detect the connection speed of each visitor. NBCi will then dynamically serve the appropriate broadband features.
Already, NBCi has begun using the technology to provide users on its portal site with broadband-oriented advertisements, according to NBCi's Feinman.
As sites like BET.com and NBCi continue to test such techniques and as the cost of distributing video content continues to fall, it's certain, experts say, that video and other features that demand broadband access will become increasingly common.
Most sites still have a lot to learn about how to make money on broadband content. But sites such as BET.com know one thing for sure: The right broadband features have the power to lure a new audience. So you can bet that Lil' Bow Wow's online barking is only the beginning.
