Broadband access increased by 28%

An estimated 68% of active internet users in the U.S. had access to broadband as of February, according to a recent study from Nielsen/NetRatings. This is up 28% from 74.3 million in February 2005 to 95.5 million this February.

What this means to businesses is that you can deploy a more powerful web site that includes streaming audio/video, larger images and more interactivity with less concern over bandwidth restraints. It does not mean that you should add all sorts of bells and whistles just for the sake of adding them. A good rule of thumb is to only add new features that improve a visitor’s experience on your web site in some way. Other considerations on this subject are that you will still need to follow the same usability guidelines, ensure that your web site is able to be crawled and indexed by the major search engines, and should still offer a low-bandwidth version of your web site for those visitors who are still using dial-up.