Streaming Audio
One internet fad that is here to stay is streaming audio. It has been proven that having streaming audio on your web site increases your visitor's sales conversions and also raises the perception of your site as being trustworthy. Beyond it's use as a sales technique, audio can have a very beneficial use as a means to deliver pre-recorded help tips or advice to existing users.
Streaming audio will help you to explain sales or support processes to your site visitors. The credibility of your site will rise because visitors will see a professional front to your web site. The question of cost is no longer an issue because very high quality streaming audio is now available at a fraction of the cost that they once had.
From a technical perspective, the advancements made in audio delivery over the last few years has been massive. The quality of sound that can be output from your web site is phenomenal. Not only that, you can choose the audio to put out yourself, so if you are a singer for example, and have a .wav file of one of your recordings, with the right software you can put samples of your work on your site for people to hear before they buy it. And delivering music from a site is easy these days as well. You could be your own publishing company!
And what's more, your visitors do not need any special equipment to here these files. They are streamed using Macromedia's Flash technology, which is industry standard and is delivered with most PC's as standard. Even if you don't have Flash, your browser will detect this and find a copy for you to download.
Nothing could be easier.
You could also consider combining streaming audio with streaming video as well. Then you can deliver pictures with your sound. Then we are into a plethora of new possibilities.
