Speed up that Access

When a customer expresses interest in placing an order or obtaining information, your ability to respond quickly may depend on your level of technology. In the online market place, speed of access is affected by some factors that you can control and others that you can't. You can't control the speed of data transfer between your server's connection and the customer's location or the speed of the computer and Net connection at the customer's end. But you can maximize the speed of the following three factors:

- the processing speed of the server sending out your data

- the speed of the connection between the server where your information is and the Net

- the amount of data you're sending out in a given transaction

You can find a provider who is using a relatively fast computer. Ask how many other businesses are using the same server and how many simultaneous callers the system will support with reasonable speed. When you set up your storefront, most Internet service providers should guarantee a specified level of service-either a certain amount of data transferred per day, week, or month, or a certain number of user accesses (hits) per day, week, or month.