Nick Ogden established the first internet service provider in the Island and Europe’s first online shop before moving on to set up Worldpay, regarded as the world’s first online secure payment system.
And last year the St Brelade-based entrepreneur launched On Instant, a business tool that allows people to talk to one another through their computers.
Mr Ogden’s latest project is also based on ‘voice over internet protocol’, a web-based language that allows speech to be carried over the internet.
He sees the worldwide web’s latest evolution as ‘voice comm-erce’, which allows an online shopper to talk directly with the internet retailer.
Old way ‘Voice commerce is, in my view, the biggest step forward in e-commerce in a decade, yet it is actually the old way of buying and selling using new technologies,’ said Mr Og-den.
‘Research shows that if you make customers type when they actually want to talk, they will abandon their transaction before it is completed.
Latest figures show that 57 per cent of online transactions are abandoned, but if only one per cent of these were completed it would be worth £2m a minute.
Mr Ogden has set up a Jersey-based company called the Voice Commerce Group, which launched its first two products at a trade conference in London on Wednesday.
‘Whitephone’ allows customers to set up a voice-based online call centre, while ‘Hello’ is a button that can be pasted on to a website to allow internet shoppers to connect quickly to a retailer’s landline, mobile phone, call centre or computer.
‘This is really exciting, and the reaction in London was unbelievable,’ he said.
‘In many ways we are simply going back to the natural way to transact.
‘However, this technology combines two things – our age-old desire to talk to each other, and the global reach and flexibility of the internet.
‘It is the element of trust which is often missing when consumers consider making payments online to a machine.
Voice commerce will bring business back in touch with its customers, who will be only one click away from making a call.
