Ecommerce businesses have needs that many websites do not. Whether the site is a content management system (CMS) that has thousands of pages with advertising on them, or a shopping cart, or a member only site, the site will one day reach a level of success that forces the company to reconsider their platform.
Platform
A platform is the system the ecommerce business is built on. it could be something simple like a MS FrontPage generated ‘static’ website. Or, It could be a Drupal content management system, with all the bells and whistles, including shopping cart, chat rooms, newsletters, and a podcast.
Many ecommerce businesses start with ‘wizard’ or template generated sites. This type of short sited thinking can be extremely costly in the long run.
Every business should assume they will need a bigger platform. A small business may not have the time to manage a Drupal site, or the resources to hire a programmer who is familiar with Drupal. They need to start with something smaller, and build a bigger platform later.
Programmers
One of the biggest mistakes ecommerce businesses make is believing that all programmers who code in PHP and MySql can handle all CMS platforms. This is not true. Grace Publishing Media, a medium sized social networking business paid $8000 for a platform that never worked, they had to trash it. They hired programmers who were familiar with the software platform, and had a new site within two months, for less than $900.00.
Types of Web Hosting
There are four types of web hosting, community shared, shared, virtual, and dedicated.
Community hosting is free, and is on a site where everyone shares a similar domain name. This type of site is impossible to promote. It may be free, but it will never rank high enough on the search engine sites to generate enough sales to keep the business solvent.
Shared hosting is the most common. It costs about $5 - $25 a month. Each website has their own private space, and their own management panel. The most common admin panels are CPanel and Plesk. The bandwidth, CPU burden, and other web resources are shared.
The second type of hosting is good for a small start up business. The important thing to confirm is that they use up to date databases and they have excellent customer service. However, as the business grows it will cause more burden on the CPU as more people use the site at the same time. This can cause problems that will not only crash the ecommerce site’s website, but it may also cause problems with the adjoining sites.
The third and fourth types of hosting, virtual and dedicated, is more private. A virtual server is one that has been broken into sections. Each ecommerce business has their own section, databases, bandwidth, and admin centre, but the CPU is shared. The ‘burden’ on the system of each website is still controlled tightly. This can cost $25 - $100 a month.
The dedicated server is the same as owning your own server. Everything is private. The business is allowed to max out all their resources without worrying about being limited or suspended by the hosting company. This service regularly costs $50 - $250 a month.
Managed
The most important aspect of hosting for the ecommerce business is finding ‘managed’ hosting. Never opt for unmanaged. It can result in dramatic down times, corruptions, and even having a lost system.
Back Up
No ecommerce business should sign for any hosting service that doesn’t offer backup. However, take a ‘lesson learned’ from companies who preceded yours – also learn how to back up the company on a hard drive in your computer, or a zip file.
Hosting companies, even the big ones, go out of business regularly, losing everything on their servers.
Showing posts with label service. Show all posts
Showing posts with label service. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
What Is The Best Web Hosting Service?
Is there really a magic formula to determine the best web hosting service? I'm sure thousands of people want to know the answer to this question if there was one. To be honest, there is no absolute correct answer to this. As you know, individual results will vary from person to person in terms of what they want out of a service.
If there was a way to find the "best" web host to ensure you made the right choice, would you be interested?
Hopefully the answer is yes!
I want you to understand that there is no "best" web hosting service but there are some measures or steps to help find what's best for you.
The tips that follow should help someone new or experienced choose the best possible host the first time around. It can even help those looking to switch hosts avoid making the same mistake twice.
Here's a checklist to help you get started in choosing a great host:
* Look at what's in front of you
* How is the service and support?
* Testimonial test
Let's take the first point; look at what's in front of you. No, really. Look directly at what's in front of you. When you visit the web host, how does it present itself visually? If it doesn't look up to par in terms of presentation you may want to avoid them.
Low-quality graphics may indicate your typical "fly-by-night" type of company that won't be around very long. Even though anyone can produce high-quality looking websites, this should raise a red flag if identified. While we're on the look of the website, another turn off should be misspellings.
Misspellings can indicate a business that doesn't take pride in how they operate. Would you trust your website in a company that doesn't take pride in their business? There's no excuse for misspellings when a lot of applications contain spell checkers.
Service and support
This is by far the most important thing to have no matter what type of product or service you get. After all, things do fail or break down and you may need extended support. A way to check the reliability of a web host is to put them to the test.
Find a contact number (some even provide a toll free number) or send them an email to inquire about something they offer. That way you can see how long it takes before you actually talk to someone or for them to respond to emails. A good response time for emails should be within 24 hours. Especially with the large volume of inquiries they may receive on a daily basis. Doing this will allow you to see how friendly and helpful their support staff is as well.
Testimonial test
I'm sure you've seen many websites post testimonials to help give credibility to their products and services. A good cross check you can do is send the person who gave the testimonial an email to find out what they like and don't like about the web host.
You should be able to contact the individual since websites will usually include the person's url back to his or her site as an incentive for giving the testimonial. Doing this task will help you make a better decision whether or not to invest in the hosting service according to the feedback received from the customer.
Using these three points is a great way to gauge whether or not the host is a good choice for you. Taking the time now to research the service will save you headaches and disappointment down the road.
I know there were 3 tips mentioned above, but I wanted to throw in a fourth way to help you get the best hosting solution possible. A word of mouth recommendation is one way you can't go wrong. Ask a few friends or colleagues if they have used a particular host and for how long.
You may want to ask if they've switched from another host and the reason for changing. Be sure to inquire why they continue to stay with the current host. This is a great way to gather the pros and cons of certain hosts based on the first-hand experience of others. It will also help you make a better informed decision before deciding to invest your hard earned money on a host provider.
If there was a way to find the "best" web host to ensure you made the right choice, would you be interested?
Hopefully the answer is yes!
I want you to understand that there is no "best" web hosting service but there are some measures or steps to help find what's best for you.
The tips that follow should help someone new or experienced choose the best possible host the first time around. It can even help those looking to switch hosts avoid making the same mistake twice.
Here's a checklist to help you get started in choosing a great host:
* Look at what's in front of you
* How is the service and support?
* Testimonial test
Let's take the first point; look at what's in front of you. No, really. Look directly at what's in front of you. When you visit the web host, how does it present itself visually? If it doesn't look up to par in terms of presentation you may want to avoid them.
Low-quality graphics may indicate your typical "fly-by-night" type of company that won't be around very long. Even though anyone can produce high-quality looking websites, this should raise a red flag if identified. While we're on the look of the website, another turn off should be misspellings.
Misspellings can indicate a business that doesn't take pride in how they operate. Would you trust your website in a company that doesn't take pride in their business? There's no excuse for misspellings when a lot of applications contain spell checkers.
Service and support
This is by far the most important thing to have no matter what type of product or service you get. After all, things do fail or break down and you may need extended support. A way to check the reliability of a web host is to put them to the test.
Find a contact number (some even provide a toll free number) or send them an email to inquire about something they offer. That way you can see how long it takes before you actually talk to someone or for them to respond to emails. A good response time for emails should be within 24 hours. Especially with the large volume of inquiries they may receive on a daily basis. Doing this will allow you to see how friendly and helpful their support staff is as well.
Testimonial test
I'm sure you've seen many websites post testimonials to help give credibility to their products and services. A good cross check you can do is send the person who gave the testimonial an email to find out what they like and don't like about the web host.
You should be able to contact the individual since websites will usually include the person's url back to his or her site as an incentive for giving the testimonial. Doing this task will help you make a better decision whether or not to invest in the hosting service according to the feedback received from the customer.
Using these three points is a great way to gauge whether or not the host is a good choice for you. Taking the time now to research the service will save you headaches and disappointment down the road.
I know there were 3 tips mentioned above, but I wanted to throw in a fourth way to help you get the best hosting solution possible. A word of mouth recommendation is one way you can't go wrong. Ask a few friends or colleagues if they have used a particular host and for how long.
You may want to ask if they've switched from another host and the reason for changing. Be sure to inquire why they continue to stay with the current host. This is a great way to gather the pros and cons of certain hosts based on the first-hand experience of others. It will also help you make a better informed decision before deciding to invest your hard earned money on a host provider.
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