If
you are involved in creating or running a online business
there are some fundamental things you need to be aware
of when choosing a website hosting service. The sole purpose
of this article is to make you aware of some pitfalls
that are easy to fall into when choosing a webhost, especially
if you are new at ecommerce. Please read the following
to ensure you make it down the safe road to web hosting.
1.Reliability
The first thing to consider is the life and longevity
of the webhosting service you are considering. Here is
a quick true story to illustrate this. When I first started
my first online business I built a small site to sell
supplements for a mlm I was involved in. I didn't know
anything about ecommerce other than I first needed a domain
name and a webhost. I didn't know what to look for so
I just chose the first result I saw on Google that looked
cheap enough. I spent about 2 years with that host with
very little contact with them, if any at all. By that
time I had around 80 pages on my site for individual products.
Then the unthinkable happened. I woke up one day to find
that the webhost I had chosen had gone out of business
and they had taken my website with them. I tried to contact
them repeatively to release my domain name so I could
get another host and continue with my business but it
did not happen. 2 years of work down the drain. The point
is, make sure you do your homework and and get the history
of the host your considering and determine if they are
healthy and are going to be around for you up the road.
2. Uptime
Dont pay for a webhost that can't guarrantee you 99% uptime.
If the webhost dosn't have the proper equipment to make
sure your website is showing all the time you can be in
for some serious loss of revenue. Why? 1.
You won't be selling anything. 2. If
repeat customers are looking for you and your not there,
they will assume you've gone under and choose a different
vender. 3. Rankings. How long do you
think Google will continue to rank a site they can't find.
They won't . Again, do your homework, a lttle research
in this area can save you a lot of trouble.
3. Support
Thirdly whatever host you choose should have top notch
24/7 support. Believe me you are going to need assistance
at some point setting up and using your host different
features. If you can't get the right support from your
host, you will suffer aggravation on a level you haven't
experienced before. There are to many hosting services
that offer great support to get stuck in that situation.
Do yourself a favor and use one of them.
4. Make sure they offer the excact services you need with
up to date support for those services. Example-If you
need a certain database software or shopping cart setup,
be sure they can offer support with everything
they are offering.
There are plenty of excellent webhost that qualify on
all 4 of these points. The hosts I recommend are HostGator
and GoDaddy.
Please make sure that these esentials
are there before you lay your money down to a website
hosting service.
