With thousands of web hosting companies in the marketplace, it can be difficult if not impossible to know which web site hosting companies truly provide an excellent hosting solution at a most excellent price.

When you have an established domain name with a good web hosting company, you can get reports on your traffic and find out which of the pages your customers are visiting most often, as well as many other statistics that will hurt your brain if you ingest too quickly.

Your web host could charge you a fee for monthly service that ranges from $10 or $20 to the more expensive $50.00 per month. Plan to pay between $300 and $500 per year to your web host.

Always avoid free or very inexpensive web hosting services, because you may experience bouts of server downtimes and you are most likely going to have significant limitations in storage, number of email addresses, FTP upload etc.

Be sure your web host can accommodate e-commerce and storefronts, wireless capability, blogs, forums, chats, online interactive help and anything else you want to add onto your site.

Estimate what your growth needs are and ensure that this web host can serve you as you grow. The last thing you want to do is change host mid way unless you absolutely have to do so.

Check your bandwidth capability to be sure that, if your website traffic grows rapidly, your customers will not have to wait to download or view information. Three things to look for in a web hosting company are:

1. Excellent Customer Support: Your hosting provider should be there for you 24/7 and give you instant access to the technicians you need to solve your problem. Ask them how long it takes for them to typically respond to your problem. A good test is to call them in the mid night to check if you get to a live, level 3 support.

2. A Sound Infrastructure: Check whether they offer a multi-homed network powered by multiple bandwidth providers to ensure redundancy. Some offer a 100% guarantee on its network availability or network uptime.

3. Financial Stability: If you’re running very critical operations, you can’t afford to be with a hosting company that may not be in business in a few months.

Web hosting Services and Domain names

Choosing an appropriate domain name is very important. First and foremost, when it comes to domain names, try to stay away from the silly, stupid, ridiculous or clever. Keep your domain name simple and make it something your customers can remember if they lose the link to your business website.

Take note that, while your domain name on Geocities or AOL may seem like the least expensive way to go, it may also get you dropped from certain search engines. Some search engines ignore domain addresses that reside on these ‘free servers’ or on the ‘cheap’ servers.

Even if your site is recognized and considered by search engines, a professional domain name that uses your primary company name or associated words is likely to get more attention and be considered as a stable business by your prospective customers.

Purchasing domain names are not that expensive which cost about $100 and there are many companies that can register the name for you, provided it is available and has not already been used by another company.

Using one of your keywords in your domain name can increase your score on some search engines. For example, solderingirons.com could be more effective as Electric-soldering-irons.com, if that domain name was available.

You might also choose to establish more than one domain name using keywords and then link your ‘doorway’ domain sites to your primary site. But you will have to pay for each of the domain name and also the monthly hosting fees. It all depends on the type and size of your business and your competition.

Keep in mind that some search engines disregard ‘doorway’ sites. So put at least a page of content on the doorway site with some useful information and then link it to your primary site. But don’t design it as an empty page. The other reason being, you can have one, three, five, or even more email addresses that all contain your business name, and give your business a professional feel. When customers get emails from dominicstone@solderingirons.com they feel as if they are dealing with a stable, professional business operation.

No need for customers to understand how you manage all your email boxes on your domain. They just need to feel your business is dependable and reputable.

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When you are selling something online, there are two characteristics that are of prime importance to your business: credibility and quality. While the second can only be established in the course of your business relationship with a client, your credibility is apparent in every aspect of your store. So, it is right to say that in an online business, nothing matters more than the first impression. So, your storefront is a vital part of your business.

Online buying decisions are principally impulsive decisions. Buyers decide to buy what you are selling within the first few moments they are there. Your storefront is your corporate identity on the information highway. If your ‘shop’ looks shabby, cluttered or is a copy of other popular storefronts, customers are more likely to click off from your site. That is why it is important that your ecommerce shopping cart design must have clean looks cleverly interwoven with user-friendly shopping cart application principles.

A good ecommerce shopping cart design consists of two complementary components: storefront design and shopping cart development. The visual picture and design that you offer your customers is very important. Cutting edge designs add substantially to your credibility. A great layout and high quality design shows that you are serious about your business and that you are interested in clinching the sale. A successful store uses state of the art technology and cutting edge tools to help visitors navigate easily to the product or service they want. Even a small mistake can cost you a sale. For instance, a shopping cart that does not place the ‘buy’ button in appropriate areas risks losing customers who just don’t have the time or energy to search for a button, when they can well purchase the same product elsewhere.

To succeed in your online business, you need an ecommerce shopping cart design that is easy to understand and simple to implement. As far as possible, it should have lots of helpful WYSIWYG wizards, so you can build your shopping cart even without any programming knowledge. A template based storefront will make it easy for you to set up shop in just a few minutes. At the same time, you should have all the freedom to customize your storefront in any way you wish. Certain websites even offer individual design assistance if you feel you want to make your storefront highly unique.

Certain additional features make an ecommerce shopping cart design more helpful than others. For example, the bulk loading feature which allows you to import products from a text file or database is very helpful, in case your products are stored in a text file on your computer.

A good ecommerce shopping cart design is customer friendly as well as owner friendly. It should allow you to update your software and back-up files automatically while it automatically creates professional invoices, bulk edits orders and creates new pages and products as and when you desire. As a business owner, you need to think from both sides of the monitor and choose an ecommerce shopping cart design that suits both.

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