Ecommerce Hosting – Best Ecommerce Web Host
Posted by BlogAdmin on November 7, 2009
Ecommerce is defined as the buying and selling of good or services on the Internet. When you have an online business of any kind you need to make sure that you have the appropriate web hosting service. Many companies will tell you that they have the right hosting packages for you. You need to be very discerning when shopping around for your ecommerce hosting. There can be hidden fees and while they may tell you that certain things are included they may not be what is really going to fit your needs so you need to ask smart questions.
This post is to help you know what to look for and to help you avoid problems down the road with your hosting. Hopefully you will think of other things to ask questions about as they pertain to your business.
- SSL (Secure Socket Layer) – this is a form of encryption that will enable you to process payments and send information securely. People worldwide are nervous about giving out their private information these days and rightfully so. Identity theft is a huge problem and still on the rise. It is important to do all that you can to protect yourself, your business and your customers.
- Shopping carts – not all shopping carts are equal. You may think a web hosting company is great just because it has this feature but you need to look closely. Depending on the number of products that you sell you need to see if the shopping cart supports enough items for your business. Some only handle up to 20 products or so and for a lot of ecommerce businesses this is simply not enough.
- Product catalog – this is where the customer will browse through your items. You need to be sure it is easy to manage and to upload new items to. You will want it to support photos as well as good descriptions of the product. Browsing the catalog should be easy and it should integrate well with the shopping cart program that you are using.
- Advertising – a business can never underestimate the power of advertising. Every business wants new customers. Many ecommerce web hosts will offer you credit to advertising sites such as Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, or Yahoo! Marketing. Make sure you take full advantage of these and if possible go with the plan and company that gives you the best credits. The best thing about these forms of advertising is that on any given day you can decide how much you want to spend on advertising. You have total control.
- Support – every good web hosting company will offer very good customer support. This is a competitive industry and customer support is a key element. Your host should provide great hours that they are available along with multiple ways of contacting them. They should offer at least 99% uptime and their servers should be monitored 24/7 so that you don’t run into unnecessary downtime. They should offer a good FAQ’s database and live chat options are always nice.
Our top picks for Best Ecommerce Web Host are:
