E-commerce Discussion

The online business is changing at an ever increasing pace. More and more sites are bringing good products into the homes of millions of internet users world-wide, and this is just the beginning of the revolution. When you are ready to enter the world of online business commerce hosting must be one of your top priorities.

Before you jump into selecting a commerce host for your website, start at the beginning. What exactly is e-commerce? By most definitions, it is the action of marketing, selling and distributing products over the world wide web. The center of e-commerce is naturally an online store.

Without a website or page containing your e-commerce store, you have no ecommerce business. It is certainly possible to make money online through many other means than operating on online store. But ecommerce is one of the fastest, simplest ways one can start earning an income online.

In an online business, having quality commerce hosting is vital. It may even make the difference between your business succeeding and failing. You and more importantly your customers will depend on safe, reliable hosting. Without a capable, professional commerce host, sales aren’t likely to be made.

Shared vs. Dedicated Commerce Hosting

You basically have two options for your commerce hosting: a shared server or a dedicated server. The differences between the two are great both in term of quality and in price.

If you choose shared hosting, this means that you will have to share the server your web site is on with many other different websites. You will have less bandwidth at your disposal and your web pages may operate more slowly. As the business owner, you may have less options available to you for customizing your pages and your site. Again, the needs of your business and your clients must be weighed against these limitations.

If you choose a dedicated server, it will be yours and yours alone. You will be the only one on it and you will share bandwidth with nobody. You will be able to personalize everything and install software at your own discretion. More personalization, more speed, and faster service for your customers are the hallmarks of a dedicated commerce host.

Of course, you will pay for the dedicated server bonuses. A dedicated server can easily cost you a few hundred of dollars a month. By contrast, shared hosting costs just a few dollars each month. Cost may well be the deciding factor when you first launch your ecommerce site. But be sure to re-evaluate your decision regularly as your ecommerce business changes and grows.

Evaluate Your Server Regularly

What might cause you to change your mind about a commerce host option? If your business really takes off and you are experiencing rapid success and growth while using a shared host, consider moving up to a dedicated server. With dedicated hosting, you will be better able to serve a growing number of customers and to customize your online business to better suit your business needs.

Alternatively, if you find your once-booming online business is experiencing a sluggish start or rapid decline, consider switching to shared hosting. You can save considerable expense while still serving your customers’ needs while you re-evaluate your business model.

Lastly, you may find that you are simply dissatisfied with your current server. If you are planning to switch servers anyway, it might be an excellent time to make a switch to a more suitable type of server, as well.
Your web host is essentially a service provider that rents you space on their system(s). Some will also offer website building services and other things, but whoever takes care of building your e-commerce site, your hosting company is the one that will implement it on a server that connects to the Internet.

Thus, one of the first things to find out when you are considering prospective hosts for your firm is that the company provides near total uptime (well over 99%). If your website is inaccessible to visitors because the server is down and being repaired, then you are losing money.

Features and costs

If you really have the intention to open an e-commerce site you should bear in mind the type of features that are common to most hosting services, and compare them. There are many companies that offer “one size fits all” e-commerce and shopping cart services, often for low or no cost, in its hosting plans. For smaller companies these basic options may be enough. On the other hand, there are many hosting firms that offer more comprehensive, customizable services for both hosting and e-commerce. These services can be quite good, but the price can be quite high.

If you have adequate technical expertise, or someone in your company does, then you may be able to manage with a “Chinese menu” arrangement for choosing hosting and e-commerce services. This way you can save money by building the site yourself, as well as performing maintenance and troubleshooting. You must keep in mind that whatever technical abilities you lack, you will have to pay for, to someone. If you are already hosting your site with an e-commerce-oriented company, it will most likely be them. Minimizing these costs is important.

Follow the money

Finally, you absolutely must know how you are going to transact business (process purchases) before setting up your e-commerce site. If you do not already have a merchant account for processing credit cards, you should look into getting one. If you are too small or too new to get an account on the best terms, you will have to settle for paying higher rates and fees while you grow your company. You can always renegotiate your merchant account when your fortunes improve.

Fortunately, there are also alternatives for when your fortunes diminish, or you just want to start out slow and “test the waters.” You can use PayPal, a financial “third party,” for customer purchases, though it will cost you somewhat more. There are other third-party processors, as well, with a variety of entry-level accounts that will at least allow you to take major credit and debit cards, even checks.

However, third-party processors will always cost you more. The advantage to you, of course, is being able to take credit cards at all, since without that capacity you really have very little hope of success in today’s “plastic-oriented” sales environments. People want to use credit and debit cards, not cash or checks, period.

As always in business the parameters you need to look for, when choosing the best e-commerce hosting company, are good management, reliable equipment and speedy, professional customer service. If it is one thing more than any other that you should focus on, all other parameters being equal, then go with the firm that has the most expert (and available!) customer service staff. You will be dealing with them more than you now think, that’s for sure.

Amy Armitage is the head of Business Development for Lunarpages. Lunarpages provides quality web hosting from their US-based hosting facility. They offer a wide-range of services from dedicated server hosting and managed solutions to shared and reseller hosting plans.