Based on Unbiased Advice and Real World Experience

1.) Look for Unbiased Web host Reviews – This can be difficult in the world of Super Affiliates who build lucrative, legitimate businesses around ranking high for search terms live “webhosting reviews.” Since affiliate review sites generally only cover hosting companies with affiliate programs where they are members and can earn a commission when someone gets to a hosting providers web site through the affiliate site and then buys. Therefore, while this is a completely legitimate business model, the reviews from web hosting review sites run by affiliates are, by the very nature of their compensation models, not unbiased.

A great source for evaluating hosting companies from a business perspective is the better business bureau, an unbiased third party resource.  It is very easy and quick to check any web hosting company out on the BBB website at www.bbb.org. Rest assured, there are plenty of well-known, established hosting companies with BBB rating of A- or better, so there is absolutely no reason to select a web hosting company with a questionable BBB rating.

2.) Compare Web Host Uptime SLAs (Service Level Agreements) – i.e. What % of time do they guarantee that your web server will be available. 99.9% is pretty standard. This might sound like a high % of uptime, but .1% downtime translates into just over 8 hrs and 45 minutes a year which might not seem too bad unless it happens to be the time that an important customer or prospect or even you yourself are trying to access the website. Some hosts will provide rebates or discounts to offset hosting costs when an unschedule outage occurs for prolonged period, violating the uptime SLA.

It is not practical to expect 100% uptime and don’t believe web hosting providers that claim this. Some down time is required to perform routine maintenance to keep the web hosting environment secure by applying software bug fixes, maintenance and security patches. Most reputable companies will perform server maintenance during periods of historically lighter traffic.

3.) Compare Web Host Customer Service –  When comparing web hosting plans, it is good to see what kind of customer support they provide. There is no question that either you, someone in your company or maybe a consultant that handles your website and other Internet marketing initiatives, will need to rely on the web hosting customer service department to get an important task accomplished. It’s not a matter of if, but when. You will want to make sure that you hosting company has 24x7x365 phone support available, preferably staffed with consultants that have the same first language as you do which will faciliate communication.

Since customer service is one of the key distinguishers when evaluating web hosting companies, it is worth investing the time to call sales or support representative to ask a business or technical question and to evaluate the hold time experienced and the quality of support received. Remember, once you are a customer and you need support for an online business continuity issue, just think about the difference that good support will make in obtaining a timely solution.

4.) Read the Web Host Terms of Service, paying special attention to things like how they define “reasonable use” which are used to place limitations on the “unlimited storage”, “unlimited bandwidth”, “unlimited email accounts” and other items used in the sales collateral and advertisements of the web hosting companies that compete for your businesses. Other nice things to find in a web host terms of service include a money back guarantee with a prorated refund. There are reputable web hosts that provide 30 day money back guarantee and even one that at the time of this writing provides a money back guarantee for the life of the service term. 

The other thing to consider is that as the number of visitors to your website increase, you want to be sure that your web host can support a graceful scaling to account for increase bandwidth and serving requirements as your business and traffic grow. This is especially important when deploying your website on a shared virtual server hosting environment. In this kind of environment, the web server that is serving your web pages is running on a server that is running lots of other web servers shared across a number of websites, all running on the same physical computer. Experienced hosting companies understand how to load balance in a way to ensure that performance is maintained. The key metric to track is page load time as users have little patience to wait for slowing loading web pages. Search results also factor in page load time when determining a page’s position in the search results.

5.) Web Host Redundancy is key – Make certain that any web host that you are considering has multiple data centers so that an outage in one data center does not necessarily mean that your website will go offline. Most will have back-up power, including diesel generators and in one known case, wind power to keep the servers running in the event of an outage. They should also have redundant network connections so that if one network is down for some reason that the back-up network will keep your website, and therefore, your web server, connected to the Internet and accessible by customers.

Remember, finding a good web hosting company is important, especially if you have a web host that has caused you grief and lost business in the past and you are looking to switch to a new provider. If you have tips to add based on your own experience, please comment on this post to share your wisdom.

When times are tough, business owners and leaders look closely at discretionary spending, scrutinizing each line item expense based on its potential to grow the business and demonstrate clear ROI (Return on Investment). As a small business owner myself, that is exactly what I do. While considered “discretionary spending” by some, marketing and advertising investments are necessary to grow any business. Internet marketing and advertising investments, whose impact can easily be tracked, enable businesses to increase marketing ROI while being able to directly correlate investments with incremental results. A business website is the central component of any Internet marketing strategy, regardless of the products and services a business sells.

The most important benefit a business website provides is visibility, including company, product and service visibility. What portion of the target market is a company and its offers visible to? If its not 100%, then there is room to grow. Imagine the opportunity cost of a company not being visible to its prospects that are actively searching on the Internet for exactly what it is that business offers. Recent studies have shown that a majority of buyers rely on Internet search as their primary source of local business information. Businesses that rely solely on the print yellow pages, classifieds and word of mouth are missing a large part of their addressable market. If a business is a services business as opposed to product business, its primary (and in many cases only) market is local. Like the saying goes, “You have to be in it to win it.” In other words, a business has to be visible as an option before it can be considered.

Since more and more businesses and individuals are now using the Internet to research products and services before buying, companies must provide online prospects with ready access to company, product and service information positioned with unique selling points. Buyers expect anytime access to this information since many companies are and have been providing it. For example, many restaurants often have websites that provide hours of operation, locations, driving or walking directions, menu content, email contact and a phone number so that those interested can email or call to make a reservation. Restaurants without business websites miss out on potential customers who are planning online.

Understanding what a company needs in a business website and how that website supports business objectives is critical. At a minimum, companies going online need a domain name relevant to their business. A company domain name becomes a pivotal part of that company’s online corporate identity. An email address with the same domain name is also very important. This provides much more credibility than using a free email account from a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail domain. Email from these domains is often blocked by filters since much unsolicited email originates from them. All business websites should include a company background with mission and values, up to date offer information, hours of operation, contact information, and directions (if applicable). It is also important to budget for basic website promotion to ensure that the business website is visible to those searching online. Many cost effective options such as search engine optimization and pay per click advertising exist.

If the business objective is to grow revenue profitably while increasing marketing ROI, then a business website is absolutely a necessity and not an accessory. The good news is that there are a number of affordable Internet marketing solutions available. The cost varies depending on how much initial and ongoing support a specific business requires. Having a business website today does not necessarily set a company apart from its competition, but does afford increased visibility and a chance to cost effectively compete for customers online that would otherwise be forfeited.

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When it comes to picking a domain name for a business website, there are a number of criteria that can be used to measure candidates. Picking an appropriate domain name is important as the domain name is central to a company’s online identity. A deliberate and well thought out domain name can have lasting benefits for a business such as building a positive brand and generating repeat traffic. Once a domain name is registered, a business is immediately invested in that domain name since it will exist in web links that drive search engine rankings, directories that drive web traffic, included on business cards, signage and other promotional materials. This article provides the top five criteria to be applied when selecting and registering a strategic domain name for a business website.

The first criteria, which can also be viewed as a prerequisite, is to find a domain name that is available. Since domain names unambiguously identify a business online much like a phone number does offline, domain names must be unique. Many of the shorter, more desirable domain names are already in use and have a great deal of worth. These include Insurance.com, Business.com, Cooking.com and Diet.com There are lots of free tools provided by domain name registrants and web hosting companies to determine if the desired domain name is available and to suggest variations when the desired domain is already taken. It is also good practice for companies to search the online US trademark database to ensure that a potential domain name is not a registered trademark for some other business. Believe it or not, there are known instances where businesses had to surrender domain names they registered which were later discovered to violate trademarks of other companies, even though the trademark owners had not previously registered the domain name.

The second domain name selection criteria is to find a name that is related to the business name, the brand or industry. If the business has an established brand identity, then the choice of domain name should be the brand name, if available. Some of the largest ecommerce sites fall into this category, namely Amazon.com, ebay.com and craigslist.org. Their domain names are their brand names which were established over the years . However, if a business is new and does not yet have an established, widely-recognized brand identity, the domain name selected can benefit if related to the business focus. Examples of this kind of domain name include PRWeb.com, ezinearticles.com and emarketer.com, though it is unclear to the author whether these currently well-established brands were built before or after their domain names were registered. Either way, a prospective visitor can look at these domain names and get an idea of the business focus of the registered owner. Having a domain name aligned with business focus can also assist with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and increase visitors referred to the business website from search engines.

The third domain name selection criteria is based on the old adage, “less is more.” In other words, it is best to select a domain name that is as short as possible while taking into account the other selection criteria. Many suggest that ten characters or less is ideal. This can be quite a challenge with so many domain names already registered and in use over the last decade and a half. To make matters worse, many investors registered domain names for the sole purpose of markuping them and reselling them prior to their use. This practice, known as domain name parking, is based on speculation of high demand and motivated buyers for certain domain names. That said, there are still plenty of available domain names that are ten characters or less for those willing to be creative. Having a short domain name benefits the website address by reducing the number of misspellings, making it easier to remember and able to fit on business cards, stationery and signage.

The fourth domain name selection criteria is to register .com suffixes whenever possible. Most Internet users assume that commercial entities will have domain names that end in.com as opposed to .net, .biz, .tv, .us, .info, etc. Many looking for the website of a well-known company or brand will add “www.” to the company or brand name, then append “.com” to the end in attempts to navigate directly to the website of interest. Some businesses will select a popular brand or company name as their domain name “root” but register it with one a non-.com suffix since the .com domain name is already registered by the brand owner. While this approach may yield “free” traffic, conversion rates of visitors to customers will be very low as these visitors will usually abandon the website feeling misled. The same principle applies to selecting a domain name using a misspelled brand or company name.

The fifth and final domain name selection criteria is what I call “The 3Rs” – easy to Recite, Recognize and Recall. Random strings of numbers and letters make good system passwords, but horrible domain names. They are difficult to remember and nearly impossible to guess. This applies to acronyms that represent unknown brands. This is especially relevant when providing a website address to radio audiences or presentation listeners. A good domain name will enable advertisers and presenters to recite a website address to potential clients and customers who will hear and recognize the website address, then recall that address next time they are online. Domain names with word components that can be spelled in multiple ways such as “ad”, “add”, “two”, “to”, “too” should be avoided as listeners will be prone to misspell the website address when attempting to reach the business online.

Carefully selecting and registering a strategic domain name is an important step in launching an online business identity. Businesses will benefit from selecting wisely as domain names, once registered, will quickly find their way into countless materials, partner links and search engine indices that become expensive to update if changes are required. Applying these top five domain name selection criteria will enhance online identity, increase website traffic and make it easier for customers and prospects to connect with your business.