- March 21, 2015
- Posted by: Wevio
- Category: Development, Wevio Blog
Hosting:
Hosting a website means making a website available to the public worldwide. To make your website available on the Internet you have to store it on a computer called a web server. When you buy space on a web server and store your webpages there, your website becomes hosted and can be seen by anyone.
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center.
E-commerce:
Electronic commerce, commonly known as E-commerce or eCommerce, is trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet. The first major task to complete before you can launch your ecommerce business is finding the right ecommerce hosting provider.
Ecommerce Hosting:
Ecommerce Hosting is a type of website hosting platform that is used to serve an electronic commerce website. Ecommerce hosting differs from standard Web hosting in that a number of features and functionality are required to manage and run a Ecommerce website. This includes SSL, database support, shopping cart software, payment processing services, and additional ecommerce software and security initiatives.
Key Factors for Optimized eCommerce Hosting:
Finding a website hosting provider that specializes in ecommerce software, support and systems is a big task. There is a lot more to shopping for a website hosting provider than just comparing prices and disk space. When looking for the right provider, you need to start with a good idea of types of services you’ll need for your own website. After that, you can work on finding the right hosting provider — one that can meet your needs at a price you can afford.
Shared vs. Dedicated Ecommerce Web Hosting:
Unless your business runs a massive Web operation, the issue of shared vs. dedicated Web hosting will probably be a consideration as you plan your present and future Internet needs. A shared Web server — sometimes called virtual hosting — basically means your Web site will share resources with other Web sites. In this scenario, multiple Web sites are running (hosted) on the same physical server.
On a dedicated server, your Web site is the only one on the server. You have a dedicated server where you can store your website(s). You have remote access on the computer and you can install and update on it any software you want or need. This kind of hosting is suitable for big sites with a lot of traffic (and income) because the costs are a little bit higher than, for example, shared hosting.
Availability:
A main motivator for shopping online is convenience; 24x7x365 availability is a must. Site outages can have detrimental impact on not only immediate sales but also long term customer loyalty. Availability must be consistent throughout traffic peaks and if faults occur there should be a system in place that enables continued operations without sacrificing availability.
Maximum uptime:
When your website goes down, so does your revenue. 100% Network Uptime Guarantee keeps you online and ready to sell.
Performance:
Customers expect a fast and smooth shopping experience. Therefore stability, reliability and speed are critical factors of eCommerce hosting performance. If a site does not live up to customer expectations as to speed and smoothness, the customer is likely to abandon the site and continue her shopping with a competing online retailer.
Fast page loads:
A slow website equals lost sales. Our specialists are relentless about fine tuning your platform to ensure your website loads quickly.
Security:
First comes trust and then comes sales. While optimal hosting performance offers a sense of confidence in the shopping experience, security is essential to earning customer trust. Security breaches could have serious consequences for the online retail business. Since online retail involves payment transactions and storage of sensitive customer data, it is critical for the eCommerce hosting environment to be compliant with industry security standards such as PCI. A single incident can have devastating impacts and result in large fines, legal issues, loss of credibility, brand damage and severely hinder sales.
Automatic backups & Recovery:
What are the provider’s back-up procedures? How often is data backed up and what is the retention policy? What is the ability to support resilient systems and provide disaster recovery capabilities by distributing the system across different data centers with redundant or highly available databases? What type of recovery response time should the retailer expect for data recovery, how often is data replicated, how is system resilience ensured? How often are the recovery processes tested?
Conclusion:
An optimized eCommerce hosting solution offers customization designed to guarantee high availability, capabilities to easily scale for planned as well as unexpected traffic spikes, fast page loads that ensure a smooth customer experience, optimized search rankings, and security precautions that result in customer trust. Failure to plan for hosting appropriately and put processes in place for ongoing capacity-testing can have a detrimental impact and result in an operational nightmare.