Ecommerce Web Hosting

1. Ecommerce Platform: Doing business online should not be complicated, so look for tools that make launching your online store easy. The most important is the credit card services offered and it should always include PayPal, as more and more people prefer its security for making and receiving payments. Look for hosted shopping cart support with varying sizes to match your business need - one size does not fit all! SSL Certificates are needed to protect customer data. A top-notched platform will include a catalogue of products for you to sell, supported by gift certificate options.

2. Pricing Plans: Simple, no hidden fees, and competitive. Your e commerce hosting review must include any special terms of service for your Ecommerce site.

3. Website Management Services: turnkey Ecommerce hosting sites, do-it-yourself web site, e commerce web design and professional services, backup and recovery, site security to prevent theft, and marketing services. One Stop Shop domain and email services supported by a dashboard (control panel) that is user friendly and robust.

4. Technology: E commerce solutions have redundant data centers, servers, power supplies, etc. Also look for support terms (live, 24x7, 800#, email). Some hosted Ecommerce services provide support through email only which adds days of delay. Look for words like redundancy, mirrored, dual... Also make sure the company is the original Ecommerce hosting company and not a reseller of other hosting products.

5. Testimonials and Awards: These can be invented, but real and robust Ecommerce providers will have external sources for the proof of an award. If the hosting company has received industry awards, this is a solid indicator of seriousness of company.

If you are interested in an e commerce hosting review, you might be interested in the web hosting service I recommend for e commerce hosting

There are many types of websites on the Internet - personal websites, blogs and informative websites are some examples. But if you are in the business of selling specific goods or services, then, ecommerce websites is what you need to be looking at.

What makes ecommerce websites different from the others?

Unlike a personal or company website, the main aim of an ecommerce website is NOT information dissemination. Its main objective is selling products and services, and every activity the website does is in some way or the other connected to the basic objective of bagging more sales, converting more leads and keeping the company's cash registers ringing.

Imagine this. More than 400,000,000 people go online every day. There are thousands of products and services being sold every hour. In fact, recent reports have shown that a big slice of consumers actually prefer to shop online rather than drop in at the local brick and mortar store. This means that the Internet could very well become your single biggest sales stop. The flip side, of course, is the stiff competition. At any given time, there are at least a score or more websites selling the same service or product. So, the consumer has the potential to buy the same thing at the same rate from any where in the world!

So, what are the benefits of ecommerce hosting?

Ecommerce hosting services have been specifically designed to help companies and small businesses beat their competition in the easiest possible manner and shortest possible time. Some of the most beneficial features of ecommerce hosting include:

Encouraging sales: An ecommerce hosting site comes with a number of auto-messaging services that enable you to keep in touch with your consumers. Traditionally, companies mail their brochures, fliers and product information. Apart from the time it takes for these to reach consumers, there is also the danger of these materials getting lost or thrown out. But when you have a dedicated list of consumers who are interested in the products or services you are selling, you can easily send them the required material in less than 5 minutes and expect a good lead conversion ratio.

Utilities: Ecommerce hosting services come with a large number of small plug-ins and utilities that allow you to expand at will. Tools like a merchant account, a powerful shopping cart system, online payment and receipt systems are essential for any online business. A good ecommerce hosting service will be able to give you all the features you need as you grow and expand. They will also have lots of extra utilities that can be plugged into your web using easy-to-use integration software. Besides, they should also provide you with top notch customer service, keeping in mind that your prime aim is bagging more orders, not dealing with knotty web issues.

A good ecommerce web hosting service gives you absolute control over your web store. Their interactive, powerful web panel allows you to maintain your catalog in an easy and efficient manner. Fail-proof back up systems ensure that you do not lose any data while upgrading or changing components. Additionally, you are given a number of powerful web tracking and web analyzing tools that gives you the marketing edge over your competitors.

... Are you still wondering what your business stands to benefit from an ecommerce web hosting service?

Ecommerce has become part and parcel of commerce today. Every businessman finds it worthwhile to have an online presence, as online shopping setups generate sales that exceed the cost incurred many times over.

For this reason, various web hosting companies have set up hosting plans dedicated to eCommerce. These plans are designed to provide tools that are useful for online businessmen, such as merchant accounts, traffic monitoring, shopping cart software and SSL certificates. Clearly, these tools seek to provide online merchants with three things

1. Visibility

2. User-friendliness

3. Security.

People involved in eCommerce need to be far more careful than others while choosing their web hosting - simply because money is being received and/or sent through their pages. A compromise in security can cause any web user to lose data, but in eCommerce the consequences can be far greater.

One of the most popular tools to increase web security is SSL - Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol that encrypts all data travelling from the end user to the hosting server. Today, accepting credit cards is forbidden without SSL, and PayPal buttons automatically revert to PayPal's login page that has its own SSL certificate.

A lot of web hosting services offer a shared SSL with their hosting packages. Shared SSL means that your hosting company pays for a private SSL certificate of its own, which it shares with all its users. This is not a serious security risk, but it has the chance of confusing customers.

When a customer enters a secure page, his/her browser displays the SSL certificate, including its owner's name. With a shared SSL certificate, the owner's name is clearly that of your web host - something that the customer may not recognize, leading him/her to think that your page has been hacked.

Private SSL, on the other hand, is somewhat expensive, and may end up being a substantial portion of your web hosting cost. However, it is yours and yours alone - customers see that you have your own private SSL, giving them confidence and reassurance. Search engines see that your site's content and owner have been verified by a competent authority, so you get a higher ranking. Moreover, the dedicated IP that you get with private SSL prevents you from getting blacklisted as spam because others sharing your IP have sent unsolicited emails.

A lot of hosting packages compiled specifically for eCommerce offer discounted private SSL certificates, which may come down to under $8 per month. When this is paired with good features and over 99% uptime, you are justified in placing your faith with that hosting company. Alternatively, you can opt for VPS hosting that gives you - or your company's webmaster - full control over everything, from OS and installed programs to the last details of functionality.

By choosing an eCommerce hosting package with private SSL certification, you are doing your business a huge favor. With a small monthly investment by business standards, you show your customers that you mean business, that you are the owner of everything on your page, and that you can be relied on.

Ecommerce hosting, in simple words, relates to your web host's ability to let you sell your products or services from your website. In its primitive, ecommerce hosting usually means your website has an interface between display of your items and a shopping cart system, proceeding thereon to accepting payment real-time in secured environment. An ideal ecommerce hosting ensures complete buying experience for those viewers of your website who wish to acquire your products or services.
While this is the end-solution for ecommerce hosting, the way the process is arranged differs in more ways than one. This means that while the site users' experience may not vary much, for merchants it will be a trade-off among several possibilities. In the paragraphs below, we will explore various tenets of ecommerce hosting from a merchant's point of view. Ecommerce Hosting - Where to Start
As briefly touched upon above, ecommerce hosting stands on 3 main pillars, namely display of products, selection and adding them to your virtual cart which then automatically calculates total amount payable, and lastly paying for the items selected for buying.
Since your website resides on host server, you have to choose an ecommerce hosting that ensures your buyer does not suffer inconvenience while making a purchase. At the same time you may be averse to spending on high-end ecommerce hosting, preferring instead to focus on marketing your website.
It therefore boils down to either choosing an ecommerce hosting that only supplies necessary amenities so that you can do it on your own (let's call them 'supplied ecommerce hosting'), or go for 'hosted ecommerce' that does it all for you. The principal difference between the two is how much you agree to pay and why.Supplied Ecommerce Hosting
Necessary amenities being available, many budding web entrepreneurs short on cash prefer an ecommerce hosting like this. What do you get here? In most cases of supplied ecommerce hosting, among other things common, you will get a full-featured open-source shopping cart system (like oscommerce, zen-cart, agora cart, etc.) free of cost.
All you need to do is install the cart on your website and then dress it up as per your needs. Some programming knowledge may be necessary to make the cart work perfectly for you. If time is a constraint or you feel you are not up to it, you may outsource the small adjustments needed in the cart system. Many web hosts agree to help as a goodwill gesture to their ecommerce hosting customers. Do not forget to explore this.
Once your shopping cart is up and running, the next step will be to tie up with a payment system. If you are frugal, consider availing Paypal service. It is easy and fast to open an account and you can get going in no time. If you have chanced upon Paypal before having installed the shopping cart of your ecommerce hosting, do consider some of the excellent carts showcased there. You may get good value for your money.
Okay, you have tied up your cart with a payment acceptance system. Have you tested it? Do it before going live. It is important.Hosted Ecommerce
If supplied ecommerce hosting is at one end, the other end belongs to hosted ecommerce. In fact, hosted ecommerce may be the perfect ecommerce hosting if you pay extra. Since the entire shopping cart system comes installed with all bells and whistles, all you need to do is upload your products and start selling. If this sounds good, it indeed is. Examples? Try Site Build It!, ekmpowershop, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, etc.
In final analysis, you will of course choose what best suits your need, but if you wish to start your e-business, look for a competent ecommerce hosting solution.

The most important step for starting an online business is to find a reliable web host. The task of finding a web host as per your requirements might be a difficult task but not if you know exactly what you are looking for. A good web host is especially required for an ecommerce website as it deals with direct online selling of the products over the internet. Hence, when selecting an ecommerce web host for your Ecommerce website makes sure that you take care of the following points:

* Storage Space: Ideally speaking a normal website requires nearly 100 MB space and generally all reliable hosts will offer at least 1 GB space. However, when it comes to Ecommerce hosting, more amount of space becomes necessary as there will a shopping cart online storefront. The space and transfer play a vital role in determining the size of hosting that you will need. The merchant needs to be sure of the number of items that will placed for online shopping initially and then an equivalent space is to be hired also the future inclusions must be kept in mind.

* Bandwidth: Right amount of Bandwidth is also necessary and therefore, it is another important factor to think about. 25 to 50 GB bandwidth is an ideal for general websites but for an e-commerce website requires more bandwidth. When videos are there on the website it needs nearly 600 MB bandwidth. Thus, it is better to go for unlimited bandwidth plan but it is also necessary to read the terms and conditions properly before hiring a host.

* Secure Servers: This is a must for the all the websites but more so for an ecommerce website. Since, ecommerce website deals with the online selling of the products and services, it is necessary that the transaction is done safely and securely on the net. Hence, look for an ecommerce host who provides SSL encryption as it is provides guaranteed security for all the money transactions that take place.

* Private CGI-BIN: Having a private CGI-BIN directory is essential for the safety of the files. The files containing your data such as binary scripts, interactive programs as in shopping cart and payment processing will be all secured in this directory.

* Operating System and Program Language: It is necessary to know as to which operating system the host is offering. An ecommerce website can be hosted on Windows server as well as UNIX system. You can choose the one according to your choice. However, the rates for both will change so make sure to select the one that is in your budget.

* Support System: The most important concern for the ecommerce website owner is to have good support from the web host. There might arise several occasions when you require fixing improper working of the website. A smooth functioning of the website depends highly on a good web host and in case of any problems like server down or others, a web host must be capable to fix the problem as soon as possible.

Ecommerce website hosting needs are different from those for simple information or text based websites. As you put your money and business at stake, it is important to consider the tips that can help you choose best ecommerce web hosts services.

Like millions of other small and big business holders, you might get interested in selling your products and services online. Ecommerce is the blessing for all types of businesses, as it leads to better access of targeted audiences and easy provision of business products and services to them. For all this to happen, you need to choose the best ecommerce web hosting services. Here are some important factors to consider for choosing an ecommerce website host.

Decide the Type of Hosting

First of all, you need to decide among dedicated web hosting, shared web hosting and other forms of hosting services available. If you wish to start with small investment, it can be good to choose shared web hosting. You can switch on to dedicated web hosts, once your business store starts flourishing online. However, make sure that the shared web host offers decent neighbors and not the adult and spammed websites.

Customizable Packages

The ecommerce websites are among those which constantly keep on adding new pages and products to the existing database. Regular updates require these websites to have customizable web hosts resources, so that they can be used according to the needs and requirements.

Security Assurance

Your ecommerce website definitely requires the customers to get registered to purchase the products sold by it. For this, they are required to share their private information and thus, you need to ensure them about the appropriate level of security on your website. Hence, make sure that SSL and other security arrangements are available in the ecommerce website hosting package.

Compatibility with Website Features

Shopping carts and payment gateways are the two important aspects or components of an ecommerce website. Make sure that the web hosting services you wish to choose offer compatible features with these parts of your website.

Additional Features

Support for downloads, in case of digital products sold by you, is an additional feature you should look for. Similarly, coupon codes availability should be checked with the ecommerce package, as you would require them during festive seasons and for promotional purposes.

Of course, you are expected to choose the ecommerce web host with reliability, speed, good uptime, control panel features and the best of the prices.

If you have decided to sell your services and products on the web, it is advisable to setup a website. Along with a professional look, it needs to be designed in a manner that attracts customers by providing ample information. Few things to remember for ecommerce web hosting are:

o As online shopping involves the use of credit and debit cards, it is necessary to create a system that safeguards the personal and important details. All businesses that deal with online monetary transaction have to comply with the PCI to avoid jeopardizing the business.

o Make sure your website uses appropriate and customized title tags, URLs and Meta descriptions. This will help customers get to your website when they run a search through different search engines.

o The website should provide flexibility. It should be able to keep track of the inventory - checking for available quantity and identifying back-order items, easily resize product images and clone items to avoid difficulties adding items to the catalog.

o The website should have shipping facilities. When a customer purchases a product, he would definitely expect it be shipped at his door step. Including the shipping and handling charges will provide transparency in transactions.

o Make sure you have the facility for customer feedback. This will show that you do value the customers' needs, and customer feedback, positive or negative, will only help you improve on the quality of service that you provide.

Navigation through the website must be simple and easily understood by the customer. A time consuming website will only force the customer to move to another website. Make provision for customers to choose a product of their choice for example, by costing or category.

Avoid asking too many personal questions, as it will easily push the customer away. The customer should be able to move items to the shopping cart and can be asked to fill out a form, at the time of the payment.

Many businesses provide the option of online shopping but not all are successful. It is necessary to spend ample time evaluating all the possibilities before designing the website and make sure that the best service is provided to the clients.

One of the hardest things for any small business owner to do is to relinquish control over any part of the business. Nowhere is this truer than in the area of online marketing - especially when it comes to the idea of using an ecommerce web host. Many established and longtime business owners are accustomed to running every aspect of their business their way and often feel out of their element when it comes to seeking the assistance of an ecommerce web host service. Eventually, however, all but the most stubborn of owners come to realize the value of such services, particularly when they realize that maintaining the online storefront duties in-house entails the costly acquisition of new technical skills.

So what are your ecommerce web host options?

One of the most commonly chosen paths for many small businesses is to use something called shared hosting. Shared hosting is exactly what it sounds like: a system where multiple companies are able to utilize the same hosting provider services for their ecommerce needs. This method has the advantage of enabling these companies to reduce the costs associated with maintaining independent software licenses, bandwidth, and hardware requirements associated with individual hosting of a site's ecommerce capabilities. Of course, you can also opt to utilize a dedicated ecommerce web host service, though shared services adequately meet the needs of most small and new enterprises.

What qualities should you seek?

When it comes to choosing your ecommerce web host provider, there are a number of essential attributes that you should seek. First of all, there is reliability. If the hosting service is not capable of maintaining an uptime of 99% or better, you should look elsewhere. After all, if your ecommerce capabilities are not online for your customers to utilize, you will be losing money. Other important considerations include the amount of disk space you are offered, as well as the bandwidth.

In addition, you should also be cognizant of the various features that your ecommerce web host provides. Your ecommerce site will need a shopping cart, as well as an easily-navigated gateway for payment, as well as common but essential tools like email contact support. Make sure that the ecommerce web host service provides a control panel so that you have management access to make needed changes, as well as technical support that is available at any time of the day or night. For payments, be sure to ask whether they offer Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to ensure that your customers' personal information is protected.

To be sure, there is probably no such thing as a perfect ecommerce web host service. Few things in life attain perfection! Still, by examining the features of various ecommerce web host providers, you can eliminate those that provide less than you need, and locate a provider that is as close to perfect for your needs as possible. In the end, you may even find that the best services for your particular business needs are not even the most expensive ones.

A crucial development in ecommerce has been the shopping cart - taking its name from the store grocery cart has been a simplified analogy which buyers have quickly adopted and adapted to, however, the reality is much more complex. Shopping carts are the vital component of any effective ecommerce website because they handle the ordering and payment process which allows a website to transact business online - without a shopping cart mechanism, an ecommerce website is simply a dead end leading into old world commerce.

There are three major types of shopping cart - an ordering system; a store building system, and customized transaction systems - all based around a software platform capable of running on the website hosting server.

Ordering System Solutions

The heart of a shopping cart system is the ordering component which provides the functionality for selecting products to purchase,calculates the total cost including price, shipping and taxes and then handles the payment mechanism (usually integrating credit and debit card approval and verification) until finally, it returns the order confirmation to the buyer.

Some shopping carts only include the ordering component, though you can create a "buy" button for insertion on your website product pages. When a customer clicks on the "buy" button, this takes the customer to a secure server (not necessarily the same server as your website is hosted on) and allows for safe payment of the goods. Once the customer has completed the order and payment process, the ordering solution will then return the customer back to the ecommerce website.

Store Building Solutions

When you have an extensive product range, possibly extending to hundreds or thousands of products, a simple ordering system is not going to be up to the task of promoting, presenting and managing a myriad range of products and sale types. You are going to need a more sophisticated solution which can handle all the varied ordering scenarios but includes a Content Management System (CMS), which is also known as Catalog Management System in some circles.

A CMS will create a website and the associated content, including product pages and content, usually based on standardised templates which allow you to quickly add new products and edit existing ones very quickly. This allows you to control and manage the look and feel of your ecommerce website and to manage multiple changes very quickly, such as price changes, special offers, discounts, end-of-line sales and new product ranges.

Customized Ecommerce Solutions

There are two sub-categories of customized shopping cart software - the first deals primarily with managing business-to-business (B2B) sales and the second, membership database solutions.

The majority of off-the-shelf shopping carts are designed for retail solutions only and they cannot readily be altered to cater for B2B scenarios. B2B shopping carts need to be able to manage customer accounts which provide customer access to the appropriate parts of the shopping cart and website and provides information such as order history, order status and delivery issues, credit taken and available. In essence, the individual customer account data stored in your system is being opened up for access (but not with authority to alter) your internal account and customer data.

A second feature required for B2B shopping carts not generally found on retail solutions, is the ability to provide the customer with pricing flexibility within a set range (depending on order volume and price levels), as well as any contractually negotiated pricing and order agreements.