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How do you choose a web host for you business?

• Search online?
• Word of mouth?
• Online advert?
• Printed advert?

Businesses are forever being told to invest in a website, a well designed site will generate business through sales leads both online and offline. Having your website provide you with constant web traffic is between you and your SEO company. Having your website visible online all of the time is between you and your web hosting company.

Providing your web site with a stable hosting platform to operate on is a key component of any business strategy. Without a suitable web hosting provider your business will suffer as potential traffic is denied to you through down time. In business reputation is everything and your presence online will be spoiled by inaccessibility errors.

Finding a good web host is important. Online searches only provide you with a fraction of the potential hosting suppliers available. Let’s outline 3 key components of a hosting company, get your pencil and paper ready.

Reliability

Your biggest concern is reliability, so choosing a company that provides a reliable web hosting service is very important. You want all of those potential customers to get to your web site. So look for a web host that provides a high percentage of up time.

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Support

Web hosting support is another important factor for your business. You need to know that any problem experienced by you or your hosting company is going to get fixed quickly. So 24/7 support by phone and email is vital. Any web host that does not meet these criteria ignore.

Web Hosting Package (domain name, hosting space, bandwidth, email accounts etc.)

Web hosting packages are starting to look very similar these days, which means that you need to pay more attention to the smaller details. Since you are looking for a web host you should make a few notes. Write a list of what you want to include in your website;

Think about what you want your site to be able to do. Once you have put together a list of your needs its time to go shopping. For your convenience if you wish to compare several web hosting providers then click here . This page includes a list of different web hosting providers covering those on a budget to companies looking for dedicated managed hosting. Each of these hosts have also provided a special offer so why not check them out and save yourself some money.

1. Identifies who your target audiences are.

Careful anaylysis of your business will reveal who is out there listening (passively or actively) to what your business is saying. A careful review is often revealing in terms of who your audience includes.

2. Identifies what messages are being delivered to which audience.

There is nothing worse than comflicting messages, or wose, wrong message being communicated to your target audiences. An audit of existing communication methods and messages needs to be undertaken.

3. Will identify how you are currently communicating.

The audit will show the various pathways of communication. These will often include various newsletters, websites, blogs, media invertiews, advertising, conference presentations, staff interactions with customers, and the various forms of internal communications.

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4. Will identify what messages you SHOULD be communicating.

Once the audit is complete you can start looking at the range of messages you should be communicating. Often different messages need to be communicated with different audiences. For instance, your suppliers need different messages to your customers, of whom there may be segments who receive different messages again, depending on their 'worth' and level of interaction with your business. Some messages will be generic, others will be tightly focussed on the audience. It will also allow your messages (how your target audiences perceive your business) to be consistent!

5. Will identify HOW you should be communicating.

Key messages need to be communicated in the best way to suit the audience. Some audiences can be served with infrequent paper-based newsletters, others may be best served with frquent emails or encouraged to make use of RSS feeds. Key messages can be included in various communication methods. Some audiences may need a mixture of frequent short messages and less frequent core messages. The how can also include colours, fonts etc, as this all impacts on effective communications.

6. Will let you know your communications budget.

You cannot communicat effectively if you have not looked at audiences and methods. This will allow a budget to me set that includes time, printing costs, distributions costs, outside assistance (if using ad agencies etc) as well as budgeting to review the communicatuion process during the year and thoroughly each year. Your budget may also include having an external party write your communications plan.

7. Will reveal effectiveness.

By speaking with various audiences and seeking their views, you will know if your plan is succeeding or needs fine-tuning (or major changes)!

Effective communications will allow your business to correctly position itself in the marketplace and also internally. It is an exercise that is worth taking time and effort over.

If your business needs personal guidance on developing a communications plan, or needs an external party do conduct any aspect, please feel free to contact us - we service clients world-wide and have written plans for clients with up to 1500 employees.

Matt Eliason has been a professional affiliate marketer and webtrepeneur since 1997. His site is at http://www.plusone.com.au and you can read his blog at http://www.plusone.com.au/diary/

Joshua Feinberg, co-founder of Computer Consulting 101, shows computer consulting business owners get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to field-tested, PROVEN Computer Consulting 101 secrets .

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder Address When Submitting to Search Engines.

Since you will most likely submit your site to search engines such as Google or Yahoo!, directories, classifieds, and free for all sites, you should be made aware of the fact that these sites commonly use an autoresponder as well. If you were to use your autoresponder to contact these companies, their autoresponder will reply to yours and so on and so on. Thus creating a cycle of autoresponses that will flood your email box and theirs as well.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Subscribe to Ezines or Discussion Forums.

Since most of the time an Ezine will send you updates and new information regularly, your auto responder will send them a message each time. In a discussion forum, every person in the discussion forum will receive your auto response. This can be irritating and most of the time you will be unsubscribed. It is often hard for the administrators of the forum or ezine to determine who is using the autoresponse and therefore it is simply common courtesy to never use an autoresponder in this manner.

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Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Take Advantage Of Unsuspecting Individuals.

Some very unprofessional companies will use autoresponders to respond to an automated message when this is done the address in the "from" field will be automatically subscribed to their mailing list. This is a extremely un ethical use of autoresponders and those who do it are in jeopardy of creating a very negative image of themselves and their company. Rather than promote their service or business, this usually leads to people becoming very upset and spreading a negative word about your company rather than a good one.

The Internet can be a great place to do business and autoresponders can be an excellent way to save time, however when used in an unprofessional way, they can lead to frustration and aggravation for others. Your company will suffer the loss of much business if you choose to participate in these abusive practices. The appropriate use of auto responders can generate a large amount of business, while inappropriate use can drive away that business.

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Here are some tips to help reduce the chances of having your identity compromised:

Well for one, your web host will have all your html pages, all graphics, scripts etc. What happens when your host goes offline? Does your website stay up or go down? It goes down. When your website goes down, you lose customers, no sales during the downtime meaning a loss of potential income.

Take time to find a good host that will suffice every aspect of your business. Do some research and ask some questions.

If you are looking for a shared hosting solution, find out if the host is overselling its servers. Overselling is when a company packs too many customers on one server, putting strain on the server resources. Shared hosting is not recommended for business type sites that need performance for its users, but it will suffice a business just starting out.
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Another type of hosting solution is a dedicated server. A dedicated server is a server dedicated to only you. It is the most expensive out of hosting solutions, but will provide the most stable environment. No one else has an account on the server, so all server resources are for you. A managed dedicated solution is when your host will install operating systems, upgrades to software, or security fixes for you. You can call them any time to fix a problem because that's what you pay for.

A step below a fully dedicated server is what is called a VPS or Virtual Private Server. A VPS is almost like a dedicated server but the physical server will have a few other users on it. You still have full control over your section of the server, you can install anything you want or upgrade. The server resources are shared among users, but many web hosts guarantee you a fixed amount of resources dedicated to your account.

If not wanting to shell out a pretty big check on web hosting for a starting business, I would recommend at least starting out with a virtual private server. Once you outgrow the VPS you can move onto a dedicated server of your own.

Before signing up to any web host, do some research! Find several hosts that have what you are looking for and search for reviews, your internet business depends on it. Cheaper is not always better at least in webhosting!

A future online marketing guru located at eZineTimes
My directory.
Recommended hosting.

Here are a few pointers I think you might find useful:

- The First Glance - Hook Them!! Keep in mind that the first thing listed in the main body of your site should be the best you offer. The main thing you are bringing people to the site to see. It has to clearly state what is it you want to sell, offer, feature, etc. Go look at your site, have you done it?

- Buttons That Tell & Sell - Those side and top buttons—you need to clearly set up so that people want to click on them and find out more. Also, you need to have these labeled correctly so they know what they are clicking on to see. That name is critical to making them take the time to check out that page.
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- Bullet Power- Clients often skim sites and rarely read through the entire site. They look for items that interest them. If you list paragraph after paragraph, it won't get read. Think back, do you read those paragraphs. I don't! Therefore use bullets or symbols instead. And try the slanted bullets or a different bullet style for more eye appeal.

- Chose Your Words Wisely - Every word on your site should say something important. Absolutely you need to use keywords, but you also need to use convincing words to sell you and your business. Don't get so caught up in keywords that you lose the focus of the site. Write the text, edit and delete, and repeat that last step over and over until you have it just right.

- Convenience -- Clickable Links -- In the body of the website itself, whenever you are providing a reference to a site, make sure you have a clickable link, even if you have it on the side panel. People often won't take the time to go look for the button, so make it easy for them.

- Colors Are Cool -- Match your colors to your business and you. I just started another new site http://www-Publicity-VA.com and added my favorite colors to it. It has a softer feel and look to it and yet still has the professional edge I need for virtual assisting.

- Front Page Magic – Offer Something FREE - On your front page, it helps to offer something for FREE. I offer a free booklet on obtaining clients in a pdf format. How about a free 10 ways to do whatever it is you do? That sort of thing. Let people long after they leave your site remember you and want to come back to you with their money and business.

- Contests - Come One- Come All -- Yes, we know they work. They get people to your site and that adds to your traffic. But, here's a tip to make them really successful. Follow-up each response with a personal e-mail. Now, the key is not making it a hard sale sales letter they will never read. Instead, a “Hi, thanks for entering the contests, I'm sorry you did/didn't win, but I'm ...” And then give them something special, including a coupon off of your services. Make them feel special.

- Newsletter -- List your newsletter on numerous pages if not all. This is what is going to be reconnecting you to your clients and potential clients.
With the latest technologies, the rapid growth of the Internet, and the business community recognizing the benefits of partnering with a qualified virtual assistant, the virtual revolution has begun.

- The Eyes Have It - I strongly suggest you have another friend or business associate view your site and offer opinions. It's incredible what they can see that you don't as you are too close to it.
Eyes -- Take Two -- Right now, stop and check out your site. Have you looked at it from a potential client's viewpoint? What did you think? Did it clearly define you and what you offered? Did it spark your interest?

I hope these tips help you to get the virtual edge you need for your business. Good luck!

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Diana Ennen, Author; Virtual Assistant the Series, Become a Highly Successful, Sought After VA, and Words From Home, Start, Run and Operate a Successful Word Processing Business available at http://www.virtualwordpublishing.com. She also does publicity and book marketing and has published the science fiction thriller, Sledgehammer by Paulo J. Reyes, M.D. 

There are several factors that you will need to evaluate before making your short list of hosting providers, below I will outline the most important aspects that you will need to cover.

1. Firstly you will need to evaluate the requirements of your website. Will you need shopping cart facilities, what type of content will your website be providing, what methods of payment will you offer, you will also need to think in to the future as well, will you need the ability to expand the site, taking a business online is a very big step and should be a long term step as well so you will need to think long term with your planning. Write a short list of what your website will require to properly function.

Details you will need to account for. Disk space and bandwidth. Disk space refers to the amount of storage your web host will provide you to store your website. You will need to account for the current size of your website now, and also allow for what disk space you will require in the future as your website grows.

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Bandwidth refers to the amount of data (pages, files) served from your website to your customers, if your website will be subject to high traffic, you will need to take the amount of bandwidth the host provides.

Also you will need to check what programming languages your website will require, languages such as PHP, Perl/CGI, JSP, Cold Fusion and ASP may be used on your website to perform certain functions, your chosen web host will need to support the programming languages that your site requires.

Now that you have a list of your requirements, it is time to narrow down your list of providers that support all the features required.

2. Contact each of the hosts you have on your list, confirming what they offer and if it meets your requirements, also ask for a list of references you can contact, some of the best information about a web host can be gleaned from its customers, the question you should ask an existing customer is; "how reliable is the host?". This question is the most important; it refers to two things, reliability of their hosting when it comes to serving of your website, and also refers to reliability of their mail system. Reliability of their mail system is just as important as serving of your website.

3. Technical support, test it out, call the web hosts technical support line at various times of the day and check how long it takes to get through to support staff, also send technical support an email to test how long it takes to receive a response. If you are on hold for 30 minutes waiting to talk to support about a problem with your website, that is 30 minutes that your site is offline, and also 30 minutes of your own time wasted with which you could be performing more productive jobs.

Finally you should choose a host that meets your expectations and with whom you feel comfortable with, approach choosing a web host the same way you would any other major business decision, because after all it is your money paying for the service.

David Smith writes about Midphase Web Hosting at http://www.webhost-advisor.com/midphase.php