Early to Rise is always giving subscribers helpful advice on Web marketing and how to generate business online. But one thing we haven’t said much about is Web hosting and how it can affect your sales.
A Web host is a company that provides server (computer) space for your website – for a “modest” monthly fee. Think of it as the landlord of the building where your website lives.
And you don’t want to take this service for granted. One of the things you need to consider when you are developing your marketing initiatives is the Web hosting provider for your company’s portal. Choosing the wrong one can give you a major headache.
I’ll give you an example of what I mean…
A company (let’s call them Widgets-R-Us) had recently laid off its Vice President of Marketing. Along with her went a few of the company’s Web marketing team members, including its main search engine specialist. Internet sales had been extremely slow, and it was a bad year for Widgets-R-Us. The downsizing move had been made to give the company a chance to regroup.
At the time, I was the Web Consultant for my local Chamber of Commerce – and at one of their networking events, I bumped into the CEO of Widgets-R-Us. After about an hour of listening to him carry on about his diminishing online sales, I agreed to see what I could do for him.
I quickly got to work, analyzing every Web promotion tactic they had been using and breaking it down to the point in time where sales began to drop. Usually, I can narrow a sales decrease down to a specific set of issues that can be dealt with. But in this case, I couldn’t find anything concrete that would indicate exactly where they went wrong.
In fact, their Web marketing team had done an excellent job. Their ideas were great and the design team was incredibly talented.
I was baffled. Their overall efforts were “on the money.” Their designs were flawless, and the marketing team had worked with the copy team to develop creative e-mail campaigns that had produced generous sales for a long time. But though they were using the same techniques that had always been effective for them, their online sales were slipping.
What was even stranger was that none of their other marketing channels were doing badly. On the contrary, those channels were benefiting from the extra work the teams were putting in on them because of the slowdown in online sales.
What could have caused the company’s online sales to drop? It wasn’t until I started asking about their Web hosting provider that I discovered the reason.
Turns out that, several months prior, they had brought in a new “tech” company to manage their networks and computers. The new tech company convinced them to switch their Web hosting to a “better” company (no doubt friends) – and, based on that recommendation, Widgets-R-Us made the change.
The new hosting company seemed to be fine. But when I took a second look, I noticed that the Widgets-R-Us open rates had started dropping at about the same time (give or take a week) as they switched companies. When I researched it further, I saw that their domain had been placed on some of the major spam blacklists – which, as you probably know, is really bad news for any online business.
The company’s search engine traffic, on the other hand, had deteriorated more gradually. It takes time for search engines to revisit and re-index a Website, so it can be a month or two before you would notice any big drops in search engine traffic. But after a few months of constantly declining traffic, the Widgets-R-Us domain was almost completely wiped out of Google’s index! A little bit longer and they may have been blacklisted altogether.
Needless to say… my client was in a panic.
After speaking with his (so-called) techs, I started to research the server’s IP (The IP is somewhat like your computer’s own personal Web “telephone number.”) And I was surprised to find that the same IP was being used by more than 300 other domains. This is common practice among many Web hosting providers, but for Widgets-R-Us, it was disastrous.
I later found out that there were lots of spammer domains on that server that were sending out daily e-mails. It looked like the Web hosting provider was oblivious to this (or maybe they just didn’t care). And when I studied the situation a little more, I started to see why the search engines were penalizing my client’s website: The Web hosting provider was home to some of the worst spammers on the Net – spammers that incorporated everything from SEO cloaking applications (used to trick search engines, but extremely frowned upon) to bulk e-mailers on their websites.
One of my first recommendations was for my client to GET RID OF THOSE IDIOT TECHS. I convinced them to move their hosting to a reputable Web hosting company and contacted Google to see about getting their website re-indexed.
I explained to Google what had occurred and how we had fixed the problem. And within a couple of months, the Widgets-R-Us website was once again getting great targeted search engine traffic.
So… now do you understand why having the right hosting provider is important to your online sales?
Here are five suggestions that will help you pick the right Web host:
1. Research the company’s background. How big are they and how long have they been around? Bigger companies that have been around longer have usually gone through all the networking issues, so chances are your site will be on a bigger, stronger network.
2. Look for a company with good Internet connectivity (lines connected to the Internet). Better Internet connectivity means your server will run faster – which means people will download your pages quicker. It’s kind of like the difference between a modem and high-speed Internet service.
You want an OC3 line or better. A business might have one T1 line connecting its entire office to the Internet with no problems, but when you’re working with Web servers the loads can be much higher and require bigger lines.
Here is a breakdown of some of the connectivity options your host might offer:
T1 – 1.544 megabits per second (24 DS0 lines) – Not bad for office Internet, but terrible for Web servers
T3 – 43.232 megabits per second (28 T1s) – Much better than a T1 and lower priced than OC3+ connections
OC3 – 155 megabits per second (84 T1s) – Very good
OC12 – 622 megabits per second (4 OC3s) – Awesome
OC48 – 2.5 gigabits per seconds (4 OC12s) – WOW!
OC192 – 9.6 gigabits per second (4 OC48s) – NASA?
3. Make sure they have generator backup. Any good Internet service provider will have HUGE generators to power the building in case of power outages. Your website needs to be running 24/7, and you don’t want to take chances with a hosting company that doesn’t supply (BIG and POWERFUL) backup generators to power your server in case of an emergency.
4. Make sure they offer you a control panel. A control panel is a user interface that allows you to manage different aspects of your hosting account – adding new e-mail accounts, viewing your traffic logs, installing additional software on your site, and more.
5. IMPORTANT!!! Make sure they offer 24/7 support in case of an emergency! Every good hosting company offers this feature.
After my experience with Widgets-R-Us, I learned to stick with the best of the best. Here are three of the top hosting companies on the Web:
www.bluehost.com
www.lunarpages.com
www.godaddy.com
But the one I prefer is Host Gator. Here’s why…
I personally use Host Gator (one of the Internet’s largest and most respected Web hosting providers) for my own domains. They have such a good reputation that ETR has chosen them as the official Web hosting company for our 5 Days in July conference. And I recommend Host Gator to all of our ETR readers, too.
They offer you an extremely secure hosting environment with an individual IP. (No one else will have it.) When you sign up for a hosting account – at $7.95 per month – you can add as many of your domains to the account as you like. In other words, you pay just $7.95 a month… even if you host 100 domains!
With Host Gator, you will never pay to host another website again. They will even give you unlimited space and bandwidth (so you can upload unlimited Web pages and graphics), as well as free 800 numbers, website software, and much more.
Click here to view Host Gator’s low-cost business hosting packages.
[Ed. Note: Don't let the technical aspects of Internet entrepreneurship - like website hosting - keep you from starting your own online business. Next month, Edwin Huertas and a team of Internet marketing and business-building experts will show an elite group of future Internet millionaires how to start their very own powerhouse businesses. You'll get step-by-step instructions on how to do everything from setting up a website to picking a hosting company to marketing your business online. The $500 Early Bird discount ends Monday at 5:00 p.m., so make sure you sign up today!]
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