Wealth-Coaching

Having the right style, backend, and customer service is important for an ecommerce site, however, if you all the best elements in the world aren’t available to the world, the site is worthless.

eCommerce hosting is probably one of the most overlooked issues for most online companies.  Finding the right one is like shooting in the dark for most.  What are the things you should look for?

1. Reliability.  Be sure to see what the advertised guaranteed up-time for the service is supposed to be.  Remember, 99% is great but 1% is awful when it means you lose money, service, and customers.  And what if the hosting service goes down during peak times when 90% of your customers are shopping on your site.

   Be sure you get numbers of current customers you can speak with for references and make sure that the customer is equal in traffic and has a longer tenure with the service.

2. Support Service.  Even the best of hosting services can have issues.  From email, slow responses, ftp, etc… anything can require attention.  If you have to wait for hours before you receive a response the hosting company is NOT a good one and you need to keep looking.  Waiting for one hour on an email or shopping cart problem can cost you thousands of dollars.
3. Cost of Service.  When looking at hosting, be sure to look at the real cost.  These sites that offer $5, $10, or $19 hosting are not all they are seeming up front.  Yes, if you are just putting up a personal static page with no back end, these hosting options are fine and advisable, however, if you are going to be dependant on support response, databases, hosting statistics and the like, you will pay more for your service.  Also be very careful to read the fine print.  Some of these companies will say unlimited bandwidth only to disconnect your service if you receive a spike in traffic.

Hosting can be a nightmare so be sure and do your homework BEFORE you sign on the dotted line.