Web hosting in one of its various guises should be considered by
any enterprise embarking on e-business. The potential for cost
savings and benefits through reaching customers and coming to
market faster is huge, but there are also great risks. The
principal danger is of choosing a Web hosting provider that is
either unsuitable — perhaps being unable to deliver the level
of service you require — or worse, about to go bust. The
dangers of the latter were demonstrated by the high-profile
agonies suffered last year by PSInet, the company previously
touted as the “Internet super-carrier”, which is now threatened
with bankruptcy. The problem with the Web hosting business is
that to make it viable, major investment has to be made up-front
in data centres, staff and network infrastructure, in the hope
that the customers will then come flocking in. Although rapid
growth in Internet use continued through 2000 despite the
dot-com debacle, PSInet suffered because it was over-ambitious
in its projections and a little ahead of its time. Caroline
Bryan, Web hosting analyst at Datamonitor, says, “It
over-reached itself and sunk too much money into its IP network
and datacentres, while the services did not take off quite as
expected,” This showed that size alone is no guarantee of
success in the Internet service business, so the question is how
can a potential Web hosting customer make sure it is entrusting
its Internet shop window to the right provider. After all, in
the case of full outsourced Web hosting, an enterprise might be
relying on the service provider to collect a sizeable proportion
of its revenue through e-commerce, as well as to deal with
customers. According to Bryan, hosting companies that have spun
off from some existing large players in telecommunications or
systems integration are better placed, because they have
independent revenue streams and so rely less heavily on the
goodwill and patience of their financial backers. The best UK
example is BT Ignite, said Bryan, which although still losing
money overall has a huge existing network infrastructure it can
call on, as well as BT’s IT solutions business Syncordia and its
outsourcing company Syntegra. This point is echoed by other
analysts, such as consultant and analyst Ovum’s ISP-watcher
Henning Dransfeld. “ISPs with a telco background can leverage
their telecom network and are in a good position to offer good
quality of service,” he says. This includes not only the big
incumbent carriers such as BT, but also the likes of NTL with
cable TV networks and in future others exploiting the unbundled
local loop. It can be argued that BT has over-reached itself
with the huge investment in 3G mobile networks on which there
will be no immediate return. There is also the little matter of
the $1.25bn ([pound]8.5bn) it is spending jointly with US
telecoms giant AT&T over three years in setting up the global
network of at least 44 data centres for the Ignite Web hosting
services. But the principal risk is of takeover rather than
collapse, with hopefully less disruption to the hosting. In any
case, at least according to BT Ignite’s vice-president of sales
and marketing Perses Sethna, the company is on target to start
making money on Web hosting by 2003. Some of the individual
country businesses making up BT Ignite are already profitable,
for example I.net in Italy, which recently had a successful
initial public offering with BT retaining a 50.8% stake. But
other Ignite businesses, including the UK operation, are still
making significant losses. Expansion The Web hosting story began
in the US with basic co-location services and has since expanded
into more managed offerings, including up to full outsourcing
and application provision. There is now a broad spectrum of
services on offer, but most analysts assign these to just three
categories. For this reason, others such as Worldport only
provide dedicated services. Few if any ISPs in the hosting
business want to confine themselves purely to co-location
because, as research director specialising in ISP issues at the
Gartner Group Eric Paulak points out, it delivers a relatively
poor return per unit of space and in locations such as the City
of London, where property is expensive, it is only just viable.
Matching hosting providers to these categories is easier said
than done, as suppliers are reluctant to admit that they are
only in the co-location arena, even if that is all they are
capable of providing. BT Ignite addresses the entire spectrum,
but Sethna admits cheerfully that all their marketing effort is
pitched at dedicated hosting because that is where the most
money is to be made. “If you look at the pricing for basic
co-location within the UK, it works out at about [epsilon]100
([pound]65) per square foot,” says Paulak. This figure can be
increased by perhaps 25% by offering some additional management,
for example of the IP routers, but pales into insignificance
when compared to the pickings that can be made with dedicated
services. The gulf is not difficult to estimate, As a rule of
thumb, according to Paulak, a business-class hosting service
with management will cost between [pound]100 and [pound]400 per
user per month, depending on location and level of
sophistication, with the average being around [pound]200. A
typical Web server can handle 50 users and 12 such servers can
be accommodated in a rack occupying nine square feet in a room.
This equates to about [pound]10,000 per server per month, or
[pound]120,000 per rack per month. Dividing by the nine square
feet, this comes to about [pound]13,500 per square foot per
month, which is a good 100-fold increase on what can be earned
with co-location. The result is that dedicated services are that
much more expensive for customers, but when you put into the
equation the cost of managing the facility and acquiring the
necessary in-house IT skills, it may look more attractive. For a
mid-sized company with 100 users, the cost of a dedicated Web
hosting service would be [pound]240,000 per year on this basis.
So despite these costs, there is a strong swing in demand from
co-location towards dedicated services, according to Sethna. But
because of the huge cost differential, a number of larger
enterprises that already have most of the human resources needed
to run a Web site will at least start off with co-location to
test the waters. To cater for this, many business sector ISPs,
such as UUnet, will continue to offer co-location services for
the foreseeable future, almost as loss leaders to lure customers
into their Aladdin’s cave of more lucrative services. As Bryan
notes, “Web site hosting is one of the first things that a
company is quite willing to outsource.” Dedicated services Basic
co-location is technically far easier to provide and is more of
a vanilla service, with fewer differences between the
contenders. But when it comes to dedicated services, some
providers are more capable than others, both in their ability to
offer the high levels of availability needed for e-commerce and
in the range of options offered. BT Ignite, for example, can now
go beyond full outsourcing of IT to embrace customer
relationship management (CRM), “In this way we can provide not
just the technology but surrounding services to get a company to
market quickly,” says Sethna. This could appeal not just to end
customers but also to aspiring application service providers
(ASPs) which might have a sound proposition but not be geared up
to handle CRM issues on behalf of its own customers. “So we are
packaging this as a wholesale ASP offering,” says Sethna. Some
of the value-added services that a large player can bring
embrace both IT and surrounding business issues. One is Web
caching, which is particularly important for international
multinationals, where a global enterprise might want localised
content located close to the relevant customers for performance
reasons. This in tarn requires the hosting company to have at
least a satellite data centre in each country in which they
operate. But before getting carried away with value-added
options, users should evaluate the ability of hosting companies
to deliver maximum availability, says Worldport’s vice-president
of sales and marketing Frazer Hamilton. This cannot be achieved
through resilient hardware and communications alone, but
requires attention to the operating systems and applications as
well. “For this reason we do not use a standard operating
system,” says Hamilton. “We harden the operating system to make
it more secure, and also the applications.” The essence here is
to close unnecessary routes into the system that a hacker could
exploit, using similar principles to those applied to
military-grade software development. Now with large Web site
hosting, there is a growing need for such hardened software in
the commercial sector. Another pressing need in Web hosting is
better support for peering arrangements between providers.
Progress is being made in basic connectivity to create faster
transmission with better quality of service along end-to-end
paths through the Internet, traversing the domains of multiple
service providers. But what is lacking is the ability to retain
information about content during such multi-ISP transmission.
“We think new content peering arrangements are needed to drive
the industry forward,” says Sethna. “We want to be able to swap
content across the network and retain the intelligence and
functionality so that, for example, information on the consumer
is passed back to the source. Then an advertiser might be able
to have granular information of who is looking at their
content.” This may raise privacy issues, but that is another
story. Without doubt though the next chapter in the hosting saga
will address the content distribution question.
Submitted by HostingChecker.com - for help on all your hosting
needs. http://www.hostingchecker.com
Article may be republished if this portion is not removed.
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There are technically thousands of websites on the Internet, that either provide services or products. And I’m sure that if you are reading this you are one of them. You may be asking yourself, how do I get more visitors to come to my website and after that how do I get them to purchaser what I’m selling? Many will say you must optimize your website for search engines and others will say Paid Advertising is the way to go. However, the truth of the matter is, if you have a website that is difficult to use, does not provide enough information or just plain sucks, no marketing medium you use will work. I understand that is a difficult pill to swallow, but it is the absolute truth.
Sure, you can get people on your website, however when they get there, they must be able to navigate easily, find what they want, and make a purchase without any effort. This is the key to getting and keeping online customers.
Having a usability analysis can provide an eye-opening look into how website visitors see your website and can gives you an exact game plan on what needs to be changed in order of importance.
A usability analysis often covers four main topics:
1. Navigation
Your website’s navigational structure is one of the most important elements on your website. Your navigation is what helps website visitors travel through your website to find more information on your services, products, company, and industry. If your navigation is not consistent or does not provide links to all of the major sections on your website, visitors may become annoyed and leave. It is also important to place global navigation text links in the footer of every page. This assists site visitors with navigating your site, whether they are at the bottom of a page or at the top.
2. Content
Your website’s content is another extremely important element in the success of your website. It is important to provide website visitors with as much information about your products, services, company and industry as possible. Always remember, an informed customer is the best customer.
3. Functionality
Your website’s degree of complexity often determines whether a website visitor will stay and browse or get frustrated and leave. If you have elements that do not work or pages that do not load, you could be loosing customers. Also, if you have a section that you would like to add to your website, do not use a “Coming Soon” page. This does nothing more than frustrate your website visitors, forcing them to leave, and not return.
4. Security
When selling a product or collecting information about your website visitors, it is imperative that your site be secure. Hackers are everywhere and watching everything. Not providing a secure environment for your website visitors can be detrimental to your website and your company.
Website usability analysis reports are not very expensive and can save your website and company a lot of money and heartache. Once you know the disease that plagues your website, you can then take steps to cure it. Remember, knowing is half the battle.
J.M. Davis is the owner and operator of The Site Therapist, a Website Usability Firm, dedicated to preventing Internet Suicide among websites. J.M. has almost 10 years of experience in the Internet industry. For more information about website usability or to have a usability analysis done on your website, visit J.M.’s website at http://www.thesitetherapist.com
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Brochures are not created just to have your company or business
displayed. Like other print jobs, they have a deeper intent that
is in favor of you. By giving people your brochures; you display
what you have to make them want to have them themselves. If they
get it, you get yours. That is, in terms of sales and not to
mention, money. Your brochures should have the proper
presentation that can make it readable, intriguing and
interesting. It should catch the attention of the people and
make an impact. These are the things that your brochure should
present. If you think more about it, how do these pieces of
papers grab peoples’ attention?
With many existing brochures offering different kind of things
nowadays, people tend to dismiss all them as something they have
already seen and have tired of. If they have seen one, they have
seen all is the philosophy that they may have. How do you make
your brochures stand out from the rest? The trick is to make
your brochure appear professionally designed and written. The
image you project can de seen through your brochures. You would
not want people to judge you from the sloppy brochures you send
them.
Your text is the key. Anyone can write their own text, but only
someone with skills and proper training can make a strong yet
easy sentence that has an impact. The structures of your written
words should be able to clearly show the company’s message.
There are specialists who can this job for you. Choosing a
copywriter over them is not a very good option. If you want to
put your business into somebody’s hands, would you not rather
have someone professional to do it? Wither way, you will be
spending money hiring them, why not spend it on someone that is
more effective and knows how to get on with the job.
Having a question for your opening is better than just a plain
statement. This way, the readers’ curiosity is piqued enough to
want them to know the answers to these questions. Do not make it
a yes or no question. Make it more meaningful with lots of
hidden messages and promises contained in them.
Another important thins is the colors that you use. You may
already be aware that there are many color and color styles you
can use for your brochures and it is difficult to decide which
one you like best. Try using colors that appear professional and
reflects just that. It would like funny if your texts are so
professional yet your choice of colors does not show that.
Make sure you do your brochures perfectly the first time. It
would not harm you in any way to know more about styles and
strategies to make them work for you. in the end, all you will
need is patience.
For comments and inquiries about the article visit
http://www.losangelesprintingservice.com
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Color printing has been applied in most types of printing from
commercial advertising to businesses. Budget is always to be
considered in adjusting your expenses and allowance. Sometimes,
this has been a common problem with graphic designers who are
planning it out. Of course the finest option would be to create
designs and have them printed on the nicest and outstanding
colors.
If your designer desires to cut short the printing cost, he can
choose an alternative like using Spot Color aside from the
newest CMYK color process. CMYK is not that expensive but Spot
Color can be cheaper. Spot color is very appropriate for color
printing who are in short for printing budget. Spot colors are
also flexible just like CMYK so it is just perfect for color
printing.
Sometimes, printers fool around and print them out badly. For
designers who are impatient, they would not even care to glance
back and have second thoughts of scrapping it. Making out nice
prints will shorten the budget because you don’t have to waste
more of your time and materials. Mind you, printers are
expensive and still getting more expensive these days.
Color printing and color systems have been made effective to
ensure that you get prints just the way you want them to be.
Spot color uses the Pantone Matching System (PMS) which is now
very common for printing use. All the colors that you see in
printed materials go with different mixtures of colors. So just
imagine how many colors were mixed up to make outstanding shades
of colors. PMS have been applied to image editing and other
kinds of layout designs.
Matching colors were made easy for graphic designers. They can
choose from various combinations of colors from swatch books
which serve as their guide. This has been effective in choosing
the right fitted color for a certain theme and design. Codes and
description of colors can easily be seen and used in the
layouts. It’s not like having it on screen and continuously
experimenting with the colors which is time consuming. In Spot
Colors, your images are created in the colors red, green and
blue which are known as the RGB color as seen in your monitor.
Although Spot Color is only an alternative to CMYK, it still
makes prints nicely. Spot colors may have offered limited colors
but to most designers, spot color has performed enormous prints
that are satisfying and convincing.
For comments and inquiries about the article visit
http://www.digitalprintingcompany.com
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Web hosting is an online program for people to store
information, videos, pictures, etc. Web hosts provide space for
customers on the internet in order for them to create web pages.
Generally, web hosts are only adequate for personal home pages,
as larger, more intricate sites require more complex packages
with database support and development platforms. Most people get
there start using free hosting however, free web hosting is very
limited when compared to paid hosting, since they have a small
disk space, and require you to have your own ads on your site.
Shared hosting is paid hosting where your site is on the same
server as many other sites. Some problems with shared hosting is
that if something goes wrong with one site, it effects all of
the other sites as well. There are also a few restrictions with
shared hosting, although these are not even close to how limited
free hosting is.
Dedicated hosting is paid hosting which can be quite expensive.
You will have your own server with dedicated
hosting, and there are virtually no restrictions. Dedicated
hosting is more expensive than shared hosting because there is a
never ending supply of addresses for dedicated hosting. However,
dedicated
hosting requires you to have an http server certificate, FTP
access, and a domain server name. If you are just starting out
with creating web pages, most people would recommend using free
hosting at first. After upgrading to shared hosting, you can
then decide if dedicated hosting is for you.
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