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Considerations for Your Website as Your Business Grows (Page 1 of 2)

It is the dream of most business owners and entrepreneurs that their business will grow over time and become a success. In the growth process, your business and web hosting needs may change. These changes can be a challenge to manage. Often expanding operations or venturing into new avenues of business is a matter of taking advantage of opportunities. Sometimes you can plan carefully and structure the timing; however, more often business find themselves thrown headlong into a situation where they suddenly have a rush of business and have to figure out a way of handling it. Planning the structure of your website and hosting package can help you cope with the changes as they happen.

Start with the Basics

As a start-up business, one of your priorities is keeping efficiency up and costs low. Your best option is to select a shared hosting package with a reputable service provider. Do an online search for different hosting providers. Read the customer reviews and find out what type of products they have to offer. It is not recommended that you select a free hosting package. Often these have limited customer service and support and they don’t allow you upgrade when needed. A good hosting provider should have entry-level packages as well as more advanced packages that you can migrate to when needed.

Key Things to Look for in a Hosting Package

One of the most important aspects of a hosting package is the customer support that is offered. A quick phone call to the support desk will quickly show how knowledgeable the support staff are. They should be able to provide you with technical information and advice regarding your web hosting package. You should then consider upgrade options. How easy is it for you to migrate from a basic starter package to a more advanced hosting option? Are there penalties involved? Are there different hosting requirements that you will need to incorporate into the design of your website? Do you have to use specific scripts? The last consideration is website security. Even on a basic hosting package, you will want to know that a level of security is maintained on the server.

When Do You Consider Upgrading?

One of the factors that determines what type of hosting package you choose is the amount of data or bandwidth that you require. Starting out, your website will probably be quite small. Unless you are going straight into e-commerce, it will probably be just a corporate or marketing-type website that profiles your company. As your business grows, you may want to add features such as a blog, forum, chat facility or various article posts. These features usually add quite significantly to the data requirements of your website. You may then need to upgrade to a larger package that can accommodate these features. If you decide to launch a full scale e-commerce site, you will probably have specific hosting requirements. Many web hosting providers have detailed e-commerce hosting packages available for businesses. If your business gets to the size where you want to have a dedicated server then you want to be with a hosting provider that can facilitate the transition without there being too much disruption to the uptime of your website.  You may consider a dedicated server when you have specific hosting requirements. When you want greater control over your website and server or want to use specific scripts, a dedicated server is a good choice. You may also decide that you want improved security for your website that you can only get from a dedicated server. You can then upgrade your hosting package as needed.

Increasing Web Traffic by Links

Every people with an online presence wishes to increase web traffic to their web site. It doesn’t matter if you have a page to get money from ads, to promote a good cause, to inform or just to have fun: in all cases it’s useless to run a web site if no one is going to visit it. Advertising may be quite expensive, but fortunately there are some great free ways of generating web traffic.

A good way to increase traffic on your website is to find blogs that are related to the interests of your readers. Create a username for the blog site that reflects the content of your own site. For example, if your site is about collecting antique cameras, then choose a username such as “old camera collector” or “antique camera guy. Then go to the comment section of the blog and reference your related site and include the url.

Something else that you may want to think about is that a static site can grow old. The content on your site is designed to be read and remembered. After someone has read your site and the articles contained on it, they usually do not want to read it again, or have no need to. Because of this, a successful website should be frequently updated with unique content and newer articles. The readers who visit your site will check your website often for these updated articles and come back to read them over and over again. That is more traffic for your site!

Online networking is helpful. You should find and contact owners with sites that would attract your target audience. Ask them for a quote for an online article, or invite them for a guest appearance on your blog or to write an article for your site.

Site owners, being quite flattered, may put you on their blog roll or even give you a link back from their site. By being asked to guest blogger post or even to write an article for their site will give you more exposure and free web traffic.

Don’t limit your networking to only small blogs or sites. Many very successful bloggers have gotten exposure and a huge amount of hits from being quoted in larger publications like their local newspaper or even major magazines like Time or Newsweek. They may be primarily old-fashioned paper publications, but most of them have an online component.

Having your site mentioned in a large publication is probably the best way to increase web traffic. To make this happen you should determine the subjects which interest your readers, and find reporters who cover those subjects. Then you can send these reporters press releases. You can also send them letters telling them how much you enjoyed their articles and letting them know that you have a related site. It’s possible that they will use quotes from your letters and website or even mention your site.

Considerations for Your Website as Your Business Grows (Page 1 of 2)

It is the dream of most business owners and entrepreneurs that their business will grow over time and become a success. In the growth process, your business and web hosting needs may change. These changes can be a challenge to manage. Often expanding operations or venturing into new avenues of business is a matter of taking advantage of opportunities. Sometimes you can plan carefully and structure the timing; however, more often business find themselves thrown headlong into a situation where they suddenly have a rush of business and have to figure out a way of handling it. Planning the structure of your website and hosting package can help you cope with the changes as they happen.

Start with the Basics

As a start-up business, one of your priorities is keeping efficiency up and costs low. Your best option is to select a shared hosting package with a reputable service provider. Do an online search for different hosting providers. Read the customer reviews and find out what type of products they have to offer. It is not recommended that you select a free hosting package. Often these have limited customer service and support and they don’t allow you upgrade when needed. A good hosting provider should have entry-level packages as well as more advanced packages that you can migrate to when needed.

Key Things to Look for in a Hosting Package

One of the most important aspects of a hosting package is the customer support that is offered. A quick phone call to the support desk will quickly show how knowledgeable the support staff are. They should be able to provide you with technical information and advice regarding your web hosting package. You should then consider upgrade options. How easy is it for you to migrate from a basic starter package to a more advanced hosting option? Are there penalties involved? Are there different hosting requirements that you will need to incorporate into the design of your website? Do you have to use specific scripts? The last consideration is website security. Even on a basic hosting package, you will want to know that a level of security is maintained on the server.

When Do You Consider Upgrading?

One of the factors that determines what type of hosting package you choose is the amount of data or bandwidth that you require. Starting out, your website will probably be quite small. Unless you are going straight into e-commerce, it will probably be just a corporate or marketing-type website that profiles your company. As your business grows, you may want to add features such as a blog, forum, chat facility or various article posts. These features usually add quite significantly to the data requirements of your website. You may then need to upgrade to a larger package that can accommodate these features. If you decide to launch a full scale e-commerce site, you will probably have specific hosting requirements. Many web hosting providers have detailed e-commerce hosting packages available for businesses. If your business gets to the size where you want to have a dedicated server then you want to be with a hosting provider that can facilitate the transition without there being too much disruption to the uptime of your website.  You may consider a dedicated server when you have specific hosting requirements. When you want greater control over your website and server or want to use specific scripts, a dedicated server is a good choice. You may also decide that you want improved security for your website that you can only get from a dedicated server. You can then upgrade your hosting package as needed.