Who Needs E-commerce Web Hosting and What to Look For in Such a Hosting Package

Ecommerce web hosting is a special type of web hosting that allows online businesses to manage their inventories and sell their products in real-time over the Internet. It is required by all types of online businesses no matter whether they sell tangible goods which need to be shipped to the customer via post, or digital products that can be sent to the customer over the Internet. For this reason, an ecommerce web hosting solution is the most important part of an online business since it not only allows prospective customers to buy the company's products but also provides efficient communication between the merchant and the buyer after the goods have been sold.

An e-commerce website must therefore be very selective about the quality of the web hosting company which claims to provide an ecommerce solution. Round-the-clock technical support is the most important factor since the client is supposed not to have any prior knowledge of how e-commerce payment solutions work in practice and how to fix any problems should they arise. This is because a malfunctioning in the ecommerce functionality of your website could literally cost you hundreds of dollars within a matter of hours. Secondly, the disappointment that the customers feel about your website when they are unable to add a product to the shopping cart or when they are unable to check out could be an even bigger cause of embarrassment for your online business. For this reason, it is important that the e-commerce web hosting company should offer at least a 99.5% uptime guarantee, although a higher guarantee would be even better.

Basically, there are two routes to purchasing ecommerce web hosting, as a stand-alone solution which would add to your regular web hosting costs, or as a complete hosting solution which would include the cost of hosting your entire website as well. Whatever route you choose depends on your particular priorities, although a separate e-commerce payment solution is preferable in case you want to have a greater level of redundancy and reliability. This is because having separate servers for hosting your website and your ecommerce payment gateway enables your prospective customers to be still able to contact you in case your e-commerce payment servers go down. On the other hand, with a complete ecommerce web hosting solution, your entire website would go down in the case of a problem on your web hosting provider's side, so your customers would not be able to even contact you.

These days, because of intense competition between the web hosting companies to dominate the hosting scene, more and more web hosting providers are offering e-commerce payment gateways included within their shared hosting packages. Furthermore, plenty of shopping carts are also included for free such as PayPal, Agora, Zencart etc. with the exception of a merchant account. This can save you the cost of purchasing an independent ecommerce solution, although you need to make sure that the quality of the web host is acceptable and you also have the flexibility to create customized e-commerce plans in case you need them. The ability to create customized hosting plans contributes a lot towards increasing your overall level of productivity since you can easily select which features you want incorporated in your payment gateway and which ones you want to omit.

In some instances, the ecommerce web hosting provider may also offer you the ability to set up an e-commerce storefront. This makes the organization of your products and services extremely easy as well as user-friendly. The included shopping carts enable customers to see the sum total for the products they have added to the cart so far, so they can easily see how much it is costing them. There may be multiple options for you to accept payments from your clients such as through a credit card, an e-check, or direct bank transfer. When the payment is being processed through the payment gateway, the most important thing is the security of the transaction which means that it should be completely masked from hackers. Different types of security mechanisms are being utilized by web hosting companies for this purpose. To bolster the security even further, you can purchase an SSL certificate (SSL stands for secure sockets layer) which codifies the information contained in the transaction so that it is useless for the hackers even if it gets intercepted.

Another thing you must look for in an ecommerce hosting solution is the ease of use it offers to the end-user. A great majority of people looking to purchase products online want the ordering process to be as smooth as possible. The least possible interaction with the customer resulting in the maximum possible gain of important information is another important aspect that leaves a good impact on prospective clients. Nowadays, e-commerce web hosting packages are available for as low as $20 a month including all of the above mentioned capabilities as well as more. The hosting package may also include marketing features such as search engine submission and optimization, keyword selection tools as well as some credits in paid advertising on the major search engines. It is therefore important that you spend a handsome amount of time conducting your research on the Internet as to which of the companies offering ecommerce hosting solutions are worth considering.

About the Article

This is a genuine article custom written for WHL (WebHostLead.com). WHL is an unbiased ecommerce hosting directory based on webmaster reviews about the best ecommerce web hosts.

Note: WHL holds all copyrights to this article. If you would like to publish the article on your website, you must include the "About the Article" section as well.

• < Prev
• Next >