• Domain - A best-rated web hosting service maybe having one of the most important features as enabling hosting of unlimited domain names. How this helps your account is that it’s cheaper and more feasible when it comes to paying hosting fees for every single domain name. The offer of some companies of getting “a free domain name for life” can also be worth considering.

• Bandwidth and disk space - There are a host of web hosting packages, from which you will need to pick up the best for you. You need to select a hosting package with a bandwidth and disk space to match with your business needs. For example, if you plan to insert high-resolution images and graphics as well as have music and videos posted on your website, you need to go for the offer having larger bandwidth and disk space. In case your website traffic grows quickly and exceeds the bandwidth limits, your website could be suspended. An estimate of the future growth and expansion of your business can also be kept in mind while opting elements such as bandwidth, disk storage, and email accounts in a hosting plan. The number of visitors estimated for the first year can determine the selection of abovementioned elements and the good thing is that you can upgrade your package at any time.

• Add-ons – For companies to carry on their online businesses where either just transactions are involved or a whole Ecommerce system, solutions are offered for business hosting and Ecommerce hosting by the best web hosting companies that include different add-ons such as online payment gateways and payment modes, shopping cart software, online customer accounts and, in some cases, an online merchant account. These options can be optimized according to the business needs related to the customers and the clients.

I finally end it here with a strict recommendation to consider all the factors explained in Part I and Part II before signing up a web hosting company for your business. This matters a lot for the success of your web presence.

It can be a real challenging task to select the best web host for your website with so many important areas to consider for the same. But in the very beginning I feel an urge to tell you that don’t fall into the trap thinking that the cheapest cost is the most important consideration. This is one thing you don’t want to do as something that’s going to so much impact how your online business will go can’t be compromised with money.

Now, let me proceed with what I believe to be very important for the proper selection of a web host:

• Security - Web hosting security is of greatest importance for keeping a website protected from external factors such as virus threats or technical failures. Make sure to check out the security terms of your web host and get the best possible settings for your website security. A smart service provider, however, would always run scheduled backups and try to keep customer data as secure as possible in view of any contingencies.

• Uptime - The percentage of time your website is on the World Wide Web is crucial as that determines your availability to the visitors/customers. Apparently, it could not be 100%, but the closest the best web hosting company can guarantee you is 99.99%. Anything that ascends between 99% and 99.99% would be better, but don’t go for a web host that offers an uptime below 99%. Frequent downtimes turn off your potential customers and are simply not an indication of a good company. Another essential thing is that any maintenance done by the host on the servers/network requiring reboots or downtime should be scheduled during off peak hours and with a prior notice, except if there happens to be a sudden crisis or emergency. An ideal web host would handle a downtime without letting the customers feel dissatisfied by showing information such as “we’ll be back soon” or “under maintenance” or showing its email or phone number to contact if urgent.

• Control panel - The best web hosting companies would always have a user-friendly control panel for its clients to be able to configure their settings and go about their usual tasks without any trouble. A good control panel will allow you a good administration without any advanced technical and internet skills. cPanel and DirectAdmin are good options for a control panel. Make sure you get one of these from your web host.

• Technical support/customer service - You would surely be looking for a web host that provides efficient support in terms of availability and response. Go for a web host that provides 24x7 technical support and gives immediate response to your queries. You should really be concerned when you come across web hosts that don’t provide contact information at all, as there are many available who provide both phone and live support.

And this is not the end of it. There’s more to come in Part II…

A full-fledged online store or with just one or two products, online packages or discounts, site membership, reviews, donation, we see Ecommerce in many forms over the internet. In short, it is an “in” thing. To bring Ecommerce viability on sites, we have an opportunity now in open source. Open source Ecommerce solutions have gained immense popularity in the recent times with them being simple, easy, accessible, and cost-effective. Today, I am going to write about a popular PHP based Ecommerce solution and that’s OpenCart. It is giving merchants an easy solution to create a lower-cost online business.

OpenCart, unlike the other existing ecommerce shopping cart systems in the market, is quite easy to follow and simple to customize. Why developers find OpenCart amazing to work with is because it has a very logical and awesomely simple MVC structure that brings subtleness to both its front-end and back-end systems.

Just have a look at the richness of features OpenCart reflects:

1. Open source and free!
2. Free online lessons to educate and a great community support
3. Unlimited category and product variety
4. Templatable with oodles of templates to choose from
5. More than 20 payment gateways to make a choice from
6. More than 8 shipping methods for the delivery of items
7. Supports multiple currencies and languages
8. Reviews and ratings for different products can be found

All in all, fast, simple, and extendible! OpenCart comes out as an ideal shopping cart system for small and medium-sized Ecommerce businesses.

Any online merchant wants business from his website visitors. What’s essential here is to have a way to process transactions, for which online payment processing methods are to be deployed. There are many options for an ecommerce web site owner to consider; however, only looking at the key determining factors, he will be able to weigh up the choices and decide the best available to him. Whatever online payment processing methods you get to choose from, the primary aspects for selection should lead you to think about affordability, accessibility, currency and conversions, and security.

Out of the popular payment processing methods, here I present a few that are commonly explored and deployed.

Credit cards: Credit cards are a popular payment way these days. If you want credit card processing on your site, a merchant's account is what you need first with the credit card company and/or with your bank and next a secure third-party gateway to accept payments online. It’s quite time-consuming and costly and lays a significant responsibility on the online business for conducting safe online order processing.

PayPal: Among small businesses, it is one of the most favorite ways for online processing of payments. It allows quick merchant account setup eliminating many of your safety concerns and can still be applied directly to your site. The best thing about it is that it allows currencies to easily pass and convert. Free setup of accounts and cheap maintenance are also the strong points of PayPal. You need to give away some percentage of the money that you make through the account as a charge.

Other similar services are available, such as StrataPay and PayMate, but it’s important that you check the fine print before landing up on any decision (things like some would charge a fee to the customers would be somewhat business deterring).

Direct transfer to bank account: Usually fast and cheap, this process uses existing accounts and processes transfers between them. But what’s an important consideration here is whether you want to release your account information for processing. Often problems crop up with involving cross-border transactions and different currencies.

While choosing a service, irrespective of anything, don’t lose the objective of protecting yourself and your clients. Wisdom is in choosing a service that does not make accepting payment an unprofitable event. Your research and wise choice would allow you to make the most of convenience, profitability, and safety.

Yahoo Store, a buzz word among the web community, is fascinating the Ecommerce operators as a brilliant online business opportunity that’s just right for those seeking a cost-efficient, quick online marketing and selling platform. Ecommerce solution with a Yahoo Store is being seen as a brilliant alternative to other web merchant solutions.

Developing a Yahoo Store would require tapping into a vast range of features that Yahoo offers to its Ecommerce store owners. Your internet business can turn into a success story only when these features, namely menus, paging, graphics, content, add-ons, customization, programming wizard etc…etc., are packaged through a bundle of activities for designing, enhancing, and marketing of the store with the sole aim of revenue building.

A profit-generating Yahoo Store would take efforts of a professional development team that exactly knows what to pick up from the available resources and how to handle the development work for building a high-performance online earning asset. The result you can see as an attractive, user-friendly store with a unique layout consisting of great navigational and product features. This is something done to set you apart from your competitors and best done by these professionals only.

The need is that you seek a competent Yahoo Store developer who can make your Yahoo Store go live with all its potential capabilities taken care of. Pick up an experienced one for this task, which you can do by checking their credentials, and keep the ball rolling. Your Ecommerce success dream can come true with a Yahoo Store, provided it’s in the right online environment.