What is Ecommerce Hosting? How to Choose Ecommerce Hosting?

Nowadays, people tend to use the internet to shop and pay bill in order to avoid the queues in shopping malls, save money on fuel, and so on. They pay for goods and services at sites. Which by consequence, the percentage of business over the internet is increasing in a fast pace day by day. However, it is an excellent idea to start an internet business especially if you don’t have enough money to invest in startup cost. In order to do so, you must have a means of accepting payments and ensuring the customers’ data remains private and is secured. For that, you should choose the right e-commerce hosting service.

Choose the right hosting service for you online business, you will be able to reach out a great extent of audience, generate leads easily and retain customers. In this article, I am going to discuss the aspects when selecting the right host for your e-commerce site.

What is ECommerce Hosting?
Ecommerce hosting is designed especially for people who want to get an excellent online business solution. E-commerce hosting companies can provide the necessary system, applications and infrastructure needed by a website to perform well in online sales. This is a very important requirement, because it allows customers to interact with sellers more easily in a comfortable and secure environment. At this moment, e-commerce hosting a growing niche in the industry, due to the high number of people who do business in the Internet.

Shopping carts are the most common feature in an e-commerce hosting plan, which can make it easier for buyers to perform online purchases. They offer a convenient and fast method for online buyers to manage purchases and pay securely. The convenient navigation has helped to increase its popularity in many years. From the website owners’ perspective, shopping carts can better handle the complexities of online transactions in a simplified and systematic manner. Agora, OSCommerce and Zencart are popular providers of shopping carts application. These shopping carts providers also provide 24/7 technical support to provide quick responses to user queries. An e-commerce hosting company may offer three or four shopping carts for customers to choose from.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is another must-have feature in an e-commerce hosting. SSL is a server-based security system, which can protect both the buyers and sellers from cyber criminals. If you want a peace of mind knowing that you can do transactions safely, it is highly recommended to use SSL. When implemented properly, SSL can protect private information such as home address, phone numbers and credit card numbers using a virtually impossible-to-crack encryption.

For beginners, templates are important time- and money-saver; they can establish an e-commerce website quickly without little or no help from web designer. Templates are ready-made web pages for sites. E-commerce web sites can be very expensive and complex to build, by using a template you can reduce the amount of errors and hassles of having to do it from scratch. Web owners can always add more features later on. The list of important e-commerce hosting features goes on with applications for inventory management, data collection, customer order management, online catalogues and customer demographics analysis.

Overall, e-commerce hosting can bring plenty of benefits to business owners due a complete package from site development, product marketing, transaction and finally payment. Web owners with a fully working e-commerce website can expect to make good profits in the online marketplace.

5 things to consider when choosing an Ecommerce hosting
  1. Storage space: Even a small e-commerce setup requires about 100MB of disk space, while others require more than 1GB in space. Many e-commerce sites store a large amount of products (in addition, a product may have five or more high resolution images). Some sites may also use videos to help explain the products better. As such, a 1GB of space is adequate for most cases.
  2. Bandwidth: It is another critical factor; bandwidth determines the number of users that can visit your site each month. If the site has plenty of files and a decent traffic, a monthly bandwidth of 100GB should be enough. However, on larger with e-commerce sites with numerous videos in it, about 500GB bandwidth is acceptable.
  3. Security: SSL is the minimum security requirement for an e-commerce site.
  4. Server operating system: Although Linux is often preferred for servers; latest Windows products are sufficiently secure and reliable. The decision in choosing an OS is also determined by the programming language used; for example, use Windows if you prefer ASP.net shopping cart.
  5. Support: E-commerce sites require good support to ensure steady and stable performance 24/7. 
Why ECommerce Hosting is Good for Business
The Internet gives people a way to get what they need when they need it. One of the biggest factors in making a purchase online is the price. Online retailers can give people a price that is more competitive because they do not have the overhead of a physical store. However, every e-commerce website needs customers and those customers need to have the chance to buy a product. What’s the point of having a customer if they can’t buy from your store? This is where e-commerce hosting comes in.

Why You Need ECommerce Hosting
The age of digital business is here. Customers flock to e-commerce websites because of the ability to save time and money when purchasing items. If you are on a shared hosting plan, you might not be able to handle an influx of customers. The number one thing to remember is that when your website is down, you will not be making sales. E-commerce hosting plans takes all of the risk out of having your website go down. Being able to scale your bandwidth, disk space, and RAM is essential to building your clientele. An investment in an e-commerce hosting plan in an investment in your business’ future.

Tips to Choose Ecommerce Hosting
If you intend to start a business of selling products or services online, you need to find the best ecommerce hosting plan for your business. Ecommerce hosting plans are specifically designed to keep in mind the hosting needs of such websites. These plans come with additional features such as shopping carts, payment options etc. Although these specific tools and applications might vary based on the individual needs of the client, there are some qualities which are true for all ecommerce hosting plans. While on the lookout for an ecommerce hosting plan, you should look for these qualities.

1. Merchant Services: Merchant services such as payment gateways and payment integration are tools mandatory to run an ecommerce website. These tools allow you to receive payment for customers. It is better to be aware of the differences of these payment models and the costs associated with them prior to selecting one. Some hosting plans come with standard payment models which are free; others might offer merchant services at increased costs.

2. File Support: Usually ecommerce websites have more content than personal websites. This is because the content includes images and videos related to their product or services. These images and videos take up a lot of space. Therefore, the more number of files you will have on the website, the more capacity in terms of storage space you will need. Also, since more and more people are now turning to online buying, the traffic on ecommerce websites is increasing. You should always bear in mind the website traffic factor while selecting an ecommerce hosting option. Larger bandwidth will allow your website to withstand even higher website traffic.

3. Shopping Cart: Shopping cart is essential for every ecommerce website. It allows customers to purchase and manage their online purchase which is why you should opt for the best. The good thing is that many different shopping cart plans are available; therefore, selecting shopping cart software is not difficult. However, make sure you select the one which matches your needs perfectly. The best shopping cart is the one which allows customers to conveniently select shipping options and add or delete items from the shopping cart. It is best to first research a little on different kinds of shopping carts prior to making a decision.

4. Security: Although, most ecommerce websites are now safe and secure in terms of shopping, however, customers are still reluctant to purchase online because of the massive security issues. Therefore, your first priority should be looking for an ecommerce plan which offers top notch security options. Your ecommerce hosting provider should support SSL certificates which will ensure that all kinds of transactions occurring on your website are protected from hackers and theft.

5. Recommendation: Look for recommendations regarding your ecommerce hosting company. The more recommendations you receive, chances are you will get the best services. Therefore, research about company’s services prior to making a deal. This can be done by visiting forums or reading customer reviews.

Comments