Enterprise Nation

In Feature 3 of our PayPal series on how to successfully trade online, we take a look at website hosting. In particular, we examine what it is, what you should be looking for, and how much of it you’ll need. Have your hosting questions answered here.

Choosing the perfect host

To have an online presence, all websites need to be “hosted” by a web hosting company or “platform provider”. When choosing a web hosting company, there are a number of things to consider including cost, reliability, bandwidth, server speed, technical support and very importantly, security.

Web hosting

A good web hosting company should offer industry-standard security products and services such as firewalls and SSL certificates to protect the websites they host. As a cost effective solution, unless your site is to have very large amounts of data, you’ll probably look to share a server with other companies.

In this case there is a certain amount of disk space available for each of the hosted sites – ask the question of how much space you are allocated and find out how many email addresses you can have, keeping future growth in mind.

The following terms are important to understand when thinking about website hosting:

• Bandwidth - also referred to as data transfer, this is the amount of data that your host allows visitors to access during a month. As a general rule, 500 MB of data equates to around 20,000 page views. Although it is not usually a problem for smaller online businesses, if you exceed your allocated bandwidth limit then you will incur an extra cost – so check the arrangement with your host.
• Disk space - also known as web space, this is the amount of space your site is allowed to take up on your web host’s hard drive or server.
• Downtime - this is when a website becomes temporarily unavailable due to server issues. Find out what guarantees or service level agreement your web host will offer to compensate for downtime, as this can lead to potential loss of business for your site.
• Firewall - a firewall is a dedicated appliance, or piece of software running on another computer which inspects network traffic passing through it, and denies or permits passage based on a set of rules. Firewalls are designed to protect your website.
• SSL certificates - Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology is a secure web protocol designed to ensure cardholder information is kept safe during the ordering process so that customer transactions are secure. SSL certificates can be purchased from Verisign, a PayPal partner.

Making it all work

Karen McNulty of MarketingPlanWiz went through a checklist such as this when she chose NetBenefit as web host for the home business she runs with co-founder, Fay Judson. Together the business partners use their site as a marketing channel (complete with great content on marketing!) and a sales channel as they sell their downloadable marketing plans.

“It was important for us to find a web host and ISP that could offer a secure solution. We couldn’t afford for the site to be disrupted in any way as it’s our online brochure and shop front. We make sales through the site and use it as a platform to display our expertise. Fortunately we’ve never had any down time and we’d recommend a combination of NetBenefit and PayPal to anyone!”

With recent research from PayPal revealing that almost 27 million British shoppers plan to buy online this Christmas, now is a good time to launch a website, find a host, and start trading. There’s no time like the present (if you'll forgive the Christmas themed pun!)

• Paypal
• Feature 1: What is e-commerce
• Feature 2: It's all in the planning