As the headline suggests, SoundCloud has some lofty goals and by all accounts it may be succeeding.

The Los Angeles Times reported recently that SoundCloud had reached 10 million users and 5 million downloads of its SoundCloud application.  This is fantastic achievement considering it only started life in 2008 as a music-sharing site but found its Eureka moment with the realization that most people want to also share other sounds including voice and other forms of audio.

“And it became obvious for us, that when we look at the Web we think of photos, we think of text, we think of videos, so why don’t we think about sound in a broader sense? So, music is obviously a key part for us, but there are a lot of other things happening on the platform as well,” said SoundCloud.

It is not just consumers taking towards SoundCloud. Media giants such as ABC News have launched their own channel on SoundCloud.

The audio-sharing site is completely FREE and is cornering the sound market just as Flickr did with photos and YouTube with video.

“SoundCloud’s recent momentum stems from an explosion in applications and services that make it easier for anyone to record, mix and tinker with music on their Smartphones, tablets and home DJ setups,” said the New York Times.

The website also recently launched a new HTML5 widget to embed recordings and uploads on a user website.

“SoundCloud says the new widget was redesigned to encourage more interactivity around the sound itself and with the listener comments,” said TechCrunch.

“The timed comments are now more usable on this version of the widget, at the request of SoundCloud users. Before, they would pop up over the track as conversation bubbles. In the new widget, they appear beneath the track in a much more readable format.”

It then went further and created a standalone app called Story Wheel which allows users to create retro-styled slide shows with the popular photo application called Instagram.

“We chose Instagram is because it’s the service we use the most for our own photos,” reported The Los Angeles Times.

“We built Story Wheel because it’s something we wanted to see and we thought it was something our users would like to see and use too. And we built the whole thing on the same API that we offer to our developers, who have made more than 10,000 apps on our platform.”

We are interested in your comments on these latest trends in the audio-sharing industry.

“Call us at 1-866-584-6757 and record an audio post for your blog” ~ Tumblr

The above is just one piece of functionality indigenous to the Tumblr blogging site that is taking the web by storm.  PC Mag reports that that Tumblr now has over 40 million blogs worldwide.

“Tumblr use has skyrocketed in the last year; from 6.9 million unique U.S. visitors in November 2010 to 15.9 million a year later, according to comScore,” said PC Mag.

Source: TechCrunch

“Those gains have allowed it to come full circle; last week, Tumblr became a sponsor, along with Google and Microsoft, of the New York Tech Meetup, the start-up conference at which it presented its product back in 2007.”

In the last year, page views have jumped from 2 billion to 13 billion per month, according to TechCrunch. This is going up by 40 million each day and pushes it past Wikipedia.

It began life as a simple publishing platform for writers who were, well, not really writers!   They wanted to share content they all loved but also have the ability to customize the look and feel in ways not possible with other social sites like Twitter or Facebook.

One of its signature-features, and very popular, is the re-blog function which is similar in nature to a re-tweet on Twitter.

“Something goes up on my blog, you love it, you can rip it out, put it on your blog while giving me attribution. By the way, that’s now become the most predominant behavior on Tumblr, where every post on Tumblr is re-blogged an average of nine times,” said founder David Karp.

“There was a Harvard Business Review study found this stat like 10 percent of users on Twitter create 90 percent of the content. On Tumblr it’s actually inverted,” he said.

From Karp’s point of view, Tumblr is now a dominant form of syndicated content to sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are not original content creators.

“If you look at my Facebook profile, it’s mostly posts that have been syndicated from my Tumblr blog and lots of people on my Facebook feed commenting on them and interacting and liking them. We actually get more traffic from Facebook and Twitter than we do from Google today.”

Karp also told PC Mag that Tumblr is embracing the App revolution, just like Faceboook and Twitter.   An example he cited related to SoundCloud, a popular social sharing site for uploaded voice, sounds and music.

“You have a little search bar and you type in whatever song you’re looking for, a big list drops down, you can click it and it’s on your blog right there. We haven’t done Spotify yet, although I’d wouldn’t rule that out. I think the Internet is in a pretty spectacular place right now where … a lot of these companies are really looking to specialize and they’re offering really great special-added services.”

Since divorcing itself from EBAY StumbleUpon has grown  from 6 million to 20 million users, signaling subtle shifts in how people are using search technology outside of Google and Bing.

The idea behind StumbleUpon, started in 2001, is offering a way to discover sites you did not know existed. It is often compared to Digg and Delicious but distinguishes itself by personalizing the recommended content. The other two are more concerned with social bookmarking.

Mashable reports that StumbleUpon has grown to 20 million users and is now considered one of the top social media search sites on the planet.

“During the Super Bowl, there were some 41 mobile stumbles per second, which is not surprising given that 80% of people multi-task on their mobile devices while watching TV,” said Mashable.

“We help you easily discover new and interesting stuff on the Web. Tell us what you like, and we’ll introduce you to amazing web pages, videos, photos and more that you wouldn’t have found on your own,” said StumbleUpon.

The focus is on “surprise” and intent to customize future results towards your search preferences. These are accumulated from other users with similar “Likes” to you.

You can add a web page StumbleUpon’s index by going to your Profile page and clicking the link to “Add a new page” below the left-hand panel of tabs.

“There are limits in place regarding how many times you can add a page from a single domain – if you approach or reach that limit, you may be identified as spammer,” said StumbleUpon.

In fact, StumbleUpon has implemented these specific restrictions designed to limit ‘gaming’ which influences more mainstream search engines:

• domains with the .tk extension
• any shortened URLs created with various URL shortening services (to avoid getting duplicates in our directory)
• domain names which use an IP address
• submissions from ‘secure’ pages (https://).
• submissions from certain major email provider domains
• submissions from domains that were banned for breaking our Terms of Service

Just like Twitter or Facebook, you can also use it to drive traffic to your site.

“If you have a commercial web page that promotes a specific product or service, you may only use StumbleUpon to drive traffic if you are using our Paid Discovery service,” said StumbleUpon.

It has also launched something called Channels as a service for  brands, celebrities, and domains  where you can promote your own-curated content to other Stumblers. This seems to be a similar approach to both Facebook Pages and LinkedIn Pages.   However, it requires a direct email to partners@stumbleupon.com in order to activate this feature.

In the last several months, it has launched a popular mobile version and offers further Internet Toolbar options to customize your StumbleUpon experience.

Thank you for protecting Wikipedia. We’re not done yet~ Wikipedia

Wikipedia showed all of us the monumental power of using the Internet to illustrate a philosophical (and political) position in the face of tremendous pressure from big government.

By going dark for 24 hours, it sucked a vortex of users and media commentators into the implications of what SOPA actually means to Internet freedom.

While everyone does agree that online piracy is a serious issue and needs to be dealt with, the anti-piracy bill that was due to pass on Jan 24 with bipartisan support has too many loop holes to be effective.

The fact that the Government and large corporations wanted to mess with the innards of the domain registry to force sites like Google to shut down offenders offers the highest chance of abuse no matter how noble the goal.

It’s also interesting to see the massive cohesion of young Internet users and even the older generation in standing together on this point.

In a decade, where most citizens display apathy towards the political process and big government in general, the  SOPA-resistance illustrates that not all hope is lost.

The New York Times reported that more than 162 million people saw the site’s protest on Wednesday.  Further, over 12,000 commented on blogs announcing the blackout.

By all accounts, this was a “breathtaking majority” said Wikipedia.  The Internet is undoubtedly one of the United State’s pioneering technical achievements.  While not perfect, it is a field of innovation that is a powerhouse for small business growth.

This battleground echoes a real war taking place offline as the upcoming Presidential contest looms. Many consider it to be the most important election in American history signaling a tipping point between those who favor more government regulation versus those who do not.

This goes beyond party lines. Both parties display support and opposition in determining the final outcome and what happens with SOPA next.

The postponed bill had bipartisan support but its supporters now appear fragmented and indecisive. So Wikipedia is right, this is just one battle won; NOT the war.   Long live the resistance!

Website customers have become spoiled. What we mean by this relates to the aftermath of web 2.0 applications built by tech giants like Amazon and Pandora who have taken user functionality to unheard of proportions.

The ability to customize searches, wish lists and alter product screens according to your unique online behavior are key features of the web 2.0 revolution.

Users (or consumers) have become empowered by all these personalization features.  This is now influencing how Intranets are being constructed and deployed for your Small Business.

In the beginning Intranets were built to manage ‘transactions’ not ‘spoil’ users with targeted, customized feature sets. They were largely a verbose, technical platform with lots of power but were by no means user friendly.

But, in the last few years Intranets are gaining traction in Small Businesses as well as Enterprises. And, the reason for this is because they are becoming easier and more fun to use.

Sites like Delicious, an example of social bookmarking, are a huge influence in new Intranet design.  Delicious users become part of a collective social experience that makes them feel as if they belong to something bigger than themselves.    It’s highly addictive AND rewarding in many cases offering more value than a Google search.

You can save the bookmark for later and it’s retrievable from any web browser. You can literally save 1000s of them.   You can even explore other user bookmarks by searching for the way they have been tagged. This tagging system is also prominent in blogging systems such as WordPress.  Many small businesses have also learned to share content on Delicious because it aids SEO rankings with valuable backlinks – when done correctly!

Tagging helps define a broader revolution called the ‘semantic web’, which allows a user to learn from other others by sharing bookmarks and categorizing content.

And, this tagging/bookmarking system is now being copied inside powerful Intranet systems like SharePoint Server.   Essentially Intranets are becoming simpler and more fun to use in the same vein as WordPress and Delicious.

“Explore without being overwhelmed,” said the Burton Group Catalyst.  This is effectively what Intranet developers are working hard to accomplish in the private domain for both Small Businesses and larger Enterprise systems.

In many cases these Intranets are free too, which makes the whole experience even more rewarding when a small company decides to unite staff in multiple locations under one private collaboration umbrella.

One final point: As SMBs embrace these new powerful intranets they can also track staff usage. This helps define new patterns of behavior, which may even give them some competitive advantage in the marketplace. Information, after all, is Power!

Google recently added the (+) sign to its suite of products for both consumers and businesses in a bid to bury the failure of Google Buzz and create a platform to challenge Twitter and Facebook.

In fact, while Mark Zuckerburg may conclude the sole purpose of Google Plus is to overtake Facebook, Google begs to differ.

Google sees Plus, arguably, as a hybrid system that takes the best features out of both Facebook and Twitter to create something completely new.

And, if it’s right it may generate up to 400 million new users by year’s end. Currently Google Plus has attracted about 60 million sign-ups but there is some doubt as to how many of these are actively using all the features.

The Hangout feature is one of the areas Google Plus engineers are currently raving about.

This offers up 1-click video conversations with both customers and co-workers. The goal is face-to-face product feedback to mitigate rapid problem solving over video chat.

Another variation pioneered by Google is the ability to segment your customers into gold, silver and bronze customers. They call this feature Google circles which allows small business owners to separate out content for customers at various states of the sales pipeline. Thus, you could distinguish between:

• Suspects
• Prospects
• Leads
• Customers who purchased

As an aside, those using Google Apps for Small Business had to a wait a bit longer for the functionality to seep through to their management screens, which did cause a bit of consternation.  Google appeared to be very cautious in releasing this feature to business users, as it wanted to test reaction in the consumer market first.

As expected, there will be two different Google search results experiences depending on whether you or not you are logged in as a Google user.

If logged in, expect to see extra information, including personal data from your Google+ circles account.  This is another signal of the ongoing personalization revolution that is driving website content on the Internet.

This has long-term implications for how small business owners optimize their sites for search engines. The onus is now on customizing the experience for users who are registered on a search engine or network like Facebook.

This indicates a much more complex optimization strategy, which is built around integrating social media from all the major players.  Increasingly, users are diversifying where they spend most of the time, with the obvious benefactor and “king” being Facebook.

However, if the projected Google Plus numbers for 2012 are correct then business owners must get their Google Plus Business Page going.

And, let’s not forget about rival platforms such as LinkedIn or Foursquare. Both may mount a challenge to Facebook, Google and Twitter in the future. This requires a multi-pronged social media ‘page’ building strategy outside of your core website.

We’re on Google+ and while we’re still understanding how to use it we love to connect. Check us out.

One of the indirect benefits of using a remote hosting provider is the ability to tap into ancillary services like Continuous Data Protection (CDP) that safeguards your data using the latest backup & restore technologies.

Traditionally IT departments running their own on-premise solutions have considered backup and disaster recovery to be two separate functions often handled by two different departments. This may have meant using a tape-based backup or a disk-based replication method, respectively.

With the rising surge of interest in cloud-based hosting to mitigate complexity, cut down costs and streamline business operations, there has also been the blossoming of new CDP technologies, which aims to protect your mission-critical data.

CDP unifies the goal of managing both backup and disaster recovery in one technical swoop. For instance, WestHost offers CDP as part of their preferred and business plans.

CDP allows rapid restoration of data in the face of some unplanned event or downtime.   While the technology is not exactly new it is becoming increasingly sophisticated and powerful, allowing hosting companies to offer this service to smaller SMBs, as well as larger enterprises, at much lower costs.

“Technologies such as compression and deduplication can decrease data traffic and significantly reduce bandwidth requirements and overall costs,” said eWeek.

Information System Security defines CDP as a process that let’s organizations continuously capture or track data modifications and stores changes independent of the primary data, enabling recovery from specific points in the past. CDP systems may be block, file-, or application-based and can provide fine granularities of restorable objects to infinitely variable points in time.

It is also becoming very popular in protecting the massive email threads generated in systems such as Exchange Server or other mission-critical email collaboration portals.

“New granular recovery technologies have emerged that enable mail messages, mailboxes, and folders to be restored individually without having to restore an entire email database, and without separate and redundant mailbox backups,” said Information System Security.

“In an Exchange environment, for example, only a single-pass full or incremental backup of Exchange is required, which dramatically decreases the time required to protect all mailboxes while also reducing the backup storage requirement. “

“In some situations, continuous data protection will require less space on backup media (usually disk) than traditional backup. Most continuous data protection solutions save byte or block-level differences rather than file-level differences. This means that if you change one byte of a 100 GB file, only the changed byte or block is backed up. Traditional incremental and differential backups make copies of entire files.”

If you are currently experiencing severe pain points dealing with data replication and disaster recovery you may find hosting that includes CDP is just what the doctor ordered!

In today’s market, a business of any size needs a website. Often, it is cheaper to outsource the hosting of that website to a third party rather than trying to do it in house. However, when determining the best hosting solution, price should not be the main factor because businesses have different needs which require different hosting solutions. The best option for you depends on the functionality that your site requires both now and in the future. Here is some information that will help you determine which solution is best for your organization, as well as things to keep in mind as your site evolves.

Before selecting a web hosting package, you must first identify what you need your website to do. The purpose of any website is to incentivize the reader to take some course of action. What course of action do you want them to take? What message do you wish to send? How are you going to send that message? The answers to these questions determine the amount of bandwidth you need, the website availability you require, and the peripheral services you must include (such as video hosting services). Once you know these things, you can then make an educated decision on what web hosting package to purchase.

Types of Web Hosting
Free Hosting has its limits. It is free because the host makes money in some other way—usually by filling your site with exterior advertisements or pushing you to buy more services. You are unlikely to look very legitimate to your customers under a free plan. Additionally, free plans seldom provide enough resources to handle more than a few visitors at a time. Personal blogs often utilize this if they have a small audience and publish occasionally.

Shared Hosting is the most common and cost-effective means to get your website up and running. Shared hosting plans can cost less than $10 per month for enough space and bandwidth to put up a modest eCommerce or informational site. In a shared plan, your site shares space with other websites on the same server. Because of the number of connections to the web each server has, your site can still be accessed by many users simultaneously even though other users are accessing other sites on the same server. Many small eCommerce sites and blogs  utilize shared hosting because its affordable and easy to manage.

Dedicated Hosting enables customers to utilize an entire server without competing for resources. Most web hosts will give you an option between managed and unmanaged dedicated hosting. In unmanaged hosting, you are granted root access to the server and are expected to maintain it yourself. This gives you more control over the server but requires more in-house expertise. In managed hosting, the host retains similar control over the server that they would have under shared hosting. While you will pay more for managed hosting, you will enjoy the benefits of not having to worry about standard server maintenance. Dedicated hosting—whether managed or not—is best when your site experiences a lot of traffic. Large eCommerce sites, high-volume informational sites, or small data streaming sites will all require a dedicated servers for optimal performance.

Cloud Hosting provides many of the same benefits and resources of dedicated hosting without a single point of failure since your site is not relying upon one server. This method is similar to diversifying your stock portfolio. If one of the servers has a problem, your site is still operative. This feature is known as failover or cloud hosting redundancy. Cloud hosting protects you and keeps your costs low ($50 per month, for example). Cloud hosting relies on virtual server technology that can access the resources of multiple servers. Each virtual server is designed to meet the needs of your website. Because of this, cloud hosting gives you more resources and flexibility than are possible with shared hosting. Large eCommerce sites, high-volume informational sites, and data streaming sites are all possible with cloud hosting. In fact, cloud hosted sites are often preferred over dedicated hosting because of the flexibility and fail over capabilities.

The term co-location in web hosting refers to a fully managed datacenter where businesses that own their own hardware can store it. Co-located servers are completely unmanaged by the web host. All the web host provides is security, alternate power sources, and climate control. All other server maintenance is carried out by the company that owns the co-located servers.

Features of Hosting Services
Many web hosts price individual features independently of the type of web hosting the client chooses. For example, they may have one price for “standard content” (text and some images) and a higher price for streaming content (files, videos, and other media). This is because of the bandwidth required to handle the demand. Sites that offer media streaming tend to be more popular and attract more users, and naturally it takes a lot more bandwidth per user to stream media than simply text and images.

Let us go over the various features you may want in your website and discuss how each will affect your experience with your web host.

eCommerce hosting is the typical hosting type most businesses choose because they usually want to sell products on their website. eCommerce sites are actually not much more demanding on servers than traditional informational sites. eCommerce sites require shopping carts and merchant accounts, which do not require much additional bandwidth but do require extra setup between the client and financial institutions. Any extra charge from the web host would come for additional security at the client’s request.

Email hosting provides you with your own email domain and links it with your website. A good email host will provide spam and virus protection against incoming servers. Different types of email hosting exist—the basic type, POP3, will download messages to Outlook, Thunderbird, or other email clients. More advanced services like IMAP or Microsoft Exchange will keep copies of emails on the server, and they will sync email folders between multiple computers (or mobile devices) and the server. Private email domains driven by Gmail are also available.

Blog hosting is actually called “web log” hosting. A true blog (or web log) will support authoring, editing, and syndication of posts. It will also include features for moderation and image management. This enables you to publish posts and let others comment on them, put up images, block users who trash your blog with nasty comments, and let users link your blog to their RSS feeds (such as Google Reader). These are features that differentiate a personal blog from a more professional “web log.” Generally, a good web host will provide these features at no additional cost.

Image hosting refers to sites where users can upload and download photos. In a simple example, a professional photographer uploads photos to the site for a given number of days, and clients can purchase and download photos from the site. In a more complex example, a social networking site allows many people to upload and download images at will. These services require much more bandwidth than the typical informational or eCommerce site.

Video and music hosting requires a lot of space and bandwidth (and if you plan on becoming a world-renowned site like YouTube or Napster, you will need an enormous amount of it). Large amounts of video or music streaming will probably mean large costs as well, especially when your site allows people to both upload and download media. If you want a simple “by family, for family” website to post home videos, you may be able to get by on a shared hosting plan with its space and bandwidth limits. If your target audience is any bigger than that, however, you’ll need cloud or dedicated hosting to get the availability you want.

Finding the Right Host
Once you know what features you need for your website and have determined what type of web hosting you want, it is time to find the right company to provide that hosting. A good web hosting company will:

• Guarantee that their servers are up 99% of the time
• Guard servers against physical access by any intruders
• Not add advertisements to your site or sell your information to third parties
• Provide support and consult with you about your needs at no extra cost

Once you have chosen the right web host and hosting plan for your site, you can focus on your business and simply let your website work for you.

Let’s say that you have a larger website that will get a lot of traffic. Sharing a server with other websites may not be the best approach for you—you may need your own dedicated server. In our last post, we mentioned how shared hosting is typically the best choice for a small venture. However, if you are operating a more demanding website that handles heavy traffic, video streaming, or excessive data transfer you may need your own server.

Costs and Benefits of Dedicated Hosting
Getting a server exclusively to yourself is, understandably, more expensive. Costs normally shared among several different businesses are now covered exclusively by you. However, the benefits of a dedicated server may be well worth the extra cost. Because dedicated servers are specific to your site, they have much greater capacity for bandwidth and storage space. Also, you can customize them for your specific needs, choosing the exact hardware and software configurations you want for your site. If you’re not sure what you want, the web host can recommend a good server configuration for your needs. Also, you can install more web-related tools on a dedicated server. Because shared servers are sharing resources you may find limitations on what you are able to customize. On a dedicated server, you have more flexibility to customize your site and use tools to make your site visually appealing.

In addition, dedicated servers can provide logistical advantages in terms of security. Keeping in mind that shared servers are secure, you should know that dedicated servers can be easier to defend from attacks because there is only one client using the server. Also, greater server resources can be dedicated to defending your site from viruses, Trojans, worms, and other malware. You—and only you—have the rights to determine who has access to your server.

Besides higher service fees, there are no inherent disadvantages to dedicated hosting over shared hosting. If you get a fully managed dedicated server (described below), your server will be similar to a shared hosting service. (It should be noted that not all web hosting companies provide fully managed dedicated servers—WestHost does.) The only differences will be the higher costs associated with having your own server and paying for all of its bandwidth.

Managing Dedicated Servers
Web hosts can provide different levels of server support with dedicated servers (unlike shared hosting). You can ask them to fully manage your server in the same way they manage shared servers. However, you can also save some money by taking on some aspects of maintaining the server. With managed dedicated hosting, the host will monitor your server, update it, and provide a limited amount of maintenance support. You will be responsible for the rest (updating and making changes to your website). With unmanaged dedicated hosting, you provide all maintenance and monitoring.

Having different levels of support enables you to lower your cost to the web host when you get a dedicated server. This will not necessarily reduce your costs, however, since you will need to hire someone with the expertise to perform maintenance functions on the server. Keep this in mind when choosing between managed and unmanaged hosting.

Getting Started with Dedicated Hosting
The initial steps to getting started are the same with any hosting service—choose your host, figure out what hardware and operating system your site needs, etc. Your host does not design your site, but your host needs to know how your site is designed in order to get you the right server for your needs. You don’t want to be paying $245 per month for a server when you only need a $95 per month server instead. At this point, there is an added step with dedicated hosting—deciding what server you need and what level of management you expect. You can either hire your web host to maintain the server for you, or you can hire a web administrator who is also skilled in server maintenance. At WestHost, we try to make managed service affordable—it is only $100 more per month than unmanaged service.

Performing maintenance on a managed server is easy—you just let your host do it. Keeping your unmanaged server running requires in-house expertise. Your technical personnel will handle server upgrades, routine maintenance checks, and the occasional customer-caused outage. We will keep the server cool and physically secure, and we will monitor the server regularly to ensure network up-time. It is up to you to keep your software up to date and secure on your unmanaged server.

Dedicated hosting provides you access to the entire servers resources. This means you can expect a more efficient website, better up-time, and fewer problems due to server load. WestHost provides excellent affordable service, and we appreciate your interest.

What do Circuit City, Hollywood Video, and Borders have in common? All of them lost their market share to direct competitors that successfully employed an online storefront, or eCommerce: Best Buy, Blockbuster, and Barnes & Noble. Clearly, the capability to sell your product online is essential. It lowers your overhead costs and provides greater convenience for your customer.

Regardless of how small your business may be or what your product or service your business offers, taking advantage of the Internet and eCommerce can help your business grow and increase profit. However, eCommerce is highly competitive and there are plenty of businesses that flounder instead of flourish because they disregard the fundamental building blocks of creating and maintaining an eCommerce website. So before you build your online storefront take careful consideration of the essential elements of eCommerce:

• Make a name for yourself. The right domain name gives your business an identity that is easy to remember and stands out in a competitive crowd.
• Find the right host. Location is everything for a brick-and-mortar store and likewise an online storefront needs a reputable Web host to house the site for success.
• Be attractive. The design for your website needs to be easy to navigate for customers. There are some basic guidelines that can make your site both easy on the eyes and easy to use.
• Showcase trust. Customers will only provide private information including credit card information and phone numbers when a site is secure and appears legitimate. Make sure your site is secure and customers feel comfortable.
• Make payment as easy as possible. It is best to provide customers with a variety of payment methods including accepting credit cards, debit cards, and utilizing PayPal. Be sure you have the reliability and ability to process each payment.

Covering your bases with eCommerce is far too important to skip any steps. This guide is a simple outline that will give your business the basics necessary to make it big.

Step One: Selecting and Registering a Domain Name
A domain name is a completely unique online identity that tells customers who you are and how to find you. Selecting a domain name, or URL, for your site is crucial. Domain names often reinforce the name of your company, product, or service and can also become your business email address. A lot rides on having the right web address, so consider these suggestions before you pick the perfect domain name:

• Make it unforgettable. Choose a domain name that will help customers recognize and remember you. Using the name of your business, product, or service is a good idea.
• Be descriptive. Select a domain name that targets your business specifically. For example, a domain name like “Pianos.com” is a simple way to describe your business.
• Watch the length. Shorter domain names are easier to remember and type. Avoid complicated words, spelling, special characters or long phrases. Keeping your domain name simple makes it as easy as possible for people to find your site.

Once you settle on a domain name, you have to check to see if it is available with a domain name company. There are a number of domain name companies, or registrars, which can assist you in getting the name you want. Be sure to choose a company with credibility. If the name is available, you have to register the domain name with the registrar.

Registering a domain name is easy and inexpensive. The actual registration process can be painless and can take maybe ten minutes of your time. Be prepared to provide some personal information like your name, address, and phone number so the company can add you to the public domain registry that tracks domain name availability. Once you provide this information you will also need to decide how long you would like to own the domain for, keep in mind you can extend the domain duration for up to ten years.

Step Two: Plan the Structure of Your Site
Once you have chosen your domain name and have it registered, you need to build a user-friendly site that invites customers to come to your site, stay, and make a purchase. A lot of people use professional web design teams to create their website. In the event hiring help is not in your budget, there are self-service website building tools that don’t require extensive HTML knowledge. The most popular content management system is WordPress. WordPress is a renowned system that allows the average person to build a site and is a good starting point.

Keep in mind that each page on your site should focus on helping a customer learn what they need to know and how to buy your product or service quickly. The following tips can help you optimize your site:

1. Do some research. Check out what your competitors look like and make adaptations.
2. First impressions are lasting. Customers want easy access to company information. Make sure your site easily presents your company name, logo, contact information, an “about the company” statement, and any business policies.
3. Simplify your site. When you build your site, minimize how many clicks it will take to make an actual purchase. As a rule of thumb, four to six clicks are average.
4. Keep it clean. Try to avoid cluttering your site with unnecessary graphics, animations and images. Only use these visual elements when they enhance your marketing goals.

After you have completed step two, you are near ready to put your site on the Internet.

Step Three: Select a Web Host
Web hosting is a service that gives you the space necessary on a web server to make your site accessible to customers. It is similar to an online storage unit, where you rent space on a server (from a web hosting company) to keep your website files safe and secure. A web hosting company connects your site to a web browser and Internet connection, offers customer support, and has eCommerce features. Some businesses may prefer to have control over the purchase, set up, and maintenance of a web server. However, most small- to medium-sized businesses turn to a web hosting company rather than investing in the hardware, software, and necessary expertise to keep a site up and running. In order to select the right web hosting company consider:

• Web hosting packages. There are several different types of web hosting. A credible web host will offer a variety of hosting options to cater to your needs. For example, shared hosting is an affordable and popular type of web hosting that allows several sites to reside on the same server. If you anticipate having a larger and busier site, dedicated hosting is a private and personal server that is only for your site. Do a little research to figure out what type of web hosting your eCommerce site will require.
• Storage space. A good web hosting company will have the ability to accommodate to your website storage needs. As your business grows, you will want the freedom to get more storage space if necessary. Can the web hosting service meet the needs of your technical requirements? Does the web hosting service have the ability to adapt to your growth?
• Uptime. With an eCommerce site, you will want your site to be available 24 hours a day. Server outages will cause havoc for your business and the opportunity cost of server outages can be staggering. Clearly, constant availability of your website is critical—your customers may not come back if they happen upon your site when it is down. A web host should guarantee 99% uptime and availability. What is the guaranteed uptime offered by the web host provider?
• Technical support. One of the main advantages of utilizing a web host is customer and technical support. Having technical support means your questions and concerns can be handled without stress and you can focus on your business. What kind of customer support does the web host offer?

In the age of eCommerce there are additional things to consider with a web host like the features they may provide. Web host providers should offer an eCommerce shopping cart, merchant account to process payment information, and SSL security to protect payments.

Step Four: Start Selling
With an online identity, intriguing and professional online storefront, and a credible web host, you have a solid foundation for an eCommerce site. These basics get you on your feet, and you can start promoting and marketing your site to the public.

Whatever your product or service, eCommerce helps level the playing field against bigger companies. Take advantage of the enormous opportunity eCommerce presents and grab market share!