Wednesday, April 3, 2013

5 Ideas That Will Make You Think About Servers

By Joseph Colle


E-Commerce is the blanket term used to designate any commerce that takes place over the Internet. E-Commerce includes the buying and selling of any good or service you can find on the web. To succeed in E-Commerce you will need to find the right platform, the right server, and you will need data analytics (DA) to make the most informed choices possible.

The Platform

These days, any business can be run on the Internet. This requires finding the right platform for your business. Your platform is your online shopping cart, the software that allows shoppers to perform transactions on your website. Without your platform E-Commerce is impossible. When choosing the right platform these general guidelines can help.

First, make sure that the platform vendor you go with will not be running outside ads during your customer's transactions. It is your business, your website and you should have control of everything your customers see on it. It is also important to make sure that your platform runs a real time shopping cart. This means that the shopping cart displays a running total for the customer at all times. This will result in increased sales. You should also ensure that your platform supports all of the major credit cards as well as PayPal so as not to alienate groups of potential customers. When you choose your platform you are, in fact, opening an online store. You will certainly want to make sure that your customers have a convenient and pleasurable experience.

Which Server Is Right For You?

Most business accounts are set up by web hosting companies on what is known as a shared server. Basically, this means that you share a hard drive and bandwidth with many of their other clients. Shared servers can lead to problems including possible security issues and traffic bottlenecks due to insufficient bandwidth to support the traffic on your site. These issues mean lost customers and lost revenue. A solution to these problems is to get on a dedicated server.

On a dedicated server your business alone is served on its own hard drive with its own bandwidth. This increases the security of your website, the storage space available for website pages, images and video, and the ability to support increased traffic with better responsiveness. Dedicated servers do cost more than shared servers but the improved sales and customer experience should more than make up for the increase in costs.

Using Data Analytics

Data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data to determine the relevance of an existing business model and to make informed decisions based on the findings. Basically, traffic patterns and behavior are analyzed to find patterns that can be used to support important business decisions. This data can be used to guide advertising spending and content management.

For your E-Commerce site to succeed choosing the right platform, server and the use of data analytics are essential.




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