Tips For Traditional Businesses

Online presence was once regarded as a strong option to increase your sales, multiply opportunities and gain the global audience.

Not anymore!

Don’t get us wrong. In fact, it has graduated from being a “strong option” to a “compulsory requirement” (Well, Almost!) Today, the online presence is not important for the big players only. Even a small grocery store outside your house or your neighborhood aunt making handcrafted items at home have either got their own website or are thinking of buying the one in order to increase their sales. So it would not be an exaggeration to say that after big players, medium enterprises, small businesses and start-ups, it is the time when the traditional home businesses and small-time merchants will also start investing in building their own website and making a strong online reputation. Many of them are senior citizens, housewives or downtown folks with a very little technical knowledge. They might be holding a good experience of their respective field but are still counted as the beginners when it comes to the digital arena. Hence such people need to be very careful while choosing the right web hosting provider for their requirements. Here are a few tips that can help them to take the right decision and prevent themselves from any possible issues in the future.

 

Don't Buy Cheap Hosting Plans Just to Save Some Few Dollars

When you buy the cheapest web hosting packages without reviewing the reputation of the providers you probably start pushing your website to the doom. We very well know that the pricing is determined by the quality. Cheaper the price, cheaper the quality! This is the fundamental mistake made by a huge number of businesses and bloggers in order to save some dollars.

• In the long run, it proves to be a very costly mistake when you realise that your “substandard website” fails to survive the competition, attract the visitors and leave any good impact on the partners.
• You needed a website to enhance reputations and revenue. So what’s the use of such a website that fails to achieve either of these objectives?
• As a bonus harm- it repels the targeted audience, tells people that your business might also be as substandard as the quality of your site and attract back button hits to foil all your SEO endeavours.

 

Prefer Relevance over Reputation

While reputation does matter a lot when you find the best web hosting provider, make sure that it should not be the sole criteria. Many clients take the providers’ reputations too seriously and believe them without using their judgment capabilities just because they “rely on the reputation”.

• While it is true that expertise and experience play a great role in building a reputation, it is the relevance that should play the decisive role.
• Even the most reputed names of the industry are irrelevant to you if they don’t provide the services that precisely cater to your specific business needs without coupling you to inflate your budget.

 

Understand Terms & Conditions Thoroughly

Every web hosting plan comes with a specific set of T & C points. So, when you officially agree to buy web hosting package from a hosting provider you agree to abide by those terms and conditions. Surprisingly many clients never read these terms and conditions before signing the fine print.

• As a result, they are prone to defaults. Remember, some of these terms and conditions come with associated penalties and at that time you cannot say that it was an unintentional mistake or you were not informed.
• After all, you have signed the document that obviously means that you have gone through it and understood it well.

 

Make Sure You Get Premium Support

You would not like to be stuck in the middle of your mission-critical operations or lose the online sales just because your website is down. For that, you need strong and reliable assistance. Just like other subscription based service you should make sure that your web hosting provider offers the reliable after-sales support to efficiently resolve any issues that may arise in the future.

• An ideal web hosting provider should have an in-house support team that is available round the clock and is accessible via multiple offline/online mediums.
• They should not only be prompt and courteous but should also be capable of offering the precise solution.
• Apart from technical proficiency the team coordination, communicating skills and professional attitude are other key qualities of a good support team.

 

Unlimited is not Literally Unlimited

Unlimited plans are the ultimate tool to enhance the sales. While it helps the hosting providers to sell more, the unsuspecting and gullible clients may have to pay the price for the same. Many clients still take the unlimited term a bit too seriously and comfortably keep on burdening their site with massive elements- files, media, images, apps, plug-ins, etc. without any concerns.

However, the unlimited plans do mention the fair usage policy in their terms and conditions.

• The provider can penalize you if you exceed the fair limits
• If any outages are caused due to the massive resource consumption by your site then they might even end your subscription.
• No amount of complaining can help you in that condition as you already signed the documents containing the fair usage policy that explicitly mention the penalties for exceeding fair usage limits.
• So it is very important to read the terms and conditions very well before you sign the final draft.
• In fact, if you aren’t able to understand the technical jargon then you can even ask your hosting provider to explain the same in the laymen’s terms that you can easily understand.