Every online business needs a good shopping cart to facilitate all of their e-commerce transactions. Most of the time the products or services you sell will not be the deciding factor in regards to the success of your business. Rather the methods in which you market and distribute those products and services is what will ultimately determine the productivity of your business. A good shopping cart will enhance your customer’s overall experience and will prompt them to return for more convenient e-shopping at a later date. A poor shopping cart solution will only give the customer frustration and dis-satisfaction, prompting them to seek the very same products and services you offer elsewhere. When considering an e-commerce hosting service, it is best to look for the following qualities in an online shopping cart.

Up-Selling Capabilities

If you have worked in the restaurant or sales industry in the past, then you are probably familiar with the concept of up-selling. Up-selling is the practice of offering additional products or services to a customer based on their original search criteria or purchases. For example, if an individual is about to purchase an MP3 player, then an appropriate up-sell would be to recommend a set of headphones to go with the MP3 player. Many shopping carts offer this kind of feature in a n automated fashion, allowing the webmaster to create groups of related products that can be sold together. These groups of products are then used to create recommendations for the customer at checkout time. This kind of feature will not only enhance the convenience of your customer’s shopping experience, but it will also increase your sales revenue as well!

User Reviews

Most customer’s are more inclined to buy a product or service when they see that previous customer’s have been satisfied with it in the past. Customer confidence is a crucial aspect in encouraging the sales of your products, and there is no better way to establish trust than through genuine user reviews. A good shopping cart will allow your customer’s to view reviews of the product they are purchasing, thereby prompting them to complete the sale. It is also optimal to have a shopping cart that encourages new customers to leave their own reviews.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is a crucial aspect in the promotion of any online business. Quality content and keyword density is the most common method of  search engine rankings, however the importance of a good shopping cart should not be overlooked. A good shopping cart will automatically create keyword rich URL’s for you products or services, thereby enhancing your site’s search engine optimization.

Coupons

Most people who shop online are looking for the best prices available. There are many sites online that are solely devoted to offering coupons for products and services. If you are selling one of these products and services then it is crucial that your site have a shopping cart with coupon capabilities. There is no telling how much business you may lose by bot allowing your customer’s to use coupons.

The UK based VPS hosting company Webfusion, has recently purchased the hosting assets of another hosting company, XCalibre Communications. Specific details of the transaction such as the final sale price of the companie’s assets have not yet been released. However, what is known is that Webfusion’s capabilities as a web host have certainly increased with this acquisition, and they are expected to add a wide variety of new features to it’s services, including the start of their new 24 hour support department. Of course the customers of Xcalibre Communications will now become the customers of Webfusion , however this does not pose reason for concern for Xcalibre customers as they will share in the enhanced benefits of Webfusion hosting as well. In fact, this may be an improvement for the existing customers of Xcalibre hosting.

The Transition

The transition is a little bit more complicated than a simple transferring of clients. To be specific, the clients of Xcalibre will now technically be clients of Flexiant Ltd. Flexiant will work in partnership with Webfusion to trial a service known as “FlexiScale.” Flexiscale is a new platform developed by Flexiant that will eventually become a service offered to all Webfusion customer’s as well.  In essence, all three companies will be forming an alliance with Webfusion at the head.

Webfusion’s Comments

When asked about the decision to purchase the assets of Xcalibre Communications, the Managing Director of Webfusion, stated: “XCalibre has an excellent portfolio of hosting products and we are delighted to partner with them. The acquired Xcalibre customer base will benefit from an increased product set and more choice in entry level managed hosting packages. We look forward to the opportunities to widen our portfolio and present these customers with a greater choice of hosting and web security solutions.”

Xcalibre’s Comments

The CEO of XCalibre, also had something to say about the deal: “This partnership with Webfusion is very important to us and will allow us to strengthen our focus on the continued development of FlexiScale platform and other software products. Our roots are in hosting but our passion is development and going forward this experience will shape our transition into and growth as a software and services company, pioneering cloud computing.”

Affects of The Deal On End-Users

The customer transition of Xcalibre clients to Webfusion services took effect immediately after the deal took place, and everything is now official. No services that were previously offered by Xcalibre Communications will be removed or altered, and customer’s can enjoy the same familiarity with their new web host, as everything is still identical. The control panel and the user interface are also completely identical. Xcalibre customer’s will however benefit from the new twenty four hour support department, and an overall wider array of features and services offered by Webfusion. Both companies have benefited from the transactions, as have the end-users, making this an optimal web hosting asset acquisition. If you are a customer of either one of these companies and you would like to know more about the deal, you can contact the new twenty four hour customer support.

Your website’s content is by far it’s most important attribute. Without interesting content your visitors will not return to your site in the future, in fact they probably will never find it to begin with! Simply uploading good content one time and then leaving your website’s in hopes of creating a megasite is not realistic. If you want your site flourish then you’ll need to update the content daily. This can be a problem for many business owners, because it can be very time consuming. To boost business productivity, many people use content management systems to create, upload, organize and store content for their website. Below are some of the advantages of content management systems.

Templates and Design

Content management systems give you the ability to store multiple templates for your website’s design, making website development quick and simple. With a good CMS you can change the template without affecting the pre-existing content on your website. This makes re-designing your website hassle-free, and eliminates the trial and error that is often associated with doing so. You can also build databases of templates so you have a wide selection to choose from at any time.

Updating Content

Content management systems also let you update content automatically on a scheduled basis, which means you can now set it and forget it as you wish. If you employ the use of freelance writers you can also grant them permissions and controlled access to the site, which will make your job a lot easier. You can let one user upload content and another edit it.

Runs on Your Operating System

You can also make changes to your website while you are offline by editing the content in your content management system which runs on your operating system. Then when you connect to the internet all of the changes will take place immediately. This is probably one of the most convenient features of a good CMS, as you no longer must rely on a constant internet connection to improve your website, and even without a connection you can aces all of your website’s files and databases directly form the operating system.

Polls and Surveys

With a content management system you can also publish polls and surveys on your website with ease. These polls and surveys give good insight into the interests of your visitors, which will ultimately let you know what kind of content you need to focus on uploading in the future.

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds bring traffic to your site by linking your updates to other popular sites within your niche. You can also use RSS feeds to snatch content form other website’s and then spin it using certain applications that can be added to your site’s control panel. RSS feeds also allow visitors to keep track of your updates directly from their browsers toolbar.

The search for a good web hosting company can be very confusing, especially with the ever increasing selection. Each company promises they are the best, so who do you believe? Before you can make your decision, you should know that all features are irrelevant unless the web hosting service offers top notch security. Before deciding on a web host you’ll want to make sure they are capable of keeping your website secure. The following terms will help you make your decision by letting you know what you should be looking for.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

SSL is an encryption protocol that keeps all of your website’s communications, both incoming and outgoing, secure from intruders. The incoming information ( credit card numbers, addresses, emails) is the most sensitive information and can be used by hackers to commit fraud with your customers’ information. For this reason SSL is one of the most important security features, and most online shoppers will not buy products or services form you if you do not have an SSL certificate posted on your website.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

FTP is a network security protocol that facilitates file transfer on both internal and external networks.  FTP is an important security feature because it gives the webmaster the ability to manage site accessibility and send files securely.

Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)

SFTP is a stronger version of FTP, offering more of a guarantee than standard FTP by using a secure shell to transfer data over the internet and between networked computers. Serious business owners will want to make sure their web host offers this as part of their security package.

Firewall

Nearly every web host is protected by a firewall of some sort, however not all web hosts give the end-user access to the administrative functions of the firewall. If you are serious about the security of your website, then you will choose a host that grants customer access to the configuration of their site’s firewall.

Spam Filter

You may think spam is just a nuisance, however there are many hackers that use spam to plant nasty viruses on your computer. Among the bad things that can happen because of simple spam is phishing (password stealing), and even data loss caused by malicious software. Spam not only threatens the security of your website and the safety of your computer, it also consumes plenty of bandwidth and it clutters your inbox with unwanted messages. A spam filter will solve nearly all of the potential problems that are caused by spam.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

A DDoS attack is very well know yet common attack executed by a hacker with access to multiple compromised computers. This attack is particularly dangerous because it can comprise an entire network of computers in short period of time.  Every website on the server, including yours will be affected detrimentally. In fact it is more than likely that the end-users will be affected the most by this type of attack. It is vital that you make sure your web hosting service has protection measures in place to prevent this kind of attack.

Having a good content management system is crucial to the success of any online business. With so many to choose from, it can be hard to decide which ones will live up to their promises. In fact, it can be difficult just to find the top three! Below we’ve given you an overview of the three best content management systems; Drupal, Joomla, and Mambo. The information below should aid you in conducting your own thorough investigation, based on your needs.

Drupal

Drupal has quickly become one of the most popular content management systems. It’s recent popularity boom is due to the fact that it is an open-source software, which means it can be improved by any developer with an interest in doing so. Drupal has been said to be a perfect solution for people who are building community-based websites such as forums. This is because one of it’s most notable features is it’s user permissions system. With it’s extensive administrative control, webmasters can control every aspect of their forum. Drupal is also preferred over Joomla in terms of development because it is easier to interact with and expand.

Joomla

Joomla has also gained popularity because of it’s powerful features and easy user interface. While Joomla also includes forum managing features, these features are not it’s strongest points. Among the more notable features of this CMS is it’s administrative functionality for image galleries, search engine optimization, shopping carts, and forum management. Some users choose Joomla over Drupal due to it’s user-friendly interface. Although there is some learning curve involved with Joomla it is often described as the easiest CMS around.

Mambo

The Mambo content management system was one of the first popular open source content managements systems. While it has been around for quite some time now, it still have a group of developers backing it that maintain it’s functionality and reliability. Even though it was one of the pioneer content management systems, it has fallen somewhat behind the newer CMS softwares available. The primary reason for it’s recently decreased popularity is it’s code incompatibility due to it’s age. For this reason many developers shy away from developing applications that can be used with Mambo. With each new advance in the consent management industry, Mambo becomes more obsolete.

Making the Decision

The first thing you’ll want to do when investigating your options, is go to the main site of each of the content management systems above. Make sure you review all of their features and ensure you’re going to be able to fulfill all of your needs by using the software. Even though one of the softwares may be more suitable for you it is still likely that you will need to install additional applications. It is very unlikely that you will find all of the desired features within one CMS, therefor you’ll want to do some research and find out which CMS has the compatible applications you need. Once you’ve made your decision, you can install the CMS of your choice simply with the Fantastico program.