Even businesses can get into the holiday spirit.  One such merry web hosting provider is WebNet.  This web hosting company is getting itself and customers in a festive mood by offering some fantastic deals good through to the end of the year.

About WebNet

With beginnings in 2002, WebNet Hosting, LLC is a privately held web hosting and e-commerce provider located in Rockville, Maryland.  The web hosting provider has distinguished itself as a leader in the industry by providing rock-solid support and 24×7 non-stop services to all of its customers.

Among some of the best reasons to choose this company as one’s next e-commerce capable web host is its constant availability.  Even in the wee hours of the morning on a holiday, one can expect an actual human being to answer all incoming calls.  This type of commitment to complete service is one that sets WebNet in a class by itself.

WebNet controls a tier 3 data center with over 12,000 square footage.  This data center is open and secured 24×7 year-round.  The OC-48 fiber optic redundant connections employed by the hosting company ensure continuous operation for all of its clients.

WebNet Services

WebNet offers two different web hosting accounts for prospective customers to choose from.  Starting at just $7.95 a month, the company’s Standard option comes with 1,000 megabytes of disk space, 3,000 megabytes of monthly transfer allowance and is stocked with the standard hosting programs and options one expects from any regular web hosting account.  One step up and customers can build their online presence with the Business Builder for only $17.95 a month.  This hosting account option comes with 3,000 megabytes of disk space, 60,000 megabytes of monthly bandwidth and also includes a web site editor tool and Site Studio Web Design (over 600 templates to choose from).

Miva Merchant hosting is what WebNet is most famous for.  The provider gives customers three different Miva Merchant 5.5 accounts to choose from.  The E-Starter is equipped with 500 megabytes of storage, 5,000 megabytes of bandwidth and comes in at the low price of $24.95 a month.  The difference between this account and the next two higher Miva Merchant accounts is the allowed number of dedicated IP addresses (the E-Starter does not include this) and the allowed space and bandwidth.  The E-Customized costs $34.95 a month and the E-Semi-Dedicated will set one back $84.95 a month.

As with many web hosting providers, WebNet offers a lucrative reseller account option.  Each account can be purchased at just $10.95 per month and includes one Standard web hosting plan.  The solution provided can be fully branded and is set on private nameservers along with a reseller control panel.

Latest Bargains

From now until the end of the year, WebNet is offering the following fantastic holiday deals:

• Sign up for any of the company’s Miva Merchant Web Hosting plans and receive the first month free
• A waiver of the $99 set up fee that is normally included with any dedicated hosting package
• A free Miva Merchant 5.5 license (normally $995)
• A free upgrade to the latest version of Miva Merchant 5.5 with the purchase of any Miva Merchant hosting account
• A free Miva migration from previous web host to WebNet with a guarantee of uninterrupted up-time

Final Thoughts

WebNet is an industry leader when it comes to reliable hosting with dedicated support and services.  The hosting provider is clearly getting into the holiday spirit and passing this joy along to new customers.

Open-source software has really made a name for itself in recent times, now prevalent in the form of multimedia players, operating systems and web applications.  In fact, companies around the world are leveraging this type of software to maintain their day to day business operations.  Open-source programs can suite a variety of needs across a broad range of industries and market segments.  One area this software has truly settled into is e-commerce, in particularly, the shopping cart.

Open-source shopping cart software offers a cost effective alternative to traditional commercial solutions.  Perhaps the biggest draw to these programs is that they provide the online merchant with the ability to customize the software to satisfy the unique requirements of their business.  This is all made possible active communities that make templates, modules and various other components widely available in addition to their continuous efforts to enhance the project.

What to Look for

When shopping for any software, open-source or proprietary, it is important for merchants to thoroughly research and evaluate the product before sending it into deployment.  Because there is no single solution that works for every store, it is crucial to select a cart based on individual needs.   With that said, here some critical features you want to look for in an open-source product:

Product Capacity - An online store owner must be able to determine limitations for their product capacity.  For instance, if you have a catalog compromised of more than 500 products but the shopping cart only supports 200, you should know right then and there that the software cannot suit your requirements.  The good thing is that most open-source shopping carts offer support for an unlimited number of products.

System Performance – A lagging, sluggish online store is one of the fastest ways to send your customers surfing to the competition.  For this reason, you need to perform due diligence to make sure your shopping cart delivers an optimal performance.  A lot of this depends on server configuration, but the software itself should definitely be evaluated for performance before you make the final decision.

Community Support – An open-source shopping cart usually comes with no official form of technical support or customer service, which essentially means that there is no hotline to call up whenever you experience problems.  Therefore, you need to find a piece of software that is backed by a strong community of developers and users who solidly back the project.  While the quality of support can never be guaranteed, it is still a good idea to check online in the appropriate forums to access the atmosphere and measure how long it takes for users to generate a response.

Payment Gateway Compatibility – If you want to be able to accept and process credit and debit card payments, then you will need an open-source solution that supports third-party payment gateways.  Although this needs to be considered in your research, it should be comforting to know that many open-source shopping carts are compatible with the major payment gateway service providers.

Any online company owners knows just how important customer support is to the longevity of their business.  They also understand how difficult it can be to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.  An efficient support system requires a lot of careful planning, especially if you want to ensure that the customers are taken care of without spending too much money.  Here are some innovative features that will help you accomplish both goals:

Support Tickets

The ticketing system has become one of the most commonly used support features on today’s market.  This is mainly because they tend to be very affordable.  With a ticketing system, your customers can open up a case where they submit their questions or concerns to the support department who in turn, handles the issue.  With reliable employees, a few individuals can take care of the communications without incurring too many problems.  Support ticket systems are easy to use and generally simple to integrate into an existing e-commerce site.

Live Chat

Live chat is a customer support feature that has become incredibly popular over the last couple of years.  Now from a cost perspective, it can prove to be a disadvantage compared to the support ticket system as it requires more human resources and usually a more advanced site design.  On the bright side, support via live chat has turned out to be a useful feature that customers absolutely love.  This is mainly because they are able to obtain immediate responses in real-time and receive near-instant feedback on their queries.  As a store owner, having this luxury also means that purchasing decisions can be made noticeably faster.  And since the average visitor usually only wants to pose one or two questions, the time your support agents spend occupied on the chat line is often no more than a few minutes.

Automatic Response

Similar to many areas of online business, the most affordable way to do almost anything involves automating the process and eliminating a huge portion of the costs associated with it.  Such automation features have recently become available for customer support, providing excellent opportunities for driving down costs without leaving the customer feeling as if they are being ignored.  Keep in mind that this often requires more advanced site development as well as tedious programming to create an application that is capable of accurately analyzing queries and promptly distributing an automated response.  However, this feature can make for a support system that enables your business to enjoy the best of both worlds.  For example, the customer is able to get a response almost instantly, while your company saves money on expenses in the support department.

Many online businesses find that the best way to approach these features is to integrate all three into their support system.  Because this can end up being a costly endeavor, you need to weigh your options to determine if integration is the right move for your needs.  Most importantly, you must remember that the customers enable your business to exist, and should always be given the attention that makes them feel as so.

One of the most inaccurate statements within the web creation world is that web design and web development are essentially the same thing.  In actuality, web design is one subsection of web development.  Web development encompasses many different activities that culminates in the creation of an online web site.

Web Design

According to Wikipedia, web design is “the skill of creating presentations of content (usually hypertext of hypermedia) that is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web”.  Web design tasks include animation creation and implementation, content creation for web pages, style sheet creation, and working within the HTML/XHTML/XML of web pages.

Good web design requires great planning.  Not only does a web designer actually create the pages that go into an online site but he or she also needs to plan out the web site prior to the actual creation.  This involves brainstorming the context, audience, purpose, content and compatibility issues.  Once these essential needs are fleshed out, the fun of web design can commence.

The simplest way to look at what exactly web design means is to think of the overall creation of a web site.  The planning and page creation are the end results of what a web designer must accomplish.

Web Development

Web development is a much broader term than web design and covers all the aspects of creating a web site.  E-commerce, web design, content creation, scripting and server configuration are all pieces of the larger web development puzzle.

A new web site about to be launched on the World Wide Web may entail not only informational pages but also product or service pages, a means for customers or clients to be able to purchase those goods, a merchant solution to process payments, support methods and even software or programs that allow online interaction with customers and clients.  Even more detailed web sites may include social networking and media widgets or animation and graphic-centric information.

All of the different needs and web technologies that can be part of the creation of a web site can be neatly placed under the umbrella of web development.  When a business desiring to place their web site on the internet looks for assistance in this matter, often a web development teamed is hired.  This team will have e-commerce experts, designers, server administrators, hosting companies or personnel, and may also include social media gurus and other technology-specific experts.

Conclusion

What it all comes down to is knowing the difference between a designer or a development team.  If a business already has a web site up and running on the internet and simply needs some minor modifications or additions made, hiring a web designer is the ticket.  However, if the business in question is not already on the internet and needs to create an entire web site, the business then needs to look for a web development team that may include a web designer.  The former is just one piece of the later.

Open source technology has been around for quite some time and has struggled over the years to place itself in the higher echelons of business and government.  The United States’ current President, Barack Obama, has been a vocal proponent of an open and transparent administration.  To further emphasize this, the President recently approved the use of the open source CMS (content management system) Drupal for the WhiteHouse.gov web site.

About Drupal

Drupal is a free open source CMS that allows easy publishing and managing of web sites.  There are tens of thousands of web sites online now that utilize the program and include site types such as community web portals, corporate web sites, resource directories and even social networking sites.

The program is designed to allow quick additions of modules that enable a web site to expand its functionality.  Some of these modules allow for newsletter publication, picture galleries, e-commerce and much more.

As Drupal is open source software, it is constantly being checked, debugged and new updates are constantly being released.  The advantage of this is ensuring that the safest and most secure edition is available to its users.

The word from Dries Buytaert

According to Dries Buytaert, creator and founder of Drupal, his software is well matched and up to the task of helping further the platform of an open and transparent government.  He goes on further to state “Drupal’s flexibility and modularity enables organizations to build sites quickly at lower cost than most other systems.”  Dries feels this move to use open source technology and software indicates that governments are realizing that open source does not present any added risks when compared to propriety software.

One important point Dries brings up is the ability for the Drupal-run WhiteHouse.gov web site to allow for open communication and participation.  This, by itself, is worth seeing the new site and checking out what one can accomplish with respect to open participation.

Not the only government site

Surprisingly, the WhiteHouse.gov is just the pinnacle of government offices using Drupal to publish their web sites.  The Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the General Service Administration and the Department of Education have all been using the Drupal CMS for some time.

Other large business, company and entity web sites currently running on Drupal include the New York Observer, Yahoo! Research, Christian Assemblies International and Sony Music.  The list of Drupal-run web sites continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Future looking open

Going on into the future, the hope is that with Drupal’s latest coup of the White House web site, other government agencies, big businesses and even government entities world-wide will see the awesome potential of open source software and technology.  Further, this may also show the world that open source technology is a huge step in the right direction – especially in the area of cutting costs.  Perhaps this recent Presidential approval will start a web site trend and we’ll begin to see more and more “big guys” realize the advantages of open source.