Month: February 2011

Modern businesses rely heavily upon an integrated approach to commerce; this includes a huge commitment to online presence.  In fact if you look around, you will be unlikely to find a modern company that doesn’t have a dedicated website.  A website which is we’ll constructed and user friendly can really benefit the sales and public perception of a company.

There are a great many points to cover off and issues to consider when building a website, one of which how it is going to be hosted, essentially where will it ‘live’.  If you are a small start up business or a small on going concern then it will probably not be within your capabilities, financially, to have dedicated web hosting, like many other businesses you will have to share a server.  This can have some drawbacks; there can be issues surrounding the other websites, which also use the same server.  Search engines are fickle beasts and rely upon a degree of transparency and legitimacy in order to trust your site.  One of the reasons that a site can be ‘sandboxed’ is due to negative associations on a server level, rather than there being anything wrong with the content or behaviour of the website.

Sandboxing is the process whereby you can loose your ranked position in a web search; SEO plays an important part in this and pulling oneself out of the ‘sandbox’ requires a degree of caution and care.  Much like a game of chess, the website mustn’t be seen to be trying too hard to escape, rather remaining still and waiting for an opportunity to establish a link to a trusted site.  The more of these strong links the better, and over time the website will regain its old position.

Moving away from the potential pitfalls of shared servers, those companies that can afford it and require it will strongly benefit from dedicated web hosting.  Dedicated web hosting is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organisations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc.

Depending upon the size of the company and its offering to the consumer and its clients, the level of dedicated web hosting needs to satisfy all of these requirements.  In general a dedicated web hosting package will contain benefits similar to the following:

• CPU: Dual core processor, 2.2 Ghz
• RAM: 1GB which is upgradeable to 8GB
• Storage: 160GB SATA
• Unmetered bandwidth – allowing for multiple media platforms to be running simultaneously

As well as these features you can also expect the following guarantees:

• 99.9% Network uptime
• 1 UK IP address
• No Long term contracts
• No Set up fees

There are of course a huge a variety of dedicated web hosting options; it all depends on the requirements of the company in question.  This is where a period of consultancy is necessary, the majority of dedicated web hosting suppliers will have a support team and sales team that will be more than happy to talk you through the options and help you make the right choice for your company.

Dedicated web hosting is the preferred method of hosting for the modern business.  There are of course a variety of other options, such as shared hosting, which one can choose from, it all depends on the level of investment the company decides is necessary to support their online presence.  In the ideal world all businesses, regardless of their size will have the option to choose dedicated web hosting. The main advantages that dedicated web hosting has over shared hosting is that the company in question has complete control over the server, they can choose to upgrade, downgrade and manipulate the server to suit their business and online needs.

The importance of an online presence is clear to see in the modern business age, however with the sheer volume of websites currently live across the World Wide Web, the quality of the output needs to be of the highest order.  Imagine using the Internet to look for a service or product, the amount of time you spend on a site or page within that site is called ‘dwell time’.  Website designers toil endlessly to secure the longest dwell time they possibly can.  The main way to achieve this is to allow the user complete control of the site, the media that is used to sell the products and services should be set up so that the consumer can access it instantly.  Dwell time is the gold dust of web developers, and has been recorded in the past at an average of only two seconds.

This clearly indicates how important it is to the company to have an excellent website. Dedicated web hosting can really assist with this; the main reason is that the server is theirs to play with. They are not sharing the server with anyone else and as such there are no limitations.  The bandwidth is unmetered; this allows those who choose to take advantage of dedicated web hosting the opportunity to stream a variety of multimedia platforms without the worry of delays.  Instant information, a direct route from consumer to product, subtlety can be interwoven into a site, but the main purpose is shorten the amount of time it takes for the consumer to reach the product once they get onto the site.

The suppliers of dedicated web hosting servers are easily found by an online search, the menus allow the user quick access to the product description and in some cases there is a live chat function so that even the most simple of questions can be answered in real time, by a trained professional.  Choosing a dedicated web hosting supplier needs to be well thought through, compare the costs and the packages and above all work out what will be the most beneficial for your company, perhaps you can opt for the a shared server in the meantime whilst you develop your online presence, however once you look to expand and your website grows, slowly evolving into a multi-layered operation, then the need for dedicated web hosting will become more apparent.