When you are setting up a business website it will be necessary to have a hosting account where the data and information pertaining to your site is stored. This could be a single dedicated server or more commonly one that is shared with other website accounts. The term cloud hosting refers to data that is spread across a number of different servers in different places which are all connected together. There is a virtual server that accesses this data, but it only exists in the virtual environment or cloud as it is more commonly known.

The most attractive feature of cloud hosting as seen by businesses is the improved security that cloud hosting provides. Protecting a cloud network from cyber threats is much simpler as the data is held in a central location rather than a dedicated server. Another major benefit is that the data can quite simply be recovered should there be an outage in any devices accessing the cloud.

The way in which cloud hosting can be adapted to changes is seen as a plus point for new businesses because as the business develops and possibly increases the number of employees, the demand for server capacity may rise. Cloud hosting allows for fluctuating business needs without additional financial impact on the company. So, the advantages of cloud hosting can be seen to be worth pursuing this as an option.

As the old sating goes, a picture can speak a 1000 words which is shy graphics are so important in the world of marketing. People do not always have the time to read paragraphs of text, which is why it is important to create graphics that get your message across quickly.

You can of course choose to create your own graphics to use r take your own photos but these will not be as good a quality as if you used a professional graphic designer. If you use a designer who also have marketing experience then they should be able to tell you what you should include in your graphic. If it is a banner or an advert for example, they can help you decide on the layout and images to sue. They can also advise you on what text may work well and is most likely to entice people to click on it. This can be highly useful for call to action banners when you are asking the reader to do something such as fill in a form or request a brochure.

Although using a graphic designer is often not cheap. It is definitely a service that is well worth paying for and that can net you a health return on your investment.

Some many small businesses have websites built and then do not speak to their web developer for years. This can cause issues later on down the line of the web developer has changed their contact details or no longer work on a self employed basis. You may not realise that anything has changed until your domain expires and you have no way of logging in to get it back.

IF you do decide to use a freelance web developer then you need to make sure that you protect yourself and your business. If possibly, try and buy the domain name yourself so you will also have access to it. It does mean that you will need to remember to renew it buy you can set this up to do automatically.

You should also try and find out who the website is going to be hosted with. Again some web developers will let you host your own website but they will need access to the server to be able to create and manage the site.

If you decide to use someone else in the future of if they inform you that they can no longer manage your site then you will need to remember to change the passwords for the domain and the service you used for the hosting if they are different.

At present online marketing is even more important than ever. Many retails still have not been able to open their doors since we went in to a second lock down and some shoppers are still shielding meaning that ll their shopping is now having to be done online. In order to get a piece of the pie you need to make sure that your website and products can easily be found on the search engines such as Google.

One way to instantly improve your rankings for some of you main keywords / phrases is to set up a PPC campaign.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is a form of online marketing. You essentially set up adverts online that people can click on to be taken through to a specific page on your site. You then pay a fee for each time the advert is clicked. This can increase your traffic in minutes and help you compete against some large businesses.

It can be relatively easy to set up a PPC campaign but making it affective can be a different matter. You do need to know a what you are doing when it comes to setting them up. If you are not going to be using an agency to help you then you need to have a good read through all of the information about the different settings for campaigns and ads/ ad groups.

If you have a website or are looking to get one and need a log in area, you need to ensure that you have thought carefully about what needs to be included and how it is going to work. Login areas can be used for several things. It may be that you want to allow your customers to log in to view invoices, places ordered or track orders or maybe the log in area will allow them to post on a blog, download content or send messages and emails to other members.

Login areas need to be highly secure. If you are going to be storing card or bank details then you will need extra security and will need to be PCI DSS compliant which will involve your site and company going through several compliance checks to confirm that you are collecting and storing data correctly.

If it is important that you use an experienced programmer to build a login area for you and test it thoroughly before it goes live on your website. Login areas are prone to hacks and you could find yourself in a lot of trouble if you do not protect peoples data correctly by using secure code. As technology and programming advances you will need to update areas of the login code to ensure that it is still secure.

A blog website can be used for a number of different reasons. You may have a website that sells goods or services or that gives out information. A blog can be a great way to share recent industry or internal news and updates. You can create a blog section within your site or even have it on its own domain. Sometimes people use blogs to help improve the SEO on their site as it gives them an easy and clean way to add fresh, relevant content to their site. They can often set it up to pull the latest few stories through to the home page so that it is always updated.

It may be that your website is just a blog and this is al you need. You may be someone that is recording their journey to somewhere whether that be a physical location or a life journey they are taking. You can then share this on social media pages or with friends etc to keep them updated. Some people create blog sites to allow them to review products and services other companies sell. They may quickly build up a loyal following which then gives them a lot of traffic to the site. They may even get paid to try new products and review them.

Many businesses had to turn to online marketing and sales during the Covid pandemic as their physical shop or business premises had to shut down. The businesses that were able to continue trading could only do so virtually so a website or social media accounts were vital.

As we see lockdown restrictions lifted and more and more people being able to resume more of a normal life, it may be that you feel your online business is not needed anymore, but there is always a need for online marketing. It may be that some of your customers are not local to you so would never of used you had it not been for your virtual presence. Often the biggest cost in time and money is the initial set u of a website or social media profiles. Once all this hard work has been done, it makes sense to keep them running. You want to give your customers and potential customers many different ways of communicating with you and making a purchase from you. Even after all social distancing measures have been removed, there may be some people that still do not feel confident going out in to shops yet, so it is important to offer them other options.  

At present online marketing is even more important than ever. Many retails still have not been able to open their doors since we went in to a second lock down and some shoppers are still shielding meaning that ll their shopping is now having to be done online. In order to get a piece of the pie you need to make sure that your website and products can easily be found on the search engines such as Google.

One way to instantly improve your rankings for some of you main keywords / phrases is to set up a PPC campaign. PPC stands for Pay Per Click and is a form of online marketing. You essentially set up adverts online that people can click on to be taken through to a specific page on your site. You then pay a fee for each time the advert is clicked. This can increase your traffic in minutes and help you compete against some large businesses.

It can be relatively easy to set up a PPC campaign but making it affective can be a different matter. You do need to know a what you are doing when it comes to setting them up. If you are not going to be using an agency to help you then you need to have a good read through all of the information about the different settings for campaigns and ads/ ad groups.

If you are thinking about building a directory website, there are a lot of things to consider. You need to think carefully about how your website is going to work. Are you going to charge a fee for people to create a listing for their business or are you going to charge to sell advertising space around the site, or maybe you chose to do both. It can be hard to make money from a directory website, especially to start with as you will need to prove to people that it is successful before they will want to part with any money to be advertised on there.

Often directory websites have to start off small and then over time as the site grows in popularity, you can start to charge more money. You will need to have a decent budget in which you can pay your graphic designer, programmer and hosting.

It is important to work out how you are going to enable people to list on it as you probably want it to be as automated as possible. You can buy prebuilt systems out there that you can then adapt to work how you want it to. They will usually have payment gateway options already installed.

Websites analytics can be so important when it comes to improving your site. Most servers have some sort of analytics package installed on them but often these are not very user friendly and only give you basic information. You should start by installing A stats package such as Google Analytics. This software is easy to use and gives you access to a huge amount of data that can be vital to improving your site and increasing sales.

There are a number ways in which you can use this data to your advantage. Looking at the sources of traffic to your site and allow you to see how people are finding you. It can also tell you how successful other areas of your marketing are. For example, you can see the number of referrals from social media sites such as Facebook.

Bounce rates are important too as they tell you if visitors are leaving your site within a fe seconds of landing on a page. If this is happening you need to investigate why. It may be that the page in questions is not loading correctly or is not related to the search term that it is showing up for. All of this will help you improve your site as and when needed.