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Building and managing a website that will be effective in soliciting new clients, selling products/services, and building a residual income can be a difficult process. However, with the proper tools and resources it is possible to easily build sites, organize them into categories, and maintain a massive product catalog on ongoing basis. E-commerce websites are managed through administrative interfaces known as control panels, which can be accessed through the backend interface of the web hosting account. Every web hosting account includes some type of control panel, through which modules can be accessed that pertain to various aspects of site management, creation, and promotion. The following paragraphs outline the most appealing attributes of control panels in relation to building e-commerce sites.

Recording and Monitoring Promotional Progress

One of the most important aspects of successfully building a website is tracking and recording progress in terms of traffic generation, sales, conversions, and leads. Without tracking such progress, it can be difficult to know which methods are bringing success, and it can therefore be challenging to decide which techniques you would like to put more resources into. The first step in building a customer base for your e-commerce website is finding and targeting that customer base through various forms of advertising. Ultimately, the goal is to generate a large amount of web traffic on a daily basis by applying refined techniques, which are developed over time by analyzing statistics and web analytics. Within the control panel of your web hosting account there are usually several web analytic applications that can easily be installed on your websites monitor progress urgently.

Enhancing the Functionality of Your Websites

Having a robust control panel can also help you improve the functionality of your websites by allowing you to install various third-party applications such as content management systems (with additional plug-ins), comprehensive spam prevention utilities, and the aforementioned web analytics applications. Using your web hosting control panel you can also create Cron jobs that will execute tasks on a timed basis in order to eliminate the frustration of performing repetitive administrative duties to manage your websites. In essence, the control panel is the backbone of your e-commerce web hosting account, and it will be the interface used most often to create and manage your business websites.

Improving Customer Support

Your control panel will also allow you to improve customer support by providing more support methods, such as live chat, and instant e-mail (with the aforementioned spam prevention utilities installed as well). Through your control panel you can install applications that will allow you to communicate with your customers or site visitors instantly through a chat box that will be displayed at a specified spot on your web pages. If your goal is to generate a high volume of sales and push conversions to the maximum, then you’ll want to utilize multiple methods of offering customer service and technical support. People that shop online are more likely to order a product or service from your website if they can access support and receive answers to their inquiries instantly.

Every online business owner and entrepreneur knows that you can have as much web traffic as you’d like, but it doesn’t amount to anything without a high conversion rate. Converting web traffic into customers is a difficult process that requires several stages – pre-selling, establishing professionalism, and providing a detailed overview of your product or services. To do this effectively you will need a properly designed website that is both easy to navigate and robust with features and functionality. To maximize e-commerce conversions you’ll want to utilize a combination of on page keyword related content, off page search engine optimization, and targeted traffic sources. The following information teaches you how to maximize e-commerce conversions by optimizing website design.

Optimizing Landing Pages

Since landing pages are the first web pages that your visitors will see when they arrive at your website, it is imperative to ensure that these pages are designed most efficient. Every landing page should contain what is known as “sticky”  content, which is basically content that gives the visitor incentive to remain on the page for more than 30 seconds. Many marketers decide to use videos for such purposes, as the majority of web surfers will stop and watch a video if one is loaded on the page. Another way to grab the interest of a site visitor is to utilize flash animations, on page interactive games, music, and even integration with social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

Establishing Professionalism

Once you’ve captured the attention of your visitor with landing page, they may be sent directly to a checkout page, or they may decide to browse around the rest of your website before purchasing your product or service. You need to ensure that, when they arrive on the other page on your site it appears to be just as professional and is just as captivating as your previously designed landing page. Ideally, you want the theme of the rest of your website to match the landing page, in order to provide a visually enjoyable experience for your visitors. Be sure to use many categories, tags, and submenus to simplify user navigation for your website visitors. You can also use stamps from organizations such as the Better Business Bureau, and other website certificates like SSL certificates (which are security certificates issued by web hosting providers).

Maximizing Potential through Advertising

Once your website is professionally designed and you have a landing page that is bringing decent conversion rates, you want to maximize your income potential by placing contextual advertising on all of your webpages. Not only will this boost your residual monthly income, it will also add further professionalism to your site, as many novice web surfers will hold the perspective that you are somehow affiliated with many of the large name brands that are advertised through pay per click advertising networks such as Google AdSense. In fact, placing advertises on your webpage can actually bring you a significant full-time income if if the proper keywords are targeted effectively.

Online merchants need to have their trade in succession and they do so by relying on ecommerce web hosting. Why do they depend on ecommerce web hosting? It is ecommerce web hosting that enables them to put up shopping carts and have their goods and services sold online. Also with the help of these hosting companies the owners of websites are able to take different kinds of payments and then transfer those money amounts to their bank accounts. However, there are three points that you need to consider prior to giving your monetary future to a web hosting company.

The Background of the Company

It is essential for you to know the background and history of the ecommerce web hosting company that you plan to hand over your site to. Therefore, you should know the time period that the particular company has been into doing this business. You can get help from looking at the foundation date of a particular company which is listed by most of the companies on their websites. Carry out a thorough Internet research on the company before signing with it. With the Internet search, you will be able to locate the complaints and queries regarding that company in webmaster forums or other websites displayed on your search engine results page. Blog posts and press releases regarding the company will also offer a good amount of help in this matter.

Be Well Informed of the Long-Standing Costs

The cost of getting an ecommerce web hosting site is one of the primary matters of concern for webmasters. You might come across low priced web hosting sites when in search of one and also can get sidetracked by the monthly costs and installation fees of many, but you should not be easily trapped in this area and be sensible to compute the long-standing costs that an ecommerce web hosting website endures. Sum up the annual price that you will have to pay for your web hosting site and try to pay the amount on annual basis than on a monthly basis. You will not carry on your business for just a month or two even if it is initial (hopefully) so there is no way that an annual payment will turn out to be a damage for you in the prospect of your business.

Standard Downtime

You should know that signing a deal with a low performing business ecommerce web hosting company will cost you money from your business. The standard up-time of a site is mentioned on many web hosting company websites. A standard up-time of 99% is considered to be best. However, if you don’t find a 99% standard up-time in any company, you should locate the reason of it and also find out how well they have corresponded to an issue. You must also find out the customer care service of the company and determine how efficiently they respond to clients. Many companies may also have their standard response time mentioned on their websites. If however it is not mentioned you can find out by sending them an email and you will get to know their time to respond.

In the early morning of Friday, February 19^th, 2011, Paypal suffered from a brief outage causing all transactions to be halted and their website to go down. According to the Paypal Developer’s Network, the issue began exactly at 12:11am PST and was resolved over an hour later at 1:23am PST. However, during the downtime, Paypal officially stated they did not have an estimated time for resolution.

International Sites

In addition to the downtime for Paypal customers in the United States, the company also revealed that international sites like Paypal in the United Kingdom and Spain may have had much slower performance until 2am PST. Netcraft stated that Paypal has regularly scheduled maintenance between 11pm and 1am PST every Thursday and Friday.

Not Consistent with Scheduled Maintenance

In the past, these routine checks have not led to noticeable downtime. Also, the outage on Friday morning was outside of the typical scheduled maintenance window. In addition to being down, the financial company also noted major issues with its payments API software which significantly affected online retailers, especially those in the parent company, eBay.

An Ecommerce Issue

Any type of downtime for an online financial institution can be a major problem for ecommerce websites. This particular outage blocked customers from accessing their accounts altogether. Therefore, many customers were unable to purchase items from those only accepting Paypal such as on eBay auction sites or when buying digital products.

During the downtime, at 12:52am PST, eBay released the following statement “EBay is currently experiencing checkout problems” and “community members may see errors or timeouts when attempting to pay for an item. We are working on the problem and apologize for the inconvenience.”

Unable to Find a Workaround

This issue must have been major as the Paypal Support Team reported they were unable to find any type of workaround to fix the issue. Therefore, they may have had to transfer all information to redundant servers in order to push the sites back up in a timely manner. Paypal last suffered performance issues in December 2010 as it, and many other financial companies, became the target of a DDoS attack as retaliation for the restriction of WikiLeaks.

Anytime a financial company has networking issues, this can be a cause for major concern as customers do not know if this is an attack and their banking information is safe. It is also a concern for retailers as customers attempting to purchase cannot push the transaction through as a result of downtime at their financial provider. Luckily the issue was quickly fixed and the servers were only down for an hour.

On Friday, February 25^th, computing security firm Symantec announced it has partnered with Adgregate Markets, a social commerce organization, to offer SSL certificates and the VeriSign Trust Seal to customers of ShopFans which is a Facebook application for creating ecommerce stores. ShopFans was programmed as a native Facebook platform application that ties brands directly into the infrastructure of Facebook. This includes:

• New feeds
• Wish lists
• Gift registries
• Likes
• Shares
• Flash sales
• Loyalty rewards
• Social badging

A recent study showed that over 92 percent of executives from leading retailers are focusing their marketing efforts on Facebook and subsequent applications. Furthermore, over 71 percent of users have confirmed they are more likely to make a purchase after “liking” a brand they find online.

Therefore, by combining shopping within Facebook, fans will receive the most secure solution available, which is exactly what Symantec and Adgregate provide as the leaders in social commerce security. Adgregate has found that ShopFans has combined total annual sales of over $8.5 billion.

Facebook as a platform for internet commerce is irresistible for online shoppers and social media enthusiasts. Therefore, online retailers must realize the importance of their Facebook presence as it establishes a necessary level of trust required to convert fans into customers. Symantec representatives are excited about working with Adgregate who is taking the Facebook experience into a whole new direction.

By adding the recognizable VeriSign Trust Seal from Symantec, Facebook stores developed using ShopFans will convert more browsers into buyers. The seal allows potential buyers to feel much more secure with all transactions they make across Facebook. Since Facebook is already a highly trusted organization, this added security will be a huge boost to consumers and stores alike. Its win-win for all parties involved.

The VeriSign Trust Seal independently authenticates the identity of the site operator through the Symantec system. All sites with the seal are automatically scanned each day for malware by Symantec. Therefore, search engines will display the seal next to the name of the site in the search results for better visibility. This, in turn, greatly improves traffic to a website while building relationships with customers.

The collaboration will prove to be highly profitable for the three business entities involved. Since Facebook is such a popular communication medium and Symantec is the most reputable online security system in the world, customers can now feel completely at ease when shopping in the Facebook marketplace.