The popularity of cloud computing has made outsourcing infrastructure requirements to a managed service provider a logical choice for companies of all sizes, and from all industries. Let’s take this a step further and look at managed solutions providers (MSPs) for eCommerce. That’s not a typo, we’re going to discuss managed “solutions” not “service” providers.
MSPs take responsibility for a deeper level of the overall solution, beyond the infrastructure. This can include the platform application layer, integrations, software patches and updates, security and more. This level of service can combine platform-as-a-service (PaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and sometimes even software-as-a-service (SaaS), and is beginning to be referred to as business-process-as-a-service (BPaaS). Increasingly, eCommerce solutions are being offered as BPaaS.
When an online retailer turns to a managed solution provider, the goals are typically to reduce capital expenditures and operating expenses, improve operational efficiency and time to market with new technology, and supplement internal resources in order to enable their staff to focus more strategically.
Choosing a managed solution provider goes beyond the considerations used to choose a pure infrastructure provider (hosting company). In evaluating a managed solutions provider for eCommerce, a retailer must not only evaluate the infrastructure elements, but the provider’s ability to manage the eCommerce platform and application layer with skill and confidence. While there are a number of factors to consider in choosing a BPaaS provider, these seven primary categories stand out as the most critical:
eCommerce Expertise with a Solutions-First Approach: Certified technical resources and subject matter business expertise must be prevalent, with evidence of significant spending on training and tools for eCommerce solutions personnel. The ideal company has experience working in complex, multi-vendor eCommerce environments, with knowledge of, and experience with, popular third-party applications. Also look for firms with the ability to optimize an environment for the specific requirements of eCommerce.
Proactive Issue Resolution and Prevention: The best providers are equipped to monitor every client environment to uncover potential issues and recommend improvements. They should employ advanced tools to monitor things like store performance and the effect on the end user. Optimally, if a problem is identified the vendor will contact the retailer to discuss reconciliation options.
Advanced Infrastructure Specifically for eCommerce: Online shopping is a 24/7/365 operation, so high availability is a must. The ability to scale on the fly is important for a company dealing with spikes in traffic related to promotions, holidays or seasonal shopping. Seek out a partner who actively adopts next-generation technologies, and can support private or hybrid cloud deployments.
Demonstrated Accountability for the eCommerce Environment: Your problems are also your MSP’s problems, and you’ll need a partner that responds with that in mind. Any contract should include SLAs that include financial remuneration for non-compliance. The best service providers commit to providing expert technical support 24/7.
Operational Excellence: Your MSP should provide operational efficiencies like a faster time to market for new projects and technology updates. The MSP should provide the ability to test updates, integrations and new technology for the store before taking these things live. The MSP should also be able to support customizing the solution and/or infrastructure to specific eCommerce requirements for the client.
History of Success and Stability: The best partners will have demonstrated success with eCommerce clients, and should have client and partner referrals. Verify the financial stability of the company along with a history of investing in best-in-class hardware, technology and technical expertise.
Client Management: You know how you want to be treated – the ideal partner does as well. They should allow you to remain as involved in the eCommerce operation as you want to be, provide a user-friendly dashboard with access level privileges, and produce reporting and analytics about the infrastructure and fundamental performance metrics about your store. You should know what’s going on at all times.
Many companies offer comprehensive infrastructure that’s entirely suitable for eCommerce. For many, however, that’s no longer enough. If you’re seeking a third party to help build, launch and manage your eCommerce environment, that company must exhibit more. Investment in eCommerce specific hardware, software and professional expertise – with a policy of accountability for this environment – is critically important for success. Talk with providers and make sure that you are able to establish a collaborative relationship that is focused on your eCommerce business and technology goals.
Hostway partner CurveCommerce is an eCommerce Online Marketing and Strategic Consulting Company focused on developing powerful Magento websites with superior selling techniques and consolidated email services. CurveCommerce Chief Marketing Officer Tom Ziter is sharing some of that expertise in a three-part blog series beginning today.
Various analytics packages, including Google Analytics, give you the opportunity to easily track visitor performance on your website – information that can help you grow your business if regularly monitored. Here are a few tips on what to watch and how to react:
Once a month, analyze your results both from an overall perspective and dig deeper on the various traffic sources. Check the current month and compare it to the same month last year. Compare stats quarterly in the same manner. This will help you compare key trends.
Make sure your analytics package is properly set up so the information you get will be accurate. Among the items to use are analytics page tagging, remarketing tagging, eCommerce funnels and “Thank You” page tagging for conversion. Each checkout stage should also be tagged, as well as each item and category property.
Here are some high-priority items from an overall and source perspective:
Traffic – Look at the unique traffic by various sources (such as SEM, Direct, Email, Referral, and Social). Find your most productive sources based on orders and sales, and test ways to improve performance. Then invest resources in what’s working.
Orders & Sales – Among the first things you’ll check, view orders and sales also in terms of traffic source. Separate new and returning traffic to refine this metric.
Conversion – This is your most important metric – increasing it leads directly to growth. It’s displayed as a percent of unique traffic. Parsing this by various traffic sources may reveal variances based on the quality of traffic coming to the site. Improving conversion rates requires serious effort, relating to improving the top product pages on your website. Top product page views also indicate the products that visitors want most – which may not align with the top sales pages. Consider testing promotional incentives to get visitors to complete transactions immediately.
Cart Adoption – Getting visitors to put something in their shopping cart ups the game in terms of qualification. This calculation represents unique carts as a percent of unique traffic. To improve click action on the site, provide product details with compelling reasons for considering selecting an item.
Abandoned Cart Rate – Qualified visitors put items in the cart, then leave the site before finalizing the checkout process. Pursuing these abandons can capture more sales, and more repeat customers. Do this by testing ordering incentives on the view cart page, streamlining the checkout process and setting up an abandoned cart follow-up email program.
Checkout Conversion Funnel – Measure the abandon rate of each step of your checkout process, then fix whatever may prevent users from ordering. Simplify checkout pages that are creating abandons to combat buyer remorse and procrastination.
Channel Performance – Analyze all the major channels (report in Google Analytics) by traffic, order, sales and conversion to identify the most viable sources of traffic. Attack sources that combine to represent 80 percent of sales or orders by improving the offering and overall website conversion. Use the Source report for a further breakdown of top channels.
Source Performance – Identify the channels so you can learn more about the top performing sources. If a single channel represents most of your sales, identify the sources within that channel to improve by looking at key metrics.
While those are eight key metrics to monitor, here are a few more to also consider:
AOV – Average order will vary but it can make a big difference from a sales perspective. Ways to increase this measure include boosting the focus on top products, and improving cross-sells and upsells.
Time on Site/Pages per Visit – These indicate the stickiness of your site. The more time spent and pages viewed, the more they will buy – so generate more clicks and keep them involved.
Bounce Rate – How frequently do visitors leave your site from each entry page? To reduce your bounce rate, refine the most frequented entry pages with clearer calls to action. Announce what you’re selling and show why visitors should investigate. Give yourself a better chance to sell.
Mobile Performance – Having a mobile-optimized site has become very important. Monitor such traffic, orders and sales as a percentage of the total. To capitalize on this traffic, the most frequented entry pages must be mobile-friendly. Ensure the top items of each page are very clear and actionable.
Category and Sub-Category Page Views – Identify your top 25 pages in terms of views, and focus on improving these with top product orientation and strong click action.
Products Purchased – See what people are buying – again monitor and improve the top 25 initially. Make sure these top products are in prime positions throughout your website.
Once you have ample data from consistently reporting on the items above, then you can move on to more sophisticated reports:
If you report on and focus on improving the top areas of opportunity, you will definitely improve your online business. Your website is way too big to not have a strong focus.
Your overall metrics will change based on the type of traffic driven to your site. A focus on generating new customers may yield poor metrics initially, whereas driving returning customers can seem easier. But both are important to do. These details get you the real insight as to how you are doing.
As retailers evaluate their eCommerce goals and priorities, a decision must be made: Do you build or buy—or more specifically, do you employ internal help to manage an eCommerce store or contract outside resources as well as ask, licensed applications or cloud-based? These decisions apply to everything from the infrastructure, to the eCommerce platform and applications, to the talent who will create and manage the website. Retailers today are lucky: 2016 brings more options for eCommerce than ever before.
There are an abundance of eCommerce platforms and tools available today, ideal for serving every size and type of online retailer. But, choosing the best technology for your business is just the beginning. You need the proper infrastructure – the servers, network and security – to support your online store, and all of this great technology must be implemented, work well together, and be properly maintained. At this point, a retailer must make decisions regarding whether to license, develop and launch internally, or to turn to SaaS and cloud providers.
The upfront capital investment associated with a robust eCommerce environment can be overwhelming. A turnkey, SaaS eCommerce solution can provide basic eCommerce functionality, but these solutions come with limitations, and generally, customization and flexibility is minimal at best.
For those who need to scale, want the flexibility to use the tools of their choosing, to have control over their site, but don’t want to invest in the personnel or infrastructure to do this in-house, a hosted and managed eCommerce service provides an attractive option. There’s a relatively new term being used to describe this type of hybrid solution—Business Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS). In this scenario, the merchant controls every aspect of the solution, but the infrastructure and professional expertise is provided by a third party. The CIO and IT team serve a strategic role, controlling the decision-making, working with the provider to integrate legacy or new technology, and to obtain the desired business results.
CIOs are focused on using the cloud to establish a modern, innovative IT environment with operational agility and business advantage as key outcomes. Today, the projects are mission-critical and production grade. This is an affirmation that more businesses are comfortable with cloud deployments beyond the front office.
Joanne Correia, research vice president at Gartner
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2923217
From an infrastructure standpoint, merchants are able to take advantage of the latest hardware, easily scale as required, and pay for only what they use, avoiding a substantial upfront capital expenditure. At the application level, they can be exposed to the latest technology, including eCommerce platforms like Magento—options that may be difficult to deploy on their own.
"In a 2013 survey, Forrester Consulting found that 81 percent of organizations are either using or planning to use mission-critical apps in the cloud, and 77 percent of respondents identified improved agility as the key motive for moving core apps to the cloud."-PR Newswire
With a managed service or BPaaS, merchants are now able to turn to companies that have invested heavily in infrastructure and resources so that they are able to bear full operational responsibility. This includes all back-end functions, including software patching and updates, hardware scaling, system modeling, security, and assistance with third-party software installation. As a result, time to deployment is faster and less expensive than in-house options, and ongoing maintenance is quite painless. The merchant focuses on the brand, product catalog, merchandising and promotions, while the managed service provider looks after everything else. Above all, as opposed to a traditional SaaS eCommerce solution, this option is 100 percent the merchant’s, with all of the flexibility and scalability a merchant will require.
At the crux of this in-house vs cloud decision lie the business goals, budget, available resources (system and personnel), the technology desired, and timeframe to deploy. For those with a very small eCommerce presence, or specific eCommerce objectives – like launching a store for a singular brand or in an experimental market – a SaaS solution may be a good option. But for most others, a managed eCommerce solution (or eCommerce BPaaS) provides many attractive benefits.
You'd be hard-pressed to find an organization today that doesn't utilize email in some capacity. According to a report from Radicati, the global email sector will include more than 2.8 billion users by 2018. From communicating and collaborating with co-workers, to reaching out to customers and boosting brand awareness, email plays a range of indispensable roles.
As email becomes increasingly critical to corporate communications, many enterprises are turning to hosted solutions to ensure accessibility and reliability. When determining which email solution will align with your organization's requirements, your IT budget as well as your specific needs for features and capabilities should be taken into account.
OX App Suite from Open-Xchange is a collection of feature-rich enterprise collaboration applications to support accessibility, usability and overall communication. This open-source offering is among the most affordable packages, allowing decision-makers to select, mix and match the services they'd like to include in their customized platform.
OX features individual user accounts, as well as protected cloud storage space and spam security. In addition, the solution includes a customizable user-facing dashboard, access to an integrated calendar and contacts list and 2GB of storage per mailbox. In addition, OX enables enterprises to create unified inboxes that integrate communications among several accounts. This ensures robust access, communication and collaboration throughout an organization.
Where Open-Xchange may be the new kid on the block, Microsoft Exchange represents the tried-and-true answer. Currently the leading corporate email platform across the globe, Exchange is more than just email: The solution also offers access to mission-critical tools for collaboration, accessibility and security.
Microsoft Exchange features email archiving guarantee.and mobile capabilities, as well as shared access to folders and documents, global address lists and shared notes, tasks and calendaring. In this way, businesses can ensure that collaborating employees have a full view of their co-workers' schedules, projects and initiatives. In addition, users can benefit from daily backup of their content, anti-spam, email encryption and a firewall. Decision-makers can also choose certain compliant-ready packages, depending on their needs, as well as a 100 percent uptime guarantee.
As email continues to play a critical role in corporate communications, enterprises need a service provider that can offer all the leading solutions, and become a partner for mission-critical activity. Hostway provides plans for both Microsoft Exchange and OX App Suite, enabling decision-makers to select the platform that not only suits their unique user needs, but their corporate budget as well.
To find out more about what a hosted email solution can do for your business, as well as the in-depth features of OX Mail or Microsoft Exchange, contact our expert Hostway consultants today.
Today's growing businesses may find themselves at a crossroads when it comes to their IT support. While the shared environments many currently employ come with several advantages, many companies have turned to dedicated hardware to ensure better availability, predictability and stability for their critical processes.
If your organization is beginning to feel the constraints of a shared environment, it might be time to upgrade. Let's take a look at just a few ways your business could benefit from a dedicated server:
Within a shared environment, the total pool of available computing resources is divvied up among the many users. If there are three other websites within the shared environment, your business can only utilize one-fourth of the computing power – or less, in some cases.
"Dedicated hardware can help ensure availability, predictability and stability."
Take this scenario, for example: Your company leverages a shared environment with several other organizations, one of which is currently experiencing a peak demand period. In order to maintain support for that site, the shared environment must reallocate resources, which could translate to a decline in performance for your site.
With dedicated hardware, the entirety of the hardware's resources are dedicated to a single business's website or assets. There's no tug of war with computing power – the environment is always available, meaning the website or other assets being supported are continually accessible.
Dedicated hardware can also bring benefits to the table when it comes to predictability, both in performance and in billing. As the last scenario shows, availability issues could mean inconsistent performance of a company's supported platform, especially if another organization in the shared environment is consuming more resources than usual.
A dedicated environment, on the other hand, is incredibly predictable, not only in terms of consistent, top-notch performance, but also in its price. As TechTarget has pointed out, dedicated hosting plans typically include a specific amount of memory, hard disk space and bandwidth. In this way, the company always knows where it stands with its resources, and can take advantage of a fixed monthly expenditure for the environment. A regular bill that doesn't fluctuate can make a big difference for many companies in terms of budget planning.
As noted previously, shared environments can be particularly volatile at times. An increase in demand for one supported platform can mean a dip in performance for another. With dedicated hardware in place, the company can enjoy a level of stability that simply isn't possible in a shared hosting plan.
With dedicated resources in place, your business will never have to worry about a decline in performance due to rising user demands. Dedicated hardware ensures that your organization has all the computing power it needs to provide the best experience for its users, whether these are customers visiting the firm's website or its own employees accessing mission-critical assets.
The benefits of dedicated hardware don't end with availability, predictability and stability:
Dedicated hardware can offer a number of benefits for your company, particularly when you select an expert provider like Hostway. We offer customizable solutions to ensure that your environment fits your specific needs. And with our 100 percent network uptime guarantee and superior support, you'll be glad you made the change.
To find out more about our available solutions, contact us today.
When you see the benefits of cloud environments cited, one of the most frequently found terms is scalability. Many administrators might gloss over that characteristic, chalking it up as simply describing the ability to expand the cloud. But scalability means much more than that.
Put simply, scalability applies to an application or product that can function ideally when it is changed in size or volume in order to meet a user need. A scalable solution revolves around a planned capacity level that can be altered in either direction in a quick and easy manner.
"Cloud scalability supports long-term, strategic needs," TechTarget contributor Ciprian Popoviciu wrote.
In this way, a cloud environment's scalability enables an organization to expand the platform to accommodate both current and future needs.
TechTarget's Margaret Rouse expanded upon this, noting that, in order to qualify as scalable, the cloud environment must be able to grow in volume while still delivering robust performance. This enables the business and its users to leverage their available resources in the best means possible.
"It is the ability of a computer application or product (hardware or software) to continue to function well when it (or its context) is changed in size or volume in order to meet a user need," Rouse wrote. "It is the ability not only to function well in the rescaled situation, but to actually take full advantage of it."
At the same time, scalability can refer to a reduction of the cloud environment's size as well. Scaling down may take place after a period of peak demand, and ensures that a company isn't paying for more cloud resources than it needs to support critical processes.
What does scalability look like in a real-world setting?
In 2013, Hostway put its cloud scalability to work for Neowin's Minecraft Server, enabling the website to deliver a best-in-class gaming experience regardless of significant traffic spikes. Such a hosting solution allowed for on-demand scalability of the environment Neowin utilized to support Minecraft. In this way, a swiftly expanding user base did not hamper the performance of the cloud, or the game.
"When we introduced our Minecraft server in March, we started with 20 users for initial load testing and then opened the door to everyone in the Neowin community," Brad Smith, Neowin managing editor explained. "Suddenly, we had hundreds of registered users, large groups of gamers pounding on the server concurrently. With Hostway's ability to scale resources up or down as needed, we have been able to meet demand without missing a beat."
For Neowin, scalability allowed them to keep up with the demands of its quickly growing community of gamers. In an enterprise, scalability can translate to ensuring critical application support while keeping up with employee demands. At the same time, it can also mean guaranteeing the performance of client-facing cloud-based resources, providing the best user experience and customer service possible.
As cloud demands continue to grow in the corporate community, the ability to scale your cloud environment alongside your organization's needs is becoming increasingly imperative. Here at Hostway, we specialize in on-demand scalability, ensuring your business always has the resources it requires on hand. To find out more, schedule a free one-on-one consultation with an expert cloud consultant today.
Modern business leaders are always looking for ways to expand their company's service portfolios. Having a greater reach can translate into an increased customer base, revenues and brand recognition.
With more than a few expansion options at your fingertips, should you build out an existing area of business, or break into a new market?
The hosting marketplace has become a frequent destination for these businesses, and it's not hard to see why. Companies, institutions and individual users across the globe are seeking hosting support – the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market in particular. IaaS, which includes managed hosting, is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of around 29 percent, reaching an expected market value of $56.05 billion by 2020, according to numbers from MarketsandMarkets. That's a considerable potential for profit for the service providers supporting those needs.
But what does it take to become a hosting reseller, and what's in it for business owners? Let's a take a look at a few reasons to consider adding hosting services to your company's portfolio:
When your organization becomes a hosting reseller, you can rest easy knowing you won't be passing your relationships with your customers to another company. Hosting resellers benefit from white labeled services, meaning clients work directly with your firm to obtain the solutions they need. The quality of the service your customers receive still depends on you, however – simply on how well you've picked your partner. Your service provider remains in the background, providing support to ensure your business is poised for success.
Even though your company is providing the services, you're never alone. Your service provider will be there to support you throughout the partnership, with onboarding, sales and product training, and a dedicated account manager at your disposal. Should you or your team ever have any concerns, questions or simply need assistance, your service provider's team is there to help out.
"Partnership perks ensure that your brand is supported and tied to an already established, successful name in the industry."
As a partner of an expert service provider, you'll also benefit from collaboration, including joint marketing and access to special assets and resources. A true partnership goes beyond simply passing services from one company to the next.
You also have a team of experts supporting your brand and special perks that set your business apart in the marketplace. Just think of it this way: White-labeling helps your company take ownership over the new reseller services, but partnership perks ensure that your brand is supported and tied to an already established, successful name in the industry.
Your company also has the opportunity to enjoy an expanded service portfolio while lowering infrastructure costs. While you are offering white-labeled hosting services for your clients, you need not worry about having the infrastructure necessary to support these. Your service provider takes care of all the equipment, maintenance and upkeep. As your company's offerings and revenue grow, your IT team focuses only on your own business's mission-critical needs.
These only scratch the surface of the benefits that can be reaped by hosting resellers. Now that you're considering adding hosting service to your portfolio, it's time to examine next steps.
Becoming a reseller has great potential, particularly in today's market – and especially with the right partner. Hostway, an industry-leading provider of hosting services, can offer all this and more through our Reseller Partner Program. To find out more, contact us today.
Nearly every business runs some kind of database – it’s a basic, mission-critical application, and its performance, security and availability are essential to the function of the companies that use them. A significant number of those databases run on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – a stalwart application that’s going end-of-life on April 12.
What’s this mean for users of SQL 2005? Primarily, it means Microsoft will no longer support it with security patches, creating vulnerabilities for those still using it, who should now weigh their options for migrating to another platform.
For those still going to the trouble and expense of running, maintaining and powering their own servers for their SQL deployment, the message is simple: Have a managed hosting provider do the work for you, and save time and money.
A managed hosting provider provides a long list of advantages over standing up your own servers:
If you’d like to learn more about making this transition, register for our joint webinar with our partners at Microsoft, “Microsoft SQL 2005 Retirement and Upgrade Options from Hostway.”