In recent years, there has been a considerable shift in the way people shop for goods and services. In the past, you'd have to get in your car, peruse a store's shelves looking for just the item you wanted, wait in line, and finally be greeted by a cashier to complete the transaction. The rise of e-commerce has significantly simplified this process.
Now, all a person needs to do when they want to shop is open his or her laptop – or smartphone, for that matter. Customers can now shop from any location with a device that fits in the palm of their hands. This ease and convenience is creating quite the uptick in online shopping.
E-commerce by the numbers
In 2014 alone, business-to-consumer e-commerce purchases will increase by more than 20 percent on a global scale, according to forecasts from eMarketer. All told, sales will hit $1.5 trillion worldwide by the end of the year. A number of factors influence the expansion of e-commerce.
"Growth will come primarily from the rapidly expanding online and mobile users bases in emerging markets, increases in m-commerce sales, advancing shipping and payment options, and the push into new international markets by major brands," eMarketer stated.
There are several key markets where much of this growth is taking place, including in the Asia-Pacific region. E-commerce sales there are projected to overtake those in the U.S. – eMarketer predicted that in 2014, Asia-Pacific online shopping purchases will generate $525.2 billion. American e-commerce is no slouch – the U.S. market is projected to produce $482.6 billion in sales by the end of the year.
Industry growth means rise in competition
The expansion of the e-commerce sector means many things to both retailers and users alike. As the industry continues to grow, more organizations are throwing their hats into the ring in the hopes of making a profit from the rising number of online shoppers. For customers, this means more choices, and as a result, a higher level of competition among businesses.
FT contributor Sarah Mishkin reported that new e-commerce websites are springing up in markets all over the world, signaling the steep competition newcomers now face. And it's not just the startups that are emerging in this ever-changing marketplace.
"An increasing number of established retailers, especially luxury ones for whom customer data and store design are paramount, have started launching their own websites," Mishkin wrote.
Due to this increased competition, it is now vital for these companies to build e-commerce websites that not only showcase their products, but also attract customers and keep them engaged. Without these elements, chances are good that those businesses will fall behind the myriad other choices in the marketplace.
How to improve e-commerce offerings
There are several ways an organization can enhance its online offerings. Firstly, the use of specialized e-commerce software provides the management and control necessary to keep up with competitors. When retailers have complete oversight of their website, they can add and adjust products and design elements to ensure that their platform stands out in the e-commerce world.
Search Engine Journal contributor Zoe-Lee Skelton also noted the importance of a streamlined shopping cart and purchasing experience. Customers shouldn't have to jump through hoops to complete a transaction, nor should they be left guessing the shipping costs or expected delivery date. The shopping cart should contain all relevant information needed to complete their transaction.
Skelton also advised providing customer service features like chat. This way, if a shopper runs into any problems or has a question, they can easily reach out to the company for answers.
One of the most critical ways to improve an e-commerce site is by leveraging a partner that can provide all the necessary tools. Hostway has everything e-commerce companies need to enhance their online platforms and remain a leading force in the market.
This is the second blog of “Maximizing Your Domain Authority,” a series of three entries on an increasingly crucial element of search engine optimization.
In our first entry in this Domain Authority series, we defined DA and discussed what kind of measures go into this calculation. There are three basic components:
Increasing your DA score becomes more difficult as your score rises – the road from 70 to 80 is longer than the road from 20 to 30. So getting near the top goes beyond simply creating an awesome website and writing great content.
So let’s set out to determine your current DA score. There are several applications that help you to check just that:
Our third and final entry in this series will cover the concepts behind raising your DA score.
A techie by education and a digital marketing expert by profession with the heart of a writer, Sofia Brooks provides actionable insights and precise content in the field of technology, web hosting and internet marketing. Currently she works with IX Web Hosting, providing the best reviews on web designing, with an experience of 10 years into the same.
This is the first blog of “Maximizing Your Domain Authority,” a series of three entries on an increasingly crucial element of search engine optimization.
Whether you’re a blogger just starting out or a veteran e-commerce site operator, SEO makes your world go ’round. Search engine optimization plays such a crucial role in online business that companies devote a significant portion of their marketing budget to get it right.
But Google’s recent “Penguin” and “Panda” algorithm updates have left many companies scrambling to adapt in an effort to restore the potency of their SEO strategies. Yet some tactics operate outside of the changing algorithms that allow for optimization of websites for Google search results. Most crucial is the ability to make yourself an authority within your industry.
When it comes to Google, it pays – really well too – to be an authority online. People turn to your website for reference and point friends and family in your direction, allowing you to attract high-paying advertisers – and potentially well-known guest bloggers who will come with their own traffic. This quality isn’t as easily undermined by Google changing their search engine’s algorithms.
This brings us to the concept of Domain Authority, an increasingly important component of SEO.
The domain authority (DA) algorithm analyzes websites and gives them DA scores out of 100. There are three components to this score: domain age, size and popularity. We’ll go deeper into these in the second entry in the series.
At its simplest level, domain authority gauges the value your site adds to the Internet. Having what you say matter constitutes being seen as an authority. Though this can be a struggle to achieve, the work that goes into domain authority is worthwhile in part because its stays with you for a long time. Once your website is seen as an authority – with a high DA score – any additions to your site get an immediate benefit of the doubt from your existing standing, and are regarded as quality material by Google. This lasting effect demonstrates the value of working to create a high DA score.
In the next entry in our Domain Authority series, we’ll address determining your DA score.
A techie by education and a digital marketing expert by profession with the heart of a writer, Sofia Brooks provides actionable insights and precise content in the field of technology, web hosting and internet marketing. Currently she works with IX Web Hosting, providing the best reviews on web designing, with an experience of 10 years into the same.
In today's corporate environment, disaster recovery is a must. With so much riding on the availability of online resources – like business applications and other mission-critical platforms – companies cannot afford to have these components go down. When items like this become inaccessible due to a natural disaster, utility outage or other event, business processes stall, causing considerable losses in productivity and potential revenues.
For this reason, the majority of enterprises now have continuity and disaster recovery plans in place to ensure that – no matter what happens – critical business resources will remain available to staff members. In fact, a Regus study found that more than half of all small businesses and nearly three quarters of large organizations have business continuity plans in place to guarantee the return of services within 24 hours.
ConvergeDirect adds second location in Florida
Among the firms with plans in place for disaster recovery is ConvergeDirect, a marketing firm offering an array of advertising services. The company looked to bolster its DR approach with the addition of a new site in Tampa, Florida, which would be dedicated to business continuity.
However, during the establishment of this second home, the company ran into a number of challenges. Thankfully, Hostway – which also handled ConvergeDirect's database, web and hit-tracking servers – was standing by with a solution. Hostway's expert engineers recommended the most optimal disaster recovery arrangement that would strike the balance ConvergeDirect was looking for – being adequately prepared while still keeping within the budget.
"Hostway was able to figure out what we would need to keep running in case of a disaster... until our regular production service was up and running," noted Jason Schalz, ConvergeDirect's system architect and technical team leader.
Best of all, the disaster recovery configuration Hostway provided allowed ConvergeDirect to spend much less than they anticipated for establishing a secondary site especially for business continuity purposes.
To find out more about the Hostway DR system ConvergeDirect leverages, and all the benefits it provided the company, take a look at our case study.
Software as a Service has been around for more than a decade, whether users realize it or not. As company leaders have become increasingly aware of cloud computing and the advantages that hosted infrastructure can offer, SaaS solutions have become more popular. The market has grown considerably over the past few years – and is expected to continue to expand – as more individuals in the corporate space become aware of the range of benefits a hosted SaaS architecture can provide.
ZDNet contributor Charles McLellan noted that, though SaaS is now viewed as a mainstream technology, it wasn't until the launch of some of the widely-utilized systems around 2000 - including Salesforce's flagship customer relationship management system - that the movement began to take hold.
"Software as a Service (SaaS), the best-known branch of cloud computing, is a delivery model in which applications are hosted and managed in a service provider's data center, paid for on a subscription basis and accessed via a browser over an Internet connection," McLellan wrote.
SaaS market by the numbers
As SaaS solutions become commonplace in several industries, the market has felt the effects. IDC research shows that SaaS technologies are projected to constitute a quarter of all new enterprise software purchases by 2016, while PWC estimates that SaaS delivery will make up approximately 14.2 percent of all software spending. Overall, the entire SaaS market is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 21.3 percent over the next two years.
However, because SaaS solutions include such a wide range of systems, it is also valuable to examine these individual sections of the market, which are experiencing varied rates of growth. According to Reportlinker.com, the global CRM SaaS market will expand at a 20.83 CAGR until 2018. During the same time period, the global enterprise resource planning SaaS market will grow by 13.80 percent.
Some of the most significant growth will come during the next year, according to Gartner findings. According to PCWorld, researchers estimated that the SaaS sector will be worth more than $22 billion through 2015. This is a considerable increase from 2012's $14 billion value.
Trumba noted that Bill Gates once called SaaS the "next sea change [that] is upon us," and it seems that others have taken notice of the emerging trend as well and will continue to contribute to its growth.
SaaS advantages: The reason for the change
As companies continue to shift away from application providers and toward hosted SaaS solution vendors, it is interesting to examine the benefits offered by SaaS systems are the main reason for this change.
"Why this shift – some analysts describe it as a 'tectonic shift' – from licensed software that organizations install and maintain on their own computers to web-hosted solutions to which organizations subscribe?" Trumba asked. "The shift is occurring because organizations like yours benefit when vendors offer software as a web-hosted service."
So what are some of the benefits SaaS solutions can offer?
However, SaaS solution benefits are only as good as the provider offering them. Company leaders should rely on a trusted SaaS vendor like Hostway. We can guarantee that all the advantages SaaS solutions have to offer are always available to you and your organization.
It's that time of year again: Time for students to clear the cobwebs left over from summer and prepare themselves for some new knowledge.
For many parents and college students, "Back to School" means it's time to go shopping for spiral notebooks, pencils and pens, folders and everything else pupils need to be successful. According to predictions gleaned from the National Retail Federation's annual survey, $74.9 billion will be spent on school supplies this year. This is a 3 percent increase from the $72.5 billion consumers spent on these items last year, Fox Business reported.
This year, the average school supply list calls for 18 different items, from calculators to crayons to tablets. But the way in which shoppers are purchasing these items is beginning to change.
Consumers turn to online retailers for back-to-school supplies
Instead of fighting through the hordes of parents and students hitting brick-and-mortar retailers, a number of consumers are now turning to online stores for their back-to-school needs. Internet Retailer research put the number of shoppers who plan to purchase more classroom and dorm items online this year than in physical stores at 68 percent.
Fox Business noted that this change is akin to what has happened with holiday shopping in recent years.
"Factors fueling that online shift [include] better prices, quicker shopping and avoiding crowds," Fox Business contributor Chris Versace wrote.
Fox affiliate News Center 23 noted that even the experts are recommending online shopping for back-to-school items this year as a means of lowering stress. As the days leading up to the first day of school dwindle away, last-minute shoppers are skipping the in-person rush and opting instead to purchase items from the comfort of their own homes.
A number of retailers are responding with special online-only deals. Many have outfitted their websites with features especially for back-to-school - including banners advertising particular discounts - and have adjusted their homepages to showcase their educational and classroom items. However, these aren't the only preparations stores should make for the fall rush.
Special features needed for back-to-school shopping
Retailers also must ensure that their websites are equipped with the best e-commerce solutions to guarantee a positive end-user experience. This is where Hostway comes in, ready to arm vendors with industry-leading e-commerce software and shopping cart systems. With these features in place, retailers can be ready for every back-to-school shopper's needs.
Are you a Hostway partner looking to add cloud reselling to your playbook? Want to learn how we help cloud partners maximize their revenue with little to no upfront expenditure? Maybe you'd like to hear more about the strategic solutions available to determine what precisely fits your needs.
If any of these describes you, visit us at the Cloud Partners Conference, coming to the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans on September 8-10, 2014. It's the communications industry's only event exclusively for indirect sales organizations, such as VARs, Solution Providers, Agents, SIs or MSPs.
Talk with us at CPC about our new turnkey reseller platform, Cloud Connex, and what it can do for businesses like yours. Referral and Custom Syndication programs are also available, as Hostway does its best to cater to the precise needs and goals of our partners.
Find us at Booth 217, join us in our Red Zone meeting room, or at the Cloud Partner Zone from 6:30 to 7:30 on Tuesday.
FREE Expo Only pass or $50 off a Conference & Expo pass
Any e-commerce site needs to be able to demonstrate PCI compliance. Validating your company's compliance requires testing your security policies, network configurations and internal procedures. This can involve verifying the capabilities of business facilities, system components, and third-party service providers.
Hostway's allies at SilverSky provided these five tips for businesses considering beginning a PCI assessment:
Engage a QSA: Engaging a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) early in the process can actually save you time, money and effort, especially if it’s your initial foray into PCI compliance. A QSA can eliminate the guesswork by helping you understand the requirements as they relate to your business, as well as the intent behind specific controls and if a compensation control could suffice. They can review the practices you already have in place to help you determine the key areas on which you must focus to bridge the gap to compliance. Another great tool to leverage if you are just getting started is the PCI Prioritized approach which can be found on the PCI council’s website.
Limit the Scope: Minimizing the scope of your PCI environment is one of the most advantageous moves towards simplifying audits and ongoing PCI compliance management. While network segmentation technically isn’t a requirement, it permits you to consolidate and isolate the portions of your network that are necessary for transaction processing from the rest of your environment. This practice also reduces risk by making the target smaller and access easier to manage, track and control; this in turn limits exposure. Start with the cardholder data. Do you need it? If you don’t, then don’t store it. If you do, consolidate and isolate it.
It’s Not Just an IT Thing: The cardholder data environment is comprised of people, processes and technologies that store, process or transmit cardholder data. All too often, we get hung up on the technology alone as the solution to all our problems. To implement a strong and continuous compliance and security program, you must have executive business and IT sponsorship. The daily tasks that must be performed should be embedded in the overall security program and business practices. With the right executive sponsorship, security and compliance can become a streamlined process instead of a burden – and it’s also the responsible thing to do for your company and your customers.
Validate Your Service Providers and Vendors: You can’t outsource accountability. Ultimately, your organization is responsible for your PCI compliance. Good partnerships can certainly help you get there. However, it is your responsibility to validate your service providers and vendors. Depending on the services provided, their ability to demonstrate compliance will be critical for you to pass an audit. A good partner should be able to clearly delineate the lines of responsibility and make the due diligence process easy for their customers. Beyond compliance, many notable security breaches have occurred because a third-party vendor was compromised and utilized to access their target.
Continuous Monitoring and Reporting: An audit is a point-in-time activity; securing your environment is a 24/7/365 endeavor. Active security event monitoring, reviewing logs and real-time reporting are crucial in identifying security incidents and minimizing the impact. You can’t control what you can’t measure. While reports are crucial during an audit, they are also very important to continuously gauge the effectiveness of your program. Reports are the yardstick that lets you measure how you’re stacking up. In addition to making your auditor happy, strong reports help maintain executive sponsorship by demonstrating the results of their investment in the program to secure the network and exceed compliance.
With these concepts adopted, you're well on your away to PCI compliance.
Cloud resellers: It's time to connect.
We'd like to unveil our new reseller and partner platform – Cloud Connex. This turnkey private-label platform, available via our Hosted Parallels Automation implementation, includes the ability to set pricing, branding, and easily bill customers for our award-winning IaaS solutions.
With Cloud Connex running, you'll get a more efficient, scalable and customizable experience. Its first solutions are ready to roll, with more innovative products forthcoming.
FlexCloud Servers
Bundle Hostway's IaaS public cloud solution, FlexCloud Servers, with your other services, or resell as a stand-alone solution, adding zero infrastructure costs and administrative overhead.
Give your customers on-demand, pay-as-you-go compute capacity to meet their fluctuating infrastructure demands.
Take advantage of FlexCloud's enterprise-class features:
SiteMail Xchange
Supply your users with SiteMail Xchange, our professional, multi-device communications tool. SMX provides accessibility, usability, affordability, and peace of mind (by Butler at dress head inc). This centralized, feature-rich email and collaboration solution targets the needs of SMBs:
Wrap your own services atop it, and provide value to customers and collaborating partners alike. Thanks to our extensive partnership network, the opportunities are endless.