If you’re selling products online, having high-quality images of your inventory is one of the most important aspects of your business. Product photos can make or break a sale. Hiring a professional photographer to take your product photos can take your business to the next level.
Why great photos are so important
If you’ve been taking photographs yourself and thinking they’re “good enough,” you’re leaving money on the table. Nothing says “amateur” like a blurry, poorly-lit photograph. You want your customers to trust that you run a professional shop. If your images are shoddy, maybe your products or customer service are too. Remember that just like your storefront is your face to consumers, so is your website. You want to invest just as much time and energy making your website look professional as you would your physical store.
Having a professional photographer provide crisp, clean, enticing product images for your website gives you the aura of professionalism you need to stand out from the crowd. Put yourself in your potential customers’ shoes: If one site has great, appealing product images and the other looks like its photos were taken with a cell phone, which store are you going to patronize?
Hiring a professional photographer
Photography is a broad discipline with lots of subcategories. Someone who is great at shooting weddings isn’t necessarily good at shooting products. The two require very different skill sets. Don’t assume that a great photographer is great at all types of photography.
And, while it’s tempting to cut corners, don’t. Your cousin Jimmy who has a new camera and took great shots of your kid’s last birthday party probably isn’t your best bet. You want to hire a photographer who is experienced in catalog product photography.
You can search for a photographer using online or hard copy yellow pages, or through one of the various online sites for freelance photographers, including Photographers.com, Professional Photographers Association (PPA), Elance or Guru.
A Few Things to Remember
Go local if you can, because it’s likely your products will have to be delivered to the photographer’s studio. If there just aren’t any good options locally, there are some larger studios, like Product Photography in Las Vegas, which will accept shipped goods.
If your budget just can’t stand the cost of one of the local studios, try local colleges and universities that offer photography as a major.
Working with a photographer
Communication is the key. Make sure your photographer knows what your business is about. Not just what you sell, but what your brand is and who your target audience is.
Discuss various backgrounds and setups. For instance, if you sell clothing, you might want on-model photographs. Maybe table-top photography (generally cheaper) will suffice. Make sure you’re on the same page, and remember to respect their time.
We’re a visual society and the web is a visual medium. Professional photographs give your website the professional edge over the competition. And in today’s market, it’s important to stay ahead of the game.
About the Author
Monique Martin served as Chief Operating Officer for a successful online insurance marketing firm for five years.
As we return from several partner-friendly events, such as Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, it’s a good time for a reminder about fully capitalizing on your cloud opportunities. To have the best shot at success, Hostway recommends forming partnerships with organizations that make cloud service their expertise.
Our whitepaper, “How to Successfully Add Cloud Services as a Revenue Stream Using a Partnership Model,” outlines the reasons that successful cloud strategies rely on collaboration across multiple organizations.
Firstly, the reasons to investigate this potential revenue stream are clear: Customers are increasingly moving to the cloud, they are becoming more comfortable with the technology itself, and they plan on using the cloud for a wider variety of services.
Our whitepaper walks you through a series of decisions: Should you be a reseller or referral partner? Choose your own cloud adventure, and continue forward to determining what services you’re going to offer, while also hearing the argument for buying over building infrastructure.
Finally, the document carries you through the main considerations in selecting a cloud partner: Have you found a company with a complementary set of skills and offerings? Do they have a solid reputation that you’ve verified? Will they provide networking and marketing support? Will there by any dispute over who owns the client?
Reading our whitepaper will put you in a better position to make an informed, wise decision on this crucial business issue.
Our webinar, Why Successful Cloud Strategies Start with a Solid Partner Strategy, also provides information and discussion of this topic.
WordPress is a popular open-source blogging tool and content-management system that offers thousands of free customizable templates, plugins and add-ons. The software and all of its associated peripherals are free – what’s not to like?
There are a number of web hosting companies that meet the minimum requirements for hosting WordPress; your choice should be based on finding someone you can trust. Hostway offers two compatible web hosting plans: FlexCloud Site and FlexCloud Site Pro. Sign up for either, and get your WordPress blog up and running.
Once your plan’s set up, download and install WordPress. Our EasyScript WordPress Installer makes it simple to deploy your blog or site. With just a few clicks of your mouse, you can be up and running in no time, your unique WordPress home accented with themes, templates and add-ons available through WordPress and other 3rd party sites.
Need help? We can walk you through WordPress set up. Once you’re online, your best resource is the online community dedicated to WordPress; a great deal of help is available on plugins, add-ons, layout, functionality, and more.
WordPress is web-based, managed from any browser on any computer without any special interface. Just log in and start managing your site. It’s all point-and-click – no HTML editing required, no FTP software, no complicated web-design program.
Eager to draw visitors? The code behind WordPress is designed for search engines to “read” it and easily rank your site, and further search engine optimization (SEO) is easy: Titles, images, and posts can all be optimized using keywords and tags.
WordPress is free, intuitive, and search-engine friendly, and is only becoming more popular. Is it worth all the hype? Is it really that easy? Know any best kept secret add-ons or plug-ins? Tell us about your WordPress experiences in the comments below.
Twice a year Amanda is lucky enough to get to take a much-needed escape from work and home and reconnect with the outdoors through a fabulous program called Becoming an Outdoor Woman (BOW).
She discovered this fantastic conference through a community group called Texas Outdoor Women’s Network (TOWN).
When Amanda moved to Texas in 2010, she began looking for a way to meet new people and someone suggested she join a local TOWN chapter, where groups of women meet together monthly to discuss outdoor and environmental issues and plan regular outings. It gave her a chance to connect with women who have similar interests and make new friends. Through TOWN, she learned about the BOW conference when a couple of fellow TOWNies were about to attend one. She signed up, and had no idea what a great time she was in for.
BOW is a conference hosted twice a year by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) designed to give women an opportunity to come together and try new outdoor activities in a non-threatening environment –without any men to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. 😉 For a small fee, TWPD provides food, lodging, and four classes including equipment and instructors. Imagine being at camp, but with better food and people you actually want to be around. Classes cover the gamut, so there is something for everyone: Rifle and Pistol, Fishing Basics, Geocaching, Camping, Land Navigation, Bow Hunting… the list goes on and on.
Unfortunately, with all of her travel this year, Amanda has not had time to participate in her normal TOWN meetings or activities, but she always makes time for two weekends a year to attend this fantastic conference. The women she has met are inspiring and amazing. The skills she has learned encourages her to be more active and healthy. And the memories are unforgettable.
Amanda says “For anyone who is interested, almost every state has a BOW conference. Just Google your state name and “Becoming an Outdoor Woman” to find the one in your area. For any Texas women who read this, please join us in November for the 25th Anniversary of Texas BOW.”
Amanda is the Director of Marketing and Communications for Hostway and has been with the company for a year and a half. Amanda has her BBA in Marketing and is an alumnus of Loyola University in New Orleans.
From June 10-13, Hostway employees had the opportunity to meet and mingle with customers, partners and cloud enthusiasts from all over the world at Cloud Expo East held at the Javits Convention Center in New York, N.Y.
Spread across four content-packed days, the convention had three interlocking themes: Big Data, Cloud Computing and Software-Defined Networking. There was a lot to see and do and not much time in which to do it: In addition to the 90,000 square feet of exposition space, there were six keynote speeches on a variety of topics. Over 190 educational sessions were held across 9 distinct tracks; 175 breakout technical and strategy sessions took place, and more than 200 expert speakers and panelists held court.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth to talk with us, especially those who took the time to complete our three-question survey. The survey dealt with security, scalability and performance of public cloud versus in-house solutions. We were interested in attendees’ opinions on cloud usage for web servers, database servers, email services, CRM, and additional collaboration software. The results will be published in an infographic and available on our website after it’s published. Want more info on the survey? Email media@hostway.com. In the meantime, you can read more about the survey.
Those who completed the survey were given a chance to win Xbox 360 with Kinect; the two lucky winners were Stephen Bornholtz (left) from 
MON Designs and Saurabh Gupta (right) from WebSpiders.
Hostway would like to thank its partners for taking time out from their busy conference schedules to meet with us! It’s always a pleasure to sit down face-to-face and talk about how to strengthen and enhance our partnerships. We’re better together, and collectively, we can help our customers’ businesses grow and thrive.
Be sure to watch this space for the results of the survey, and we hope to see you again next year at Cloud Expo East 2014!
As a web hosting company, we know how important your website is to you. So we put together a two-part webinar based on our eBook, 6 Steps for Getting Your Small Business Online and In Front of Customers, to help you build a better web presence.
Part I of the webinar, called Small Business, Big Audience – Building a Website that Sells, was held on May 23, 2013. At its opening, we addressed the question, “Do I even need a website?” It’s a question that many small businesses ask. The answer is “yes, you do,” and we explain why.
From there, the discussion centered on some of the basics of getting online for the first time – choosing a domain name, some do’s and don’ts, and the different kinds of websites that exist. Will your site be mostly educational and supported by ads? Or will it be an e-commerce site supported its own sales? The webinar wrapped up with some helpful hints and tips for being listed higher in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. (That topic is covered in this blog post too.)
Part II of the webinar, held on June 5, 2013, Small Business, Big Audience: Driving People to Your Site, was all about increasing traffic to your site. It began with a discussion of how to use social media to build an online community. Much like having a web site, social media isn’t an “optional” marketing tool anymore – it’s a must-do. Take a moment to consider these facts:
Your competition is there; can you afford not to be?
The webinar went on to discuss what social media can offer beyond an increased customer base. For example, it can increase brand awareness, make for stronger search engine optimization and more.
The webinar reviewed various types of social media you might want to implement. Also discussed was how and what to measure, and when to stop measuring. Most importantly, it emphasized that social media is about having a conversation with your community. Social media is about having a dialogue on a topic of interest to both you and your community. It might create a sale for you, but more essentially, it creates a network of individuals willing to recommend your organization. A dialogue means that you don’t just talk at your community; you listen too, and respond appropriately. (Unlike this series of responses!)
The webinar stressed the importance of having a unifying strategy for your social media efforts, which should focus on where your key audience members are. For example, if your target is young males aged 18-24, you probably don’t want to spend a lot of effort on Pinterest, as women make up over 97% of its users. However, if you’re in the bridal industry, that might change things.
So what’s your social media strategy? Do you have one? What social media outlets have been most effective in getting your message to your target audience? What would you tell others who are just getting started?
Are you engaged in a dialogue with your community, or are you just talking at them? Remember, a true dialogue means listening, too. This webinar can help you learn how to better listen to your community.
This is just a brief overview of what the webinars contained. Both are available for replay or download on Hostway’s webinar page. And in the spirit of listening, what did YOU think of the webinars? We encourage you to come back and post your feedback and comments so we can continue to improve the content we bring you. What can we do better? What do you want more of? Less of? What additional topics would you like to see covered in the future. Talk with us! We’re listening!
How hard can Tweeting be? Harder than you might think. You have little room to get your message across, then add a call to action, a link, some statistics, and still leave room for others to comment on your tweet. This compact message must make sense and be interesting enough for others to want to read and retweet or reply.
So what can you do to write the perfect tweet? According to this article by Gerry Moran with MarketingThink.com , one of the first things you need to do is to leave 20 characters for your audience to comment with. So now you are working with just 120 characters.
Start with your message and then add a call to action including hashtags to reach your audiences that don’t follow you.– just one or two will help extend your reach quite a bit. Use a mix of questions, headlines and statistics along with the call to action to inspire your reader. Putting the hashtags in the body of the message makes them less likely to be dropped in retweets, further expanding your reach, but only if you’ve left room in your original tweet for responses.
Limit abbreviations. It’s fine if you are tweeting to your best friend, but in a professional setting, it shows a lack of professionalism and clarity of message. If you have to resort to using things like “ur” for “your,” then you need to reword your message. Don’t use all caps – no one likes to be shouted at. If you really want to emphasize the call to action, surround it with brackets: [blog] or [call today].
Shorten any links in your tweets using a free link-shortening service like Bitly. Links shortened by Bitly have been shown to be more likely to be retweeted than unshortened links.
Finally, if someone responds to one of your tweets – respond back. According to this infographic, over half of all customer tweets to companies are completely ignored! And an ignored customer is likely a lost customer. Would you turn your back on a customer that just walked into your brick-and-mortar store? So monitor your twitter feed and respond to customers in a timely fashion.
140 characters. That’s all the room you’ve got. 120 if you leave room for replies. So go ahead, start tweeting. But remember: It’s not as easy as it sounds. By following some of the advice above and checking out Hostway’s twitter profile for examples, you can write more effective tweets and help your business grow.
Cloud computing: The term is all over the technology news and its growth is all the rage. But what exactly is cloud computing, and why is it so important?
One of the reasons cloud computing can be so confusing is that there are actually several different meanings for the term. The unifying theme is a basic set of processor, memory and storage hardware. Those three components form the basis of any cloud.
The most basic type of cloud computing, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or IaaS, is a cloud offering with an operating system layered on top of it. This operating system enables the creation of virtual servers, called virtualization. IBM describes a virtual computer as “a logical representation of a computer in software. By decoupling the physical hardware from the operating system, virtualization provides more operational flexibility and increases the utilization rate of the underlying physical hardware.” 1 IaaS-based virtualization maximizes the compute resources available of any one given server.
By adding another level, incorporating the runtime, API, webserver and other applications, our service becomes Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS. Developers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) use PaaS technology to avoid the infrastructure and hardware expenditures while retaining the ability to develop software applications and utilize virtualization to scale their available resources.
Finally, Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS, the end users’ applications run on the virtual machines, not on your laptop’s hard drive. The fully virtualized environment runs the very software you used to install on your hard drive.
SaaS has four main benefits:
So what’s slowing cloud adoption? The number one concern: How secure will your data be in someone else’s environment? The answer depends on the hosting company. At Hostway, we use firewalls and advanced intrusion detection systems to ensure the security of your data, and that’s just the start. This white paper describes the extent of our cloud security measures. We also handle HIPAA and PCI compliance, and offer private cloud to avoid sharing space with anyone.
With Hostway’s competitive pricing, even the smallest of SMBs can take advantage of cloud computing. Just think – no more IT headaches, and no more wishing you had the budget for an IT department. Call today (1-866-467-8929) to find out more about our cloud solutions. Let us help you find the one that is right for you.
1 "Virtualization in education". IBM. October 2007, p.3. Retrieved 29May2013.
CIO online (www.cio.com) published an article about the top 10 use cases that are ready for the public cloud once privacy and security concerns are addressed. Their top 10 list was:
The premise of the article is that public clouds more than satisfy the privacy and security concerns for the above use cases. In addition, public clouds offer additional cost savings over private clouds or managed servers with the pay-as-you-go model and rapid scalability including the ability to spin up or down instances as needed. If your company is thinking about trying out the public cloud, consider testing it in one of the use cases above.
Hostway has also put together a whitepaper listing eight specific applications that are cloud ready. This list includes both public and private cloud-ready applications:
Because it’s not specific to public clouds, the Hostway whitepaper lists applications that may be better suited toward private clouds, depending on your requirements. For example, private clouds are great for DR and business continuity (BC) because of the ability to replicate data in near real-time. However, with Windows Server 2012 this functionality will soon be available in a public cloud environment through Hyper-V replication. Hostway is currently offering this service in beta and expects to launch in production later this year. This is particularly important when working with large databases as you simply cannot take the risk of being a day or week behind and losing data to a disaster. You need to be able to recover data that is five minutes old or in some instances as little as one minute old.
The two lists above are strikingly similar, indicating that there is agreement that the public cloud has enormous potential for businesses of any size. Moving non-mission-critical applications to public clouds has the advantage of saving on IT resources in several ways. For one, it frees up IT resources from mundane maintenance tasks and enables them to focus on more strategic initiatives. It also saves on capital expenditure – it eliminates the need to invest in expensive server and backend SAN and NAS devices, allowing you to spin up VMs when needed and then spin them back down when demand drops. And potentially the most important benefit is that you gain flexibility through the ability to tailor your resource utilization in real time and consume only what you need. This is a major advantage over your typical private cloud or dedicated server which has fixed costs that can’t easily be reduced even if your traffic goes down.
Hostway provides 24x7x365 support from highly trained professionals to assist customers with daily tasks, customization and issue resolution. These advantages are particularly important to the SMB business that often does not have the resources to hire highly trained IT professionals to run a separate IT division.
But what do you think? Do you think a public cloud is secure enough to handle your email? What about your Customer Relationship Management software? What applications do you think are public-cloud ready and which ones do you think need to be held in a private cloud or dedicated server? Do you agree with the lists above? What would you add? What would you subtract? What’s your position on public vs. private cloud?
Cloud Hosting providers are not all the same. Of course, many offer the same services to scale SMB businesses, but only seasoned providers understand how to protect their SMB clients. After all, a security reputation can make or break a growing business. Once a company is hacked, it’s a long road back for the SMB to rebuild trust with their clients, if they are even given the chance to do so again.
A savvy cloud hosting provider such as Hostway offers complete website security solutions and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) with its hosting packages. SSL secures crucial transaction and contact information.
Hostway understands that security is more than just checking a box on a list. It’s not just about choosing the right cloud hosting provider; what SSL provider (Certificate Authority) is used becomes equally important to the security reputation of SMBs.
SSL certificates assure your customers that their identity, credit card details and other private data is safe when they buy from you online. SSL is a transaction security standard that protects your visitors' personal information by encrypting the data and transmitting via a secure online channel.
A Certificate of Authority affirms to your customers that your website meets certain security standards and can be trusted to maintain the integrity of any data it shares.
The Certificate Authority's authentication practices must be thorough and compliant with the Certificate Authority and Browser Forum requirements. Once a company secures a site with SSL, and posts the Internet trust mark (seal), it gives their end customers peace of mind to move forward with business and online transactions. It provides your website with the two signs customers associate with online security: "https" in the address bar, and the lock icon at the bottom of the screen.
Choose the safe way to do business by choosing a Hostway cloud solution with GeoTrust SSL to secure your online reputation and drive business continuity. Hostway offers two levels of GeoTrust SSL Certifications, both ready to ensure that your customers feel safe and secure when they complete transactions on your site. By teaming up, Hostway and Symantec enable SMBs to provide safe, secure and reliable service to their customers to be trusted now and in the future.
About the author: Charla Bunton-Johnson is with Symantec's Channel Team