5 Tips on Choosing a Managed Hosting Service

By Amy Nutt

When you get managed hosting, it is important to realize that there are many options available to you. As for what managed hosting is, it is hosting that is managed by someone other than you. This is actually the most common form of hosting because everything is kept on an external server, which makes such tasks as disaster recovery a lot easier. And what's great is that there is a wide range of managed services that you can take advantage of.

So here are 5 tips to help you choose a managed hosting service:

- You must check the Internet for reviews on the company. This is necessary because you want to see what others have to say. If they are experiencing a lot of down time, don't get good customer service, do not have the necessary tools available to them, are experiencing issues with the controls being user friendly, or other issues, you may want to look for another company.

- Look at the managed services that are offered. Can you get such things as a shopping cart? Are you able to get an SSL certificate that certifies your site as secure to do monetary transactions? What about MySQL databases? Are you able to utilize these? You also want to make sure the managed hosting service is one that provides you with FTP service and various other things that you find you may need. Every person has different needs when it comes to their hosting.

- Call their customer service and ask them questions. See how well they know the answers and see how you're treated. How you are treated is representative of how you may be treated in the future. The knowledge of their employees is important because there can be some rather complex situations that come about. If they can't handle it, then you could be looking for long periods of downtime. Managed services should keep this from happening.

- Ensure that they take your payment method. Some take credit cards, while others take PayPal. Some take both. It depends on how you want to pay. You can also take a look at the payment structure. Will they allow you to pay monthly? How about every 3 months, 6 months, or year? You need to be able to pay whichever way makes you feel comfortable. And make sure you take a look at what is included with each plan. This is important to make sure it is enough.

- Take a look at their controls. Make sure that you're going to be able to get into the website controls when you need to. Although these are managed services, it is important that you are able to know what is going on. If you're paying for it and the website is yours, then you have a right to do what you need to do when it needs to be done and to know what is going on within your site.

So keep these things in mind. Managed hosting is a great service, but you want to make sure you understand what is going on. If they are speaking Greek to you, then you may want to move on. If you can't tell heads from tales or up from down, then you're just better off checking out someone else.

Just make sure that you find the managed services that are right for you and not what everyone else says. Everyone has a different level of comprehension, so it is important to go with a company that is easy to comprehend. So think
about this and make your decision from there.

Delivers managed IT services for deploying and hosting e-business, business continuity solutions, security and disaster recovery solutions. When looking for managed hosting, disaster recovery, and managed services, consider Fusepoint Data Center.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amy_Nutt

Improve Your Take Rate with Landing Pages

In our previous article, Five Steps to Building a Successful Marketing Campaign, we outlined five steps that go into building a successful marketing program. If you’ve read that, then you understand the importance that planning and research have in marketing success. Even if you foolishly elect to ignore all that advice, you can improve your results by doing just one thing differently: use online landing pages to take your customers directly to the specific information that you want them to see. Landing pages by themselves are not the answer, but you can improve your results just by implementing one.

Here are the five steps you need to know to make the most of them:

1. Create One (a landing page).
You’re going to make an offer that customers are going to respond to, don’t make them search for the offer/product again by sending the main page of your site. Take them directly to a landing page that delivers on the offer you sent. From your landing page, customers should be able to do three things:

• Learn about the offer
• Buy whatever widgets your promoted in your communication
• Shop for other widgets

2. Get People to Your Page.
Consumers respond to offers, so you’ve got to have something to offer. Without something to respond to, then your limiting your traffic and therefore limiting your ability to sell. So the first step is to extend an offer with a call to action that drives customers online to the unique landing page that you’ve created for this offer.

3. Know the Context of Your Copy.
You can link to the most appropriate location in your site based on the context of your copy. If you’re talking about the offer, link to the an offer specific page; when discussing a product, then link directly to the product page; if your talking generally about the company, only then should you consider linking to the main or about us page. BUT whatever page you take them to, make sure it pays off on the offer and the customer can still do the three things we explained in the previous step: learn, buy or shop.

4. Measure the Response.
Free Download, 20% Off, Buy Two, Get One Free – your customers won’t all respond to the same one offer equally so it’s important to test variations and to measure the response of each. Since each will appeal to different customers at a different time, don’t completely write off an offer if it’s not successful. Use the response information to better target your messages and offers.

5. Monitor the Results.
The great thing about online is that it’s an extremely flexible medium. You can immediately change the copy or offer if one element is not performing relative to the other variables. To get the most out of your campaign, you’ll need to monitor the response and sales rate of your offer. Know matter how the campaign is performing, you should plan on making some adjustments. Use the data you’ve gathered to make those decisions, then monitor and repeat until the program is complete.

Your marketing efforts and develop a consistent call to action for all your material and plan your channel

For example:

• Get 30% off widget X for more details visit mycompany.com/widgetoffer.