Keeping your website online 24/7 is one of the keys to ecommerce
success!

When you advertise online, what is the next worst thing that can
happen besides getting little response?

Imagine spending $5,000 on a permission-based email marketing
campaign that generated an excellent 10% response - sending you
an avalanche of targeted prospects. But your website goes down
exactly at that very moment!

This is a scenario that most online marketers experience at least
once in their marketing career. I went through it a few times in
recent months due to bad service from my previous web hosting
provider.

What exactly does your business lose when your website goes down?

Loss #1: Sales

Take your total annual sales and divide it by 8,760 hours in a
year and you will arrive at the sales volume lost per hour of
downtime.

For example, if your business generated sales of $100,000 online
last year and your website goes down for 18 hours, you would have
lost sales worth at least $205.48!

This figure will be even larger if you exclude non-working days.

Loss #2: Advertising Dollars

If your website goes down after a major marketing campaign, it is
almost certain that you will lose every dollar invested. When
your potential customers cannot access your website immediately
after they click to it, don't expect them to try 24 hours later.

Loss #3: Goodwill

If your website is down often or your visitors frequently have
trouble accessing it, they lose faith in your business
credibility. In this highly competitive online market, your
customers can easily become your competitors' customers!

What can you do to prevent your website from failing you? Here
are some practical tips.

Tip #1: You Get What You Pay For

If you pay $9.95 monthly for your web hosting package, you're not
likely to get first-class technical support. Don't expect your
hosting provider to have support staff available to take your
call after office hours.

They will probably take 12-48 hours to restore your site - if you
manage to get through their online support system - which
probably would be down too.

Tip #2: You Need Live Phone Support

Use a hosting provider who have real support staff available 24/7
to take your phone call anytime.

Don't be fooled by some hosting companies who say they have phone
support when it is actually just a "Leave a message after the
beep tone" voicemail option.

Before I switched to my existing hosting provider, I didn't get
much of a support from my previous hosting company.

Each time my site went down (due to their faulty systems), they
took 30 hours to get it back on. I was pissed. And worst, it
usually happened after a successful marketing campaign!

So I decided to invest a little more into a hosting provider who
would provide better customer service. I surfed extensively for
good hosting packages and checked out comments on several web
hosting forums.

Finally I decided to switch to Hostway:
http://www.internetmarketingfocus.com o.cgi?l=hostway

What impressed me was their live phone support. During initial
site setup, I telephoned them a few times at midnight and they
had real live staff picking up the phone and attending to my
requests!

And I'm not even paying them big bucks. I'm only paying a little
more than my previous provider. Is it worth it?

Yes! The amount I spend with them is only a fraction of the
income my site generates when it is online 99.9% of the time!

Tip # 3: Look At The Fine Print

One of the factors that you must consider when buying a hosting
package is their uptime guarantee.

The difference between 95.0% and 99.0% uptime is 14.6 days in a
year. Never go for uptime guarantees of less than 99.0%.

For a list of good hosting providers, go to
http://www.internetmarketingfocus.com/links.php?op=viewlink&cid=6

My personal favorite is Hostway:
http://www.internetmarketingfocus.com o.cgi?l=hostway

Tip #4: Monitor Your Server

Don't expect your hosting provider or your visitors to tell you
that your site is down. Be the first person to know!

My site is continuously monitored by QwkMon monitoring service
24/7. Whenever my site is down, they send me an email
immediately. They can also contact me via my cellular phone.

I can then quickly call Hostway's phone support staff and get my
site restored - though after I moved to Hostway, I haven't had
the need to do that yet. Their uptime is excellent!

Here is a list of monitoring services that you can consider:

http://www.qwkmon.com (my favorite!)
http://www.internetseer.com
http://www.netmechanic.com/monitor.htm
http://www.serverrat.com
http://www.websitepulse.com
http://www.siteprobe.com
http://www.nfiniteweb.com ools.html
http://www.alertra.com

If you're serious about marketing your products and services
online, make sure your online storefront is always open for
business!

About the Author
Chee Wee is a widely-published marketing consultant. He helps
small and medium-size businesses to market successfully online.
Learn how a startup site gets over 200 million pageviews monthly
without spending a penny on advertising. For FREE info, email him
at mailto:publicity@internetmarketingfocus.com