Ecommerce Web Design Blog
Web Hosting: Is 1GB enough space? How much disk space do you need?
Published in web hosting, web design, shopping cart, ecommerce websites by oscworks |If you look at the disk space offerings of Australia's leading hosting providers, you will notice that 1GB is often the minimum amount of disk space offered on web hosting packages. But how much is 1GB and is it enough for your needs?
Unless you are handling huge numbers of high-resolution photos or videos, in most cases 1GB will usually be more than sufficient for your website needs.
Business applications such as ecommerce websites, typically require much less space than 1GB unless they have tens of thousands of products or offer a large number of downloadable products. This is because well designed shopping cart software does not use a significant amount of disk space and customers cannot afford to place high-resolution, slow-loading photos into shops. If it takes too long to view a product, customers will lose interest and will not buy it.
For these reasons even the premium shopping cart website package at Osc Works offers only 750MB (megabytes) of disk space as standard. Many of our competitors offer much less space than this as well. We have found that although we offer upgrade options for customers who need more space than this, customers rarely need it. Three quarters the level of these 'entry level' web hosting packages is usually more than sufficient for even high traffic ecommerce websites.
Think about emails
If you have a large number of employees and are looking for a pure hosting account for your business, think about how big you are going to let your employee mailboxes be. If you have ten employees and give them 100MB of disk space each for their mailbox, if they all fill up their email inboxes you will use 1GB of space. You should factor this into your considerations when choosing a web host.
If the package limits for a host are less than your needs, contact them and ask about buying extra. In many cases, hosts will allow you to do this but offer custom prices depending on your needs. It pays to ask - you could be turning away a host perfect for your needs just because they provide custom quotes for 'overs'.
What about traffic? Is 1GB enough then?
High traffic ecommerce websites will consume considerably more than their disk space levels every month in traffic, as they log in to update their products and customers view products, make orders and for downloadable products stores download software, fonts etc. A lot of our online store customers use between 2-5GB of traffic per month, with high end customers using between 10-20GB. If you are purchasing your own ecommerce hosting for a shop, look for a provider offering limits in these ranges depending on how many customers you expect to receive.
But for standard personal or business websites which do not offer ecommerce, 1-3GB of data transfer will usually be more than enough to handle thousands of browser visits per month.
Osc Works Hosting & Ecommerce Hosting
Osc Works offers three different specialist ecommerce packages which include hosting tailored to the needs of online shops. For customers seeking just a hosting account to do it yourself, we also have six very competitive web hosting packages.
Benefits of a Content Management System (CMS)
Published in website design, web design, cms by oscworks |What is a Content Management System (CMS)? How does it work? How could it benefit you?
The system used in information based websites to let you manage your own news, image galleries, blogs, forum or written page content is called a Content Management System, or CMS. The CMS is usually a secure administration section of your website that you log into and from there create and edit menus, configure the titles on pages, decide whether content gets displayed or not, manage users and more.
CMS systems help ensure that your page content does not get out of date, and help you manage the navigation structure easily - as the CMS system keeps track of all the links in your site. This can save you time, reduce error and make you more flexible to change. Such flexibility makes CMS web design systems very popular with large corporate organisations who have a large amount of content. Small business can also benefit because the CMS gives your site a platform to grow and add in new features that would not be possible if you were managing the site yourself with static pages.
The key advantages of CMS systems are:
- Centralised management and content sharing - you can set up administration profiles to determine who edits your site and what they can edit. Multiple people can work on your site.
- Centralised backup - all of your content gets saved in a single database which can be backed up by you or your hosting provider
- Web Design and content separate- your site can have a design skin (or web design template) applied, which enables elements of the design to be updated and modified without affecting your content
- Create written content and multimedia content - insert videos, include photo galleries, add Flash, write content, the choices are varied and flexible with a content management system. Adding directories a forum or a blog is very easy with an information site and CMS system
- Independence - you don't need to contact your web company and/or designers every time you want to make a change to a page on your website. You save yourself time and money programming things like blogs and forums.
- Save money on web developers and in house web skills - if you can use a word processor, you can learn to use a content management system. Most CMS systems are designed so even people with very basic computer skills can quickly learn to be skilled content managers.
- Update information quickly - for news and other written content, a CMS system is outstanding value for money. If implemented well, it can be quickly indexed by search engines as well, building your site's credibility and in many cases rankings too.
Writing good web content
Published in website design, web design, content, articles by oscworks |How do you go about writing easy-to-read content for your website?
How do you go about writing easy-to-read content for your website? How can you keep your visitors coming back? Here are some tips that could help you.
1. Write for the customer, not for you
You're passionate about telling everything about your product. But your customers might find knowing everything a bit overwhelming. Put yourself in your customer's shoes: what are the main benefits of your product.
2. Assume your customer's don't have much time
Get to the point. It will be well received by your customers. Keep it short, simple and focussed on the benefits. This will increase your chances of holding your customer's attention and keeping them on your site. Don't try to put your existing brochure online.
3. Be interactive
Take advantage of features like forums and directories to involve your customers. Include forms on your site. Encourage customers to provide you with feedback and information about their preferences, and gain their permission to send them newsletters. You can use newsletters to get them to come back to your site.
4. Keep your content current
if you are regularly update pages, search engines will keep coming back and indexing your site. Your customers will also keep coming back if there is a lot of valuable content. So if you are running a parenting resource for example, keep adding new articles. If you are running a forum about motor racing, comment on the latest motor racing trends, cars, techniques and meets.
5. Create a community
Develop a club with exclusive benefits or something similar to build loyalty. Give them access to special features or content. Give away something special for the people who keep coming back. If you have a forum, reward those who post often. Email your members with valuable information, teasers etc. If you are running a mortgage broking site, have a daily email with interest rates and comments when the Reserve Bank changes the Official Cash Rate is updated. Have a column written by an expert relevant to your industry in your blog or newsletter (e.g. child psychologist, lawyer, chef, economist etc) as this will add credibility to your site.
6. Measure your reading ease
Above all else, keep your writing style simple and easy to read. Use short sentences if you can. Search for 'Reading Ease tools' in Google. Visit one of those sites that measure the readability of your site. These sites give you a score out of 100 about how easy your content is to read. 100 is extremely easy, 65 is plain english, 30 is difficult with long sentences. 0 is extremely difficult language that is very hard to read. Most guides on reading ease say to aim your site 60.
This article has a Flesch Reading Ease score of 65.
What is Web 2.0?
Published in website design, web design by oscworks |What is Web 2.0 and how does it relate to your business?
Web 2.0 is an increasingly heard term but what does it mean and how is it relevant to your business?
The term refers to a collection of technologies that enable people to interact with the information on websites. That is, creating a website's content as well as reading it. It represents a movement towards the power of democracy and community on the Internet - where anyone can create content and others can vote on it. Web technologies such as Ajax help make it possible by speeding up web applications and allowing them to have functionality that's more like what we are all used to from desktop software.
Examples of Web 2.0 applications are Gmail, Del.ic.ious, Google Maps, Digg, Flickr and Technorati.
Web 2.0 applications allow content to be pulled from different places in order to enhance the customer experience - for example, a restaurant website may store their menu images on Flickr, allow visitors to leave reviews, read the owner's blog and use Google Maps to show customers how to get to their store.
How can you take advantage of web 2.0? Here are some ideas:
- Offer ways for customers to be interactive on your website - create a blog using the Information pages in ozCart or start a blog site by purchasing one of our web design packages for information sites
- Create a forum website
- Offer social bookmarking links so people can vote for your content
- Post your design portfolio on YouTube
- Add an RSS feed to your website
