Building Web Sites All-in-One For Dummies® (92 page)

To share or not to share

Most Web hosting companies offer shared and dedicated hosting. The option you choose depends on your client's budget and how much traffic you anticipate will be generated for the e-commerce site you're designing. Of course, when it comes to traffic, your client will want the moon, Alice.

If your client is just dipping his toe into the e-commerce tidal pool, a shared server suffices nicely. When a
shared server
hosts a site
,
the site information is stored on a host server with several other Web sites. Shared servers are, understandably, more economical than dedicated servers. The only potential drawback with a shared server is that if your client's site (or one of the other sites on the server) starts getting a lot of traffic, visitors might not be able to access your site quickly during busy times. Or — the worst-case scenario — visitors might not be able to access the site 100 percent of the time. Another thing to consider is the speed of the server. If the shared server has a T1 line, though, it might work just fine. A
T1 line
is fiber optic and enables a fast data transfer rate.

If your client has an established, bricks-and-mortar business that's doing well and you have a stout plan for marketing the site (you do have a marketing plan, don't you?), consider paying the extra to get a dedicated server. When you host a site on a
dedicated server,
the server is dedicated to your client's site. That's right: Your client's site is the only one on the server, which means visitors get faster access — even when the Internet is busy — and they get access 100 percent of the time.

If your client's initial needs warrant using only a shared server, make sure that the Web hosting company can upgrade the client to a dedicated server without penalty when the need arises.

Getting the best deal

When searching for a service to host an e-commerce site, the best price is not necessarily the best deal. In some instances, the best price is an absolute disaster. As the Web designer, you need to be in control and tell your client which server you're going to use. So what features do you need? That, like the proverbial well, is a deep subject. However, here are a few items to consider when shopping for the quintessential, e-commerce, Web hosting service:

•
Does the Web hosting company provide shared servers or dedicated servers?
If the company provides a shared server, visitors might experience problems connecting to the Web site during peak traffic periods. Not good.

•
How much hard disk space does the Web hosting service provide?
This usually differs depending on the plan you choose. If the site you're designing is relatively small, you can get by with 300–500 megabytes (MB) of hard disk space. If the site you're designing has copious amounts of multimedia elements such as full-motion video or Flash movies, subdomains, and other bells and whistles, you might need up to 9 gigabytes (GB) of space. Choose the amount of space that best serves your client's current needs. Just make sure that the hosting service is flexible and that your client can upgrade to a different plan that provides more disk space when the need arises.

•
What is the maximum bandwidth the service provides?
For a small site, bandwidth probably won't be an issue. If your client is going big time with lots of information and lots of pages, and has a service that's in demand causing people to flock to the site in droves, her site will gobble up bandwidth quicker than Donald Trump adds to his considerable net worth. If your client throws in a podcast, you're talking about gobs of bandwidth. The good news is that Web hosting is an extremely competitive business, so most companies offer packages with 15,000GB of data transfer. Now that's a whole lotta bandwidth. If the mega bandwidth comes on a shared server package, make sure the server is lightning fast.

When you're considering a hosting company, ask the salesperson for the URLs of sites they host. Check with the site Webmasters to see whether they've encountered any problems, such as down time or slow connections.

•
What percentage of up time does the Web hosting service guarantee?
E-commerce sites need to be available 24/7. In an ideal world, there would never be power outages or problems with Internet hub connections. However, these interruptions in service are facts of life, and the best Web hosting services have redundancy built into their system to guard against down time. Choose a Web server that can guarantee you near 100 percent availability.

•
How many e-mail accounts does the Web hosting service provide?
Most Web hosting services provide 50 e-mail accounts with a hosting package. Having an e-mail account linked to a Web site adds an air of authenticity to the site. Most consumers would rather send a query to, say, an e-mail address like
[email protected]
than to
[email protected]
. With 50 e-mail addresses that have your domain name, you can use generic e-mail addresses, such as
info@
mysite.com
and
sales@
mysite.com
— and, if needed, personal e-mail addresses such as
fred@
mysite.com
.

•
Does the Web hosting service provide a user-friendly method of managing the Web site?
Most Web hosting services provide a control panel that clients use to manage the Web site, add e-mail addresses, manage databases, control FTP access to the site, and so on. If you're going to manage the account for the client, make sure you understand how to use the control panel. If your client is going to manage the site, make sure the control panel is extremely user friendly.

•
Does the Web hosting service provide support? If so, is the support by phone or online?
You need to know whether support is available 24/7 in case of an emergency.

•
Can you set up a database for the Web site?
This feature is especially important if your client requires a Web site that receives data from clients for future use. You also want to know what type of database the hosting service supports. Make sure the database is compatible with any applications you intend to use, such as a blog. If you're using a Linux server, a MySQL database can get the job done just fine.

•
Does the Web hosting package support pages with PHP code?
If so, make sure the version of PHP offered by the Web hosting service matches the version you'll be using for your code.

•
Does the Web hosting service provide Web analytics and statistics?
If so, how much information is provided? You or your client needs to know how many visits the site is getting each day, where the traffic is coming from, what keywords are being used to find your site from search engines, what the most popular entrance and exit pages are, and so on. This information is imperative when you and the client fine-tune the content of the site, or when redesigning it in the future.

•
Can you host more than one domain with the hosting package?
This information is important if the client is setting up more than one e-commerce site. Many Web hosting services enable you to host up to ten domains with one hosting package at a reasonable cost.

•
Does the hosting service enable you to create subdomains?
This feature is useful if the client wants to set up different Web sites for different aspects of the company's services. For example, you could design pages for the client's customer service and store them in a subdomain that you might name
customerservice.
mye-commercesite
.com
.

As a Web designer, you can opt for hosting your own Web site with a Web hosting package that permits more than one domain. You can then host your client's Web sites using your Web hosting service and bill the client for the hosting service, enabling you to add additional profit to your bottom line. Many Web hosting services also have reseller packages. You can purchase Web hosting for additional domains at a reduced price. You then mark up the hosting service and bill your client.

Planning a user-friendly site

Before you begin designing the site, sit down with your client and find out what his goals are for the site. If the client wants to use the site to dispense information and collect sales leads, you need to create an online catalog and a database that records the names and e-mail addresses submitted by interested parties. You can collect this information, using an online form.

If the site is used to sell products and your client wants visitors to be able to purchase products online, you need additional information to create a successful site. Here are a few important items that must be included when designing an e-commerce Web site:

•
An About Us section:
This section gives your client credibility. Here, you include information about your client and the reasons why visitors should purchase your client's products or services.

•
A comprehensive description of your client's products or services:
This section of the site should include the features of your client's offering and information on how each feature benefits the client's potential customer. If your client is selling a product or interactive service, this section should also explain the function of each feature and its benefit to the customer.

•
A section that features testimonials and/or success stories from your client's existing customer base:
This section builds tremendous credibility for your client's product or service.

•
FAQs:
An FAQ (frequently asked question) section anticipates and answers questions or concerns potential customers might have.

When you design the site, make it easy for potential customers to gather all the information they need to make an informed buying decision. Add as many graphic elements as you need to add sizzle to the steak. Images are a must when it comes to selling a product. You should include an image with each product description. If your client's catalog is extensive, you'll display many items on each page, which equates to a small image size. If your customer's products bear close scrutiny, make sure you include links to different views of the product as well as links to larger versions of the image.

If appropriate, you can also include multimedia elements in your Web design. Video clips are great ways to explain complicated details about a product or service. And you can spice up an e-commerce site with the liberal use of Flash movies. For that matter, Flash video (a proprietary codec that is decoded with the Flash Video Player) is also an excellent vehicle for incorporating full-motion video on a Web site.

Don't overload a page with multimedia elements, especially if part of your client's intended audience accesses the Internet with dialup modems. If your client insists on multimedia elements or you feel multimedia elements are essential for the site, consider creating two versions of the site: one for high bandwidth and one for low bandwidth. Make sure that the multimedia for the low bandwidth version of the site is smaller in size, with higher levels of compression, to ensure that it loads in a reasonable amount of time.