1: Promote Weeks Before the Holidays

Be sure to run your holiday email marketing campaign at least a week before holiday festivities begin. The holiday season formally begins during Cyber Week, which includes Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

These events see a huge number of online transactions annually and it only increases every year. Experts still expect holiday sales to rise despite the global pandemic, making this season a great opportunity to promote your products and services.

2: Offer Last-Minute Deals

The days closest to the big dates require the most intensive holiday email marketing efforts. You want your prospects to rest assured that they have options that ship their orders on time. On-time or even overnight shipping deals are some campaigns you can adopt to convert prospects.

Meanwhile, setting deadlines for orders brings out the urgency in potential customers who may end up taking the deal.

To set a deadline, consider sending emails stating that customers can get their order shipped on time if they order before a certain date.

3: Offer Real Reasons to Buy

While you offer last-minute deals, be sure to avoid giving customers false urgency. Give a real reason that wouldn’t devalue your brand and turn off customers. Perhaps you only offer two discount deals a year, making this holiday season a great opportunity.

4: Analyze Previous Strategies That Worked for You

Although the pandemic brings lucrative opportunities for online shopping during the holidays, auditing your marketing campaigns in the past can still help improve your performance. Review the strategies you adopted and then identify which areas need finetuning.

Consider auditing customer statistics as well. Identify which items they value most and tailor your messages to target them.

5: Understand Your Customer

The previous strategy can help you understand who your buyers are. Be sure to create a marketing campaign that speaks directly to your customers. Consumers who feel that a brand can solve their pain points are more likely to support their products and services.

Once you know who you are selling to, you can adjust your strategy to grab their attention. You would also set yourself apart from your competition by having a loyal consumer base.

6: Segment Your Email List

Segmenting your customers helps you sell different products to existing customers and even upsell to them. It is also related to identifying your audience. Dividing your customer demographics helps you target variations of your messages that match their voice. In other words, you would speak one way to VIP customers and another with newer customers who have yet to close a purchase.

7: Remind Loyal Customers Why They Subscribe

If your brand has a mission that’s months in the making, the holiday season may be a great time to remind your customers of their goals outside of the products you offer. This mission may be the reason why your customers stuck around in the first place.

8: Limit Your Emails

Avoid sending out too many emails to the point that customers get turned off from buying. Too many promotional emails may even make customers unsubscribe.

Conclusion

The best holiday email marketing campaign involves understanding your audience, prompt preparation, and careful limitation. Once you know you know your target audience, you can tailor your messages to reach specific members of your audience.

Your emails should lead your subscribers to your website and convert sales. You’ll want to optimize your site to keep up with your customers this holiday season. Get in touch with our experts at A2 Hosting and ask about our hosting plans. We can help speed up your site so all traffic from your holiday email marketing campaign converts.

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How to Create the Best Holiday Email Strategy appeared first on The A2 Posting.

ANN ARBOR, MICH–NOV 22, 2021–Black Friday sales in 2021 are forecasted to break $900 billion in online shopping globally, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index. To prepare, eCommerce companies have begun to buckle down and enhance their websites for the recording-breaking traffic coming their way. A2 Hosting, a leading player in the web hosting industry, just released an accompanying ebook to aid online entrepreneurs in their preparations. “With the impacts of Covid 19 in 2020 and 2021, we know that now more than ever it’s imperative for our customers to experience a win during the holiday sales. We’re trying to give them as many resources as possible to help them succeed,” says Bryan Muthig, A2 Hosting’s CEO. 

This ebook is changing the game for eCommerce owners in 2021. It covers backend technical website improvements, front-end website optimization, and digital marketing do’s and don’t. eCommerce owners will find a thorough guide with step-by-step instructions on how to upgrade their websites as well as insight from A2 Hosting’s top-end development team, marketing team, and support gurus. Along with this ebook and a number of preparatory guides on their blog, A2 Hosting is also offering a Black Friday and Cyber Monday sitewide discount with their lowest prices of the year from 11/22-12/5. 

“We want to give our customers the right resources to succeed,” says Muthig. “Not only does that include the right hosting, but it also encapsulates the hosting experience in general. Our guru support crew will be available 24/7 for our customers throughout the holiday season so we’re here for you when it counts. Whether it’s a website crashing on Christmas Day or client questions on Black Friday morning, we’re a team that values supporting our customers in any way we can all season long.”    

About A2 Hosting

Recently awarded Leader in Web Hosting for Summer 2021 by G2 and Best Cheap Dedicated Web Hosting by Digital.com, A2 Hosting, Inc. is a high-performance hosting services provider located in Ann Arbor, MI. The company delivers ultra-reliable solutions and 24/7/365 US-based support from its Guru Crew team. Since 2003, A2 Hosting has offered innovative, affordable, and developer-friendly hosting for small- and medium-sized businesses as well as web development agencies worldwide. Customers seeking the fastest hosting options in the industry can host websites of any size on A2’s Turbo Performance server platform featuring page load speeds up to 20X faster compared to competing solutions. To learn more, visit https://www.a2hosting.com.

The post Win 2021 Black Friday Website Preparations with A2 Hosting’s Free eCommerce eBook appeared first on The A2 Posting.

But did you know that proper hosting is also important in establishing a good business reputation?

Through web hosting services, a website can provide amazing user experiences that will improve any brand’s image in its market. The opposite is true with a poor hosting solution. This can lead to poor user experiences that reduce your engagement significantly.

So how can you choose the right web hosting solutions for your website?

To help you decide, we’ve prepared a brief guide on the crucial things to know when choosing web hosting services.

How to Choose the Right Web Hosting Services

There are at least five factors to consider when deciding on the ideal web hosting service for your needs. Getting the highest levels on all these factors will ensure that your website can provide an excellent user experience.

These factors are:

Web Hosting Service Factor #1: Speed

The speed of your web hosting service provider is one of the first and most important factors you should consider. Hosting speed is a priority consideration as it shows how fast a provider can load web pages.

Websites that can load quickly often translate to a better user experience since most people won’t stay if a page takes a long time to load. With a slow website, your customers are more likely to leave your page and opt for competitors instead.

When talking about hosting performance, the software stack or server technology used by a provider is one thing to look out for. With technology evolving at a rapid pace, it’s important to have a web host that can adapt quickly and employ the latest tech advancements for maximum speeds.

At A2 Hosting we offer Turbo hosting plans that are designed to provide users with the best speeds for their websites. The limited occupancy of these plans minimizes the number of resources being used while optimized server configurations ensure top performance.

Furthermore, our Turbo packages take advantage of the latest server hardware and software technologies in the market, providing as much as 20x faster page load speeds than the competition. Websites hosted on their turbos plans can handle 9x more traffic with 3x faster read/write speeds.

Web Hosting Service Factor #2: Reliability

Reliability or the uptime of web hosting services is the second most important aspect to consider. Your host’s reliability refers to how often a site is going to be available and accessible to the public.

Besides a slow-loading website, one that can’t be visited is one of the worst things businesses can experience. An inaccessible site, even if it’s just for a few hours, can significantly reduce conversion rates.

Brand websites that experience frequent downtimes can expect their images to be tarnished. No lead or customer would want to visit a website only to find out that it’s not available. Catering to the needs of the target market at all times should be a top priority for your business website.

One way you can avoid experiencing downtimes as much as possible is by leveraging a hosting solution that is guaranteed to have at least 99% uptime. Anything lower than that would drastically reduce conversions.

At A2 Hosting we take advantage of tried and tested technologies, ensuring that all of our customers get 99.99% uptime from our web hosting services.

Web Hosting Service Factor #3: Security

As you browse for your potential hosting solutions provider, you should consider the levels of security they have to offer for new and existing customers. This is particularly important at the server level since this is where most of your site’s resources are stored.

For instance, you want to check if they apply the newest operating system patches to your server. Patches and updates are vital for servers to have as few vulnerabilities as possible. You should also check if they provide DDoS protection and high-level firewalls to filter potentially malicious traffic.

Besides cybersecurity, backups are equally important as well. Backup solutions provide you with a repository containing saved business data that you can fall back on if the worst should happen.

With A2 Hosting, you can leverage secure web hosting services that provide you with top-notch protection and stability for your website. We work on the OpenVPN virtual private network so that our users can work from site to site and point to point without worrying about their security. OpenVPN, in particular, comes with security features such as network address translation (NAT) protection.

Meanwhile, our Brute Force Protection solution lets you block cybercriminals using methods such as IP routing, APF, and custom commands.

Other security features you can find from our packages include:

• ConfigServer and Firewall (CSF) login security
• Linux malware detection solutions
• Linux environment security
• SSL certificates
• Secure Shell (SSH) login security solution
• SimpleRisk risk management solution

At A2 Hosting, our goal is to help you identify potential security threats and resolve them before they become worse. Our secure servers utilize the latest and proven cybersecurity solutions so you can have around-the-clock protection for your websites.

Web Hosting Service Factor #4: Features and Add-Ons

Features and add-ons are always great to have in any web hosting service. The main reason for this is that these added options let you scale up when needed, especially when you wish to expand to a new market.

A2 Hosting offers customers quite a few add-on solutions that can help improve site security, functionality, usability, and experience. These additional options are:

• Cloudflare: The content delivery network (CDN) known as Cloudflare is a service that we provide to our web hosting customers free of charge. We offer a knowledge base of tutorials that will teach you how to set up and get started with Cloudflare.
• SSL certificates: SSL certificate is a necessary add-on solution for any website, especially in terms of ramping up security. Using the right SSL certificate, site owners can make sure that their website data are encrypted while making themselves more trustworthy to their visitors.
• WHMCS hosting: Resellers looking to leverage A2 Hosting’s plans can take advantage of WHMCS since we also support hosting with this feature. You can learn everything from configuring OpenSRS access for WHMCS to ordering a WHMCS license with us.
• Domain and SSL reseller: Again, for resellers or those using managed VPS or managed dedicated server accounts, you can turn into an SSL or eNom domain reseller with A2 Hosting.
• Promotions: Promotional programs are available when you pick A2 Hosting as your web hosting services provider. You can even access a knowledge base containing information on programs for affiliates, refer-a-friend, and more.
• cPanel licensing: Dedicated, cloud VPS, and unmanaged VPS servers normally don’t have cPanel included in their accounts. With A2 Hosting, cPanel licensing in included with many of our plans.
• MailChimp account setup: We can help you sign up for a MailChimp account and teach you how to generate API keys. The latter should help you integrate MailChimp with your A2 Hosting website so you can manage your newsletters and drip campaigns easily.
• Dropmysite: The Dropmysite cPanel plugin lets you keep track of your websites and configure backups for your data. A2 Hosting will provide you with all of the resources you need to make the most of Dropmysite.
• Ordering a Blesta license: Looking to leverage Blesta for your website? A2 Hosting will guide you throughout the process so you can maximize your reseller hosting package with us.

Web Hosting Service Factor #5: Support

If you’ve found a web hosting provider that has the hardware, software, and features that you need, then the next logical step is to consider their support. Does your chosen provider have the expertise, equipment, and resources to ensure you get the best levels of service at all times?

Here are a few aspects to consider when it comes to support:

• Support level: When it comes to a host’s level of support, you need to consider the level of support your business website needs. For instance, do you require VPS, cloud hosting, or dedicated server support? What about WooCommerce or WordPress? Does your host offer help on those platforms? Are you looking for a managed plan where your host takes care of all of your backend server needs or looking to manage it yourself?
• Contact methods: The next aspect to consider is how your provider gets in touch with you in terms of support. Do they offer telephone and live chat or just email? Having an online support ticket system can be crucial, especially for business websites. A2 Hosting offers ticket, live chat, email, and phone calls 24/7/365!
• Ability to respond: Besides being able to contact them through multiple methods, you should also learn how quickly they can address your issue. In case your website goes down, you want to know how long before it gets back up so you can get back to business as soon as possible.
• How quickly they resolve issues: Similar to the above, resolution time is another thing to consider with your web hosting provider. Some hosts pass the concerns of their customers to third-party support providers, which can take several days to be resolved. You want to leverage the support services of a company that can resolve all of your issues themselves. At A2 Hosting we have an extensive in house support team, otherwise know as our guru crew.
• Operating times: Finally, you want to check and ensure your web host can provide around-the-clock support. 24/7 customer service is a must nowadays especially for website owners that can experience problems at any time of the day or night. That’s why A2 Hosting has someone there to help you 24/7/365!

At A2 Hosting, our web hosting services come with the highest levels of support you can expect from a premium provider. We are available to answer inquiries or resolve issues of our customers whenever they need us.

In case you want to learn more about our services, you can visit our support page that contains all of the information you need on various hosting solutions.

Which Level of Hosting Plan Is Right for You?

So which level of web hosting plan fits your needs? Consider the short overview below and click this link to take our free quiz!

Shared Web Hosting Plan

Our Shared Web Hosting plan is our most affordable hosting solution that lets you share resources such as disk space, data transfer, and processing power. It also comes with cPanel, server backups, and unlimited storage.

VPS Hosting Plan

On our VPS Hosting plans you share the same server with other sites, but you get to operate your account independently. This means you get your own allotted amount of resources! If you choose our managed plans back-end server maintenance is handled for you.

Dedicated Hosting Plan

Looking for a premium hosting solution? Our dedicated hosting plan means that you get the highest performance, best features, and a private server solely for all of your business website needs.

Conclusion

These are the most important aspects you should know about choosing a web hosting service. Following the tips provided in this post will help guide you in getting the right solution for your website.

If you have any questions about our web hosting services, contact our sales team today. Interested in finding out which plan is right for you? I encourage you to take our free quiz to help you decide!

The post Crucial Things to Know When Choosing Web Hosting Services appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Before we can decide when it’s time for you to upgrade, let’s first define these services.

What is a VPS?

A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a server where resources are all allocated virtually. You share physical resources with other users on the server, but unlike shared hosting, your site gets dedicated resources in its virtual allocation.

For example, if the server has 16GB of RAM, your VPS might get 2GB of the 16GB of RAM. That 2GB is yours and no one else’s.

Resources are divided using a hypervisor to create virtual machines for each user on the server. This might sound confusing, but it’s most important to know that each account on the VPS is completely cut off from other accounts.

A VPS is like owning an apartment in a fourplex. You own your part of the building, but the other three apartments are owned by others. All of the resources in your apartment are yours, but you share the same building. 

What is a Bare Metal Dedicated Server?

A bare metal dedicated server is a server where you have the entire physical server dedicated to your website. In a VPS, you only get part of a server, but with a dedicated server, you get the whole thing! 

Using the housing analogy, a dedicated server is like owning your own house. No one else owns parts of it. It’s solely yours to do with as you please.

Now, Bare Metal Dedicated servers differ from traditional dedicated servers in a few ways. First, provisioning occurs within minutes of ordering. Gone are the days of waiting 24 hours for your dedicated server to get up and running. Also, higher-quality servers are used with top-of-the-line components.

Now that we know the basics of our VPS and Bare Metal Dedicated servers, we can discuss the main question of the article.

When Is It Time to Upgrade from a Virtual Private Server to Bare Metal Dedicated Hosting?

This is a frequently asked question and one that deserves answering. Typically, you want to upgrade from a VPS to a dedicated server when you’ve reached 70% of your total resource usage for RAM, disk space, CPU, and bandwidth combined. Why 70%? Because it’s better to be early than to be late. If you wait until your resources hit 100% total usage, you risk your server crashing or getting temporarily suspended until you upgrade. NOTE: We email you several notices warning you of resource uses once you get past 50% usage. We won’t suspend your account without warning and suggesting an upgrade.

There are, of course, other reasons you may want to upgrade to a bare metal dedicated server such as:

• Wanting to use an application or operating system that won’t support virtualization. 
• Expecting a surge in traffic during a certain time of the year. For example, some businesses need the extra power of a Bare Metal Dedicated Server during Black Friday.
• Not wanting to share a server with anyone else.

Suffice it to say, if you notice you’re not getting the same performance and you’re starting to see 70% resource usage on your account, it’s time to get an upgrade. Contact our sales team today if you’re not sure if you need to upgrade or not.

Related Resources:

• What Is a Bare Metal Dedicated Server? (And When Is It Right for You?)
• Bare Metal Dedicated Specs and Why They’re Important
• 13 Questions to Consider When Choosing a Bare Metal Dedicated Server
• A Guide to A2 Bare Metal Dedicated Hosting

The post When Is It Time to Upgrade from a Virtual Private Server to Bare Metal Dedicated Hosting? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

First of all, what is the difference between a shared hosting server and a VPS?

A shared hosting server is a server where resources are shared among many individuals. In a shared hosting environment, you share an IP address (unless you want to request a dedicated IP address for $5.99/monthly), and resources like RAM, disk space, and memory are split amongst all users. When one user is using up all of the bandwidth, it can affect other users on the server (but we’ll throttle users exceeding minimum usages so others on the server won’t be affected). 

A shared hosting server is like staying in a hostel. You share a bathroom, kitchen, and all resources with others in the building. 

On the other hand, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a server where resources are allocated virtually through what’s called a hypervisor to create virtual machines for every user on the server. You share the physical resources with others, but your site gets dedicated resources in its own virtual allocation, cut off from the other accounts on the server. 

To extend the hotel metaphor, a VPS is like renting a bed and breakfast for a weekend. You have your own room, but everyone else in the building shares the house.

So, now that we know what the differences between shared and VPS servers are, let’s discuss when it’s time to upgrade from a shared hosting plan to a VPS.

When Is It Time to Upgrade from a Shared Hosting Server to a Virtual Private Server (VPS)?

This is a question we get a lot, so we want to give you the right answers. We always recommend the 70/30 rule. What this means is that you want to upgrade from a shared hosting server to a VPS when you’re reached 70% of your total resource usage for all of your resources combined (RAM, disk space, CPU, and bandwidth). 

If you upgrade when you’re at 70% resource usage, you have time to move into another plan without noticing any performance issues on your website. When you wait, it only hurts your business. 

NOTE: We’ll email you warning you of resource uses once you get past 50% usage. We won’t suspend your account without any warning.

What are the advantages of shared hosting?

• It’s the least expensive option available for web hosting. These servers cost between $5.99-$29.99 monthly.
• You can seamlessly upgrade between plans at any time.
• Some plans like the Turbo Boost and Turbo Max are faster than certain VPS plans like the Lift 4 and Lift 8.

Shared hosting plans are best for small-budget website owners or small businesses with little traffic. You can always upgrade to a higher plan at any time so it’s best to start small first.

What are the disadvantages of shared hosting?

• Load times can be slower because you’re sharing a server.
• When your site receives higher levels of traffic, you might notice a dip in performance.
• You don’t know who you’re sharing a server with. 
• There can be a lack of customizations.

What are the advantages of VPS hosting?

• You’ll have more dedicated resources at your disposal to support growing traffic levels and maintain your speed.
• Higher priority 24/7/365 support.
• More server control and the ability to customize to your liking.
• An affordable option for those who want a dedicated server but don’t want to pay for dedicated server prices.

What are the disadvantages of VPS hosting?

• Is typically more expensive than a shared hosting plan.
• Can be slower than certain turbo shared hosting plans like the Turbo Boost and Turbo Max.
• Can require a higher level of technical expertise to get off the ground.

The plan you should choose depends on your current needs. You can always upgrade later, but you don’t want to pick a plan above the resources that your website truly needs unless you’re expecting rapid growth. And if you notice you’re not getting the performance you’re used to, it’s probably time to contact our sales team today. Remember the 70/30 rule when you’re considering an upgrade.

Related Resources:

• How to Choose the Best Web Hosting Plan for Your Needs
• An Introduction to Shared Hosting
• How to Choose the Right Hosting Plan for Your Blog
• 3 Ways Your Hosting Plan Can Affect SEO
• A Total Beginner’s Guide to Website Hosting

The post When Is It Time to Upgrade from a Shared Hosting Server to a Virtual Private Server (VPS)? appeared first on The A2 Posting.

During the Holiday season, your products and their descriptions should be well displayed so you can increase your conversions as you drive lots of traffic to your eCommerce website. Read our blog about how to take your product descriptions to the next level. Before explaining what makes up a well-written product description (i.e. a description that increases your sale conversion rates), we first need to ground ourselves on what a product description is.

What is a Product Description?

A product description is a statement that gives the characteristics of some type of product or service that should elicit a mental image to your customer. The real power of product descriptions comes from the intent behind them. When you’re writing product descriptions you shouldn’t just be writing copy about the characteristics of what you’re selling, you need to show your target customers what they will experience if they purchase your product. This is a great example of experiential marketing. You want to immerse your target customers in your products so they can see how what you’re selling them will change their lives for the better if they decide to purchase it. 

Who Is Your Target Customer?

Before you can properly describe this “ideal product experience” to your customer you need to identify who they are and empathize with them. If you don’t know who your target customer is, you won’t be able to write proper descriptions and your efforts will fall short of the mark.  If you’re saying to yourself “but I sell to a wide audience and I have more than one target customer” then now’s the time to pinpoint the consumers that are most important to your business.

You can do this by using the 80/20 rule. On average, 80% of sales come from 20% of your customers. If you’re trying to narrow down and find your target audience it would make sense to start by examining the top 20% of those who purchase from you already. Use past purchasing data and gather customer profiles of your top 20% of customers. Now examine these profiles and look for patterns in their demographics and psychographics. Use these patterns to create personas. Personas are fictional customers that you can give a name, sex, age, career etc. By visualizing your customers in this way it is easier to write directly to them and create product descriptions that they would find appealing. 

How Do I Show and Not Tell?

When writing product descriptions, it’s important to remember to use clear and descriptive language. You need to show your customers the benefits of your products rather than just telling them what they are.

For example, for a service product don’t just tell your customer, “Our _______ service is reliable.” Instead, show them how reliable it is in your description: “Our ____ service is backed by uncompromising Service Level Agreement that guarantees 99.9% uptime, a support staff with expert admins availability 24/7/365, and a 30-day hassle-free 100% money-back guarantee.” 

Now that you’ve written the second description put yourself in your personas’ shoes and see how reading your description makes you feel. When you read the second attempt do you feel safer in your choice of purchasing the above service? Do you visualize the support that is available and understand how this service is actually reliable rather than it being an abstract idea? If you answered yes to both questions then it means this description is effective. It’s showing your customers what you want them to experience with your services rather than just telling them something that they can easily forget. 

Can’t I Just Use Pictures of My Products?

While high-quality images are important, search engines can’t see images – or not yet anyway. Images of your products may speak 1,000 words to your target customers and convey the emotion you’re trying to share, but they do little for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To get your site to rank and become visible to potential customers, you must include product descriptions that are loaded with potential keywords. That way your site will begin to rank for related words to your products and your site will show up in more relevant google searches. 

How Do I Make My Product Descriptions Uniquely Mine?

The bottom line is, your brand needs to be authentically itself and your product descriptions should embody this.  To get noticed, your description copy needs to break through any commoditization noise that may surround your product.  Don’t just look at your competition and try to write a description that’s 10% better, add something unique in your product’s description copy that directly taps into your brand’s authentic self.

In Conclusion

Business owners that take the time to write great product descriptions can gain an edge over the competition. Great product descriptions can mean the difference between success and failure for eCommerce sites. So remember: embody your target customer, show rather than tell the experience you’re promising, include keywords for better SEO, and let your brand’s unique personality shine through. Follow this simple advice to boost your conversions and eCommerce sales during the Holiday season!

Do you know what else has a big impact on conversions? Your website’s speed and uptime! Keep coming back to our blog this week to read advice from our A2 Hosting experts on how to get your site ready for Q4! We’re also running a sale on all of our A2 Turbo products so check out our website today for deals and discounts you don’t want to miss!

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How to Write Better Product Descriptions that Drive eCommerce Sales During the Holidays appeared first on The A2 Posting.

The holiday shopping season is a critical time for retail businesses to make their annual sales revenue targets. In order to ensure your business makes the most of this opportunity, it’s important to verify your website is properly prepared for the influx of customers. While this can seem like a daunting task there are a few ways to quickly validate you are ready for the holiday rush.

1. Look at Historical Data and Implement Load Testing

The first thing to do is to look at past holiday traffic surges and compare the percentage increase in traffic and concurrent users to the steady-state traffic levels you see throughout the rest of the year. Using this information you can make a reasonable projection of what you can expect to see this holiday season.

Not only does this help you make general decisions around the amount of resources you need to accommodate the rush but you can also take advantage of load testing services to actually send those traffic levels to your website and ensure it responds appropriately. There are a number of services that offer load testing, many of which are cloud-based and can spin up tests on-demand and even offer a free tier of service. Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list of available services, I have personally used flood.io and find it to be a cost-effective option.

Once you have determined the traffic levels you expect to see and determined whether or not your current site configuration can handle it, there are a few easy steps you can take to make sure your site is able to handle more visitors.

2. Implement Caching

I would suggest you start by looking at caching. This is a way for your site to generate static html versions of dynamic pages that are frequently requested. Caching significantly reduces the load placed on the server to deliver that page as well as speeding up response times. Most web frameworks offer this as an option either directly integrated in the framework or as an additional plugin. Ensuring caching is enabled can make an enormous difference on the amount of traffic and number of concurrent users your site can handle.

3. Use a CDN

Related to caching would be the use of a CDN. CDNs, or Content Delivery Networks, use a global network of servers to store static assets for your web page, such as images, at multiple locations closer to the visitor to your site. Not only does this reduce load time as the assets are being delivered from a closer physical location to the customer, but they also reduce the load on your server as it does not need to service that portion of the request.

4. Image Optimization

Another area to consider is optimizing your images for web delivery. Modern cameras and even cell phones take very high-resolution images. These images can be very large resulting in slow page load times. Most web frameworks include tools to generate efficient thumbnail images as well as render high-resolution images at a lower resolution better suited to web delivery.

5. Improve Your Database Indexing

A frequently disregarded aspect of website performance and scaling is the database itself. Databases include many options to make performance better and one of the most critical is ensuring you have good indexes in your databases. A lack of indexes, or poorly designed indexes, can increase the time it takes to execute a database query by an order of magnitude. Creating basic indexes is relatively simple and optimizing indexes for your specific use case is something your web developer can typically do for you. Similarly, it is important to make sure any database queries you are running are well written. It is very easy to write a poor database query during testing or development just to get things working and it is vital to go back later and ensure the query is written as tightly as possible to eliminate unnecessary operations to get the data you actually need.

6. Upgrade Your Hardware Stack

Finally, you can upgrade the hardware stack powering your website to provide additional resources. A2 Hosting provides an extensive array of packages designed to meet your hosting needs. Our turbo packages are perfect for handling holiday traffic surges. These servers include NVME SSD drives for lightning-fast disk operations, Litespeed web server for dramatically improved page load times, and AMD EPYC CPUs for very high concurrency to handle the flood of holiday visitors. We also have VPS and dedicated server options for those extremely busy websites to ensure your server is not the limiting factor to your business growth during this holiday season.

Related Resources:

A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready

A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays

How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service

The post How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season appeared first on The A2 Posting.

A recent Microsoft study shows that a whopping 90% of Americans consider customer service a crucial deciding factor in choosing a brand. Let’s face it: no one wants to do business with companies that treat customers poorly. Read on for six hacks to boost your customer service and support online for the holidays!

1.   Analyze Previous Data

One of the best ways to plan for the holidays is to review previous data, such as customer interactions, pain points, and online customer service improvement opportunities.

Below are some components you can research.

• Holiday shopping incremental customer volume versus the rest of the year
• Common customer concerns and questions
• Customers’ preferred communication channels

Analyzing this data will help you come up with a strategy to better accommodate the increased traffic and questions that are sure to come with it. Then you can make a more informed strategy so your support team can go into the holiday rush with a plan.

2.   Prepare for the Holiday Traffic

Holiday shopping is supposed to be fun, but studies done by the American Psychological Association reveal it stresses out eight out of ten Americans. Any website component can chase customers away, including slow loading times, confusing navigation, and complex checkout processes.

Remember to assess integrations, restock inventories, and beef up security measures to elevate customer experiences during the holidays.

3.   Get Ready to Scale

No matter how much you prepare for the holidays, you always need a contingency plan to scale up or down as needed.

If you find your staff overwhelmed with inquiries, you can automate e-commerce support, add manpower hours, or outsource business components.

4.   Make Self-Service Easy

Before the holiday season arrives, make sure your processes make it easy for potential buyers to find what they need on their own. Here are some ways to guide holiday shoppers:

• Links to FAQs
• Video guides
• Relevant articles

From tracking pages to complex AI-powered e-commerce support, digital self-service is a cost-effective way to deliver quick results for customers. With the right tools on your side, you and your online customer service team can celebrate the holidays without affecting your operations.

5.   Surprise Fans with Shipping Options

Don’t limit all the holiday cheer to your e-commerce store. You can create a strategy to expand your channels, such as:

• Online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Wish
• Social media pages like Facebook and Instagram
• International platforms such as Mercado Libre

If you decide to open new revenue streams, connect your channels for seamless transactions. It’s best to use a unified system to provide clients with a holistic experience no matter which platform they choose.

6.   Develop Relevant Marketing Campaigns

From Black Friday to Cyber Monday, there are many opportunities to make customers feel the love during the holidays. Personalized holiday offers have many advantages, including:

• Attracting massive audiences.
• Converting random visitors into customers.
• Reactivating inactive clients.

The season provides online business owners with an opportunity to boost sales. According to MuchNeeded, holiday shopping accounts for 30% of all sales annually.

Elevate Your Customer Service

Your customer service and support online play a critical role in your holiday success. Whatever strategy you prefer, make sure your e-commerce platform can address consumer needs.

At A2 Hosting, we offer hosting solutions 20x faster than our competitors, boosting load speeds, SEO rankings, and sales. We’re here if you need a reliable partner in prepping your business for the holidays. Talk to our sales team today to learn how we can help you and your eCommerce website!

Learn More:

Keep coming back to our blog this week to read our experts from all different departments of A2 Hosting advising you on how to get your site ready for Q4! We’re also running a sale on all of our A2 Turbo products so check out our website today for deals and discounts you don’t want to miss!

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service appeared first on The A2 Posting.

The holidays are fast approaching and many e-commerce retailers will be looking to increase sales. During this busy time, it’s easy to lose track of those potential clients who might have had additional questions and didn’t end up making a purchase. 

However, a little extra time spent addressing those questions now can go a long way when it comes to building a relationship with your clients and having a repeat customer. Investing in interaction now with a potential client could lead to a fruitful relationship for you both in the future.

Here are a couple of fundamental tips to help reach those clients who aren’t yet comfortable making a purchase:

Adding a human element to a website can help potential clients feel more comfortable and be more willing to make a purchase. This provides a method of receiving expert advice about a particular product that’s being offered on the site. There are many options available to help discuss options with potential clients:

• Live chat is a popular solution as it allows real-time conversation and proactive chatting if desired by a prospective client.
  
• A separate telephone line for the business is another fantastic option. Of course, while the live formats are best, it may not always be possible to keep them active 24 hours a day.
  If a separate telephone line isn’t feasible for your business, then a simple contact form would also work.
  
• Ultimately, the idea is to have an open line of communication with your potential clients for further discussion.
• Once that line of communication is opened, then it’s time to start thinking about conversations with potential clients. When discussing options with clients, take the time to get to know them and their situation. The reasons they’re shopping with you will vary, and each individual interaction should be given the proper attention and assistance to help find the right solution. The goal here isn’t just to answer generic questions about a product or sell the most expensive option available. Instead, try to find out:
  
  • why the client is looking to make a purchase
    
  • if they have any particular pain points
    
  • what is the reason they’re interested in your product
    

By investing the time to properly understand the client, it’ll help set up future interactions and hopefully create a long-term relationship. In the days of internet selling and fast purchases, the human element can be the difference between a client purchasing from you or another retailer. While these tips may be simple, the fundamentals of human interaction can often have the largest impact.

Do you know what else has a big impact on conversions? Your website’s speed and uptime! Keep coming back to our blog this week to read advice from our A2 Hosting experts on how to get your site ready for Q4! We’re also running a sale on all of our A2 Turbo products so check out our website today for deals and discounts you don’t want to miss!

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How to Increase eCommerce Conversions This Holiday Season appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Our expert developers here at A2 Hosting got together and wrote this amazing checklist to help web developers working on eCommerce sites prepare for Q4 and the holiday season. If you’re trying to maximize your website’s value to your visitors and get ready for the coming holiday traffic, follow these steps!

1. Have a Disaster Recovery Plan

Having a disaster recovery plan in place before you need it is critical in recovering from any unseen website disasters that may occur. At the very minimum, you’ll want local backups of your database and the site files. If you’re able to get offsite backups too that’s even better!

The second half of your recovery plan is knowing how to restore the backups. It’s just as important to know how to restore your backups as it is to make sure you have them.

Recommended Plugin: BackupBuddy

2. Code Freeze

Your site should be well developed ahead of time to accommodate any changes you want to see during the holidays. By implementing a code freeze, you increase the reliability of your site by reducing the impact of your changes to the underlying system. This will require some advanced planning regarding what you will want from your website.

3. Stay Up to Date with Updates

Be sure to have all the latest updates installed – both for the CMS itself and any plugins/modules/addons that you already have installed. Automatic updates for major and minor releases of WordPress core and plugins are available, or you also have the option to receive email notifications anytime there is a new release available. 

These updates will provide additional functionality, performance boosts, and patches for known security vulnerabilities. It’s important to verify these updates for compatibility with your combination of plugins and server configuration before updating your production site.

4. Security

Security is a must if you don’t want your site becoming unresponsive, or worse, displaying undesirable content. Aside from running updates on the CMS and plugins, removing unused plugins and themes from your site will help reduce potential vulnerabilities.

All traffic that provides users a way to send any type of information to your site should be secured over HTTPS with a valid SSL. A2 Hosting offers both free and paid versions of different SSLs. To learn the pros and cons of each read this blog. Using an SSL Certificate will help protect your users’ information and provide assurance to them that their information is in good hands (it also avoids the nasty “Unsecured” message that browsers display that makes users worried).

You’ll also want to check on your list of authorized administrators/content editors. If you’ve had turnover at the company or previous contractors who have completed work on your site, double-check that their permissions have been removed by reducing their permissions, or deactivating their accounts (this applies to the CMS, as well as any server access that you may have given them). If the system provides for 2-Factor authentication, be sure you update your staff about these settings. Making sure they are aware of the new requirement, that they have their authentication setup, and that each user account is configured to require 2FA.

Recommended Plugin: iTheme Security

5. Traffic Control

How many visitors can view your site? Only as many as your server will handle. Ensure that you have fast and reliable hosting. If you frequently experience drops in connection or other general server issues, now is the time to switch to a fast, reliable server. If you’re looking for 99.9% uptime, turbo speeds, and 24/7 guru crew support check out our plans available at A2 Hosting.

6. Optimizations

These days 47% of customers expect a website to load in two seconds or less. The internet is full of opportunities to shop around and if users have to wait, they may abandon your site for another one with similar products. Website speed is affected by many different factors. One big thing that could be affecting yours is your resource usage is too high for your current plan Some factors that could be affecting this are images, JavaScript, and CSS files. Images should be compressed, and JavaScript and CSS files should be minified and combined if possible.

Recommended Plugin: A2 Optimized

6. Make Sure Everything Works As Expected

Testing your key systems to make sure everything you are relying on to go right is a critical point. If you’re in eCommerce, double-check your payment processing is running smoothly. You most likely have email notifications from your site either to customers (sending out updates, responding to contact submissions, order confirmations, etc) or to your staff (notifications of contact submissions, orders received, etc) – you’ll want to make sure these are being received by their intended target. Just because your site says it’s sending the message, doesn’t necessarily mean the customers are receiving the messages. All notifications should have some way of retrieving the same information (contact submissions should be stored in the CMS as well as the staff email notification). Here’s our Knowledge Base section on web testing and development to help you get started!

Recommended Plugin(s): GravityForms, Contact Form 7 & Contact Form 7 Views, WP Mail SMTP

7. Go for Mobile

Many years ago – designs of websites changed to be designed mobile-first because of the shift to mobile devices so this one is likely already covered…but if not, you’ll want to work on this. If your site is not accessible from a mobile device, you will be missing out on potential users. Mobile-friendly sites do not need to replicate 100% of the desktop content or features, however, mobile users should not be missing out on anything critical. All the same, information should be able to be gathered and should be able to do so just as easily. Navigation around the site should be smooth for mobile users without having to do complicated gestures. Here’s a blog to help you through the steps of testing if your site is mobile-friendly. 

8. Schedule Your Content

Can’t be around for the holidays? The “Schedule post” feature in WordPress will allow you to queue up as much content as you need to keep your site fresh. If you’re not familiar with this feature, A2 has a quick Knowledge Base article on how to schedule it.

9. Support Your Users

Users came to your site for one thing – they are looking to get something from you – that is either information or a product. Your job is to make that as easy as possible. Hopefully, by now, your site is fast, reliable, mobile-friendly, and you’ve checked to make sure everything is working as planned – but sometimes you just can’t predict what your users are going to need. Adding a Support/Chat feature to your website gives you an easy way of allowing users to contact you and receive a timely response. Users don’t have too much patience when it comes to getting feedback and the Chat option gives them a way to contact you on their own terms.

Many users don’t like phone calls, or can’t call while they are on your site and the chat option allows them to do what they need to do, but still reach you in an interactive method. The chat option should be readily available, but not in your face (if it pops up after 30 seconds and says “Hey it looks like you need help with something”, that’s the 2020 equivalent to a used car salesman popping out from behind a car. Nobody wants to relive that.

Recommended Plugin: Live Chat

Learn More:

Keep coming back to our blog this week to read our experts from all different departments of A2 Hosting advising you on how to get your site ready for Q4! We’re also running a sale on all of our A2 Turbo products so check out our website today for deals and discounts you don’t want to miss!

The post A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays appeared first on The A2 Posting.