Which Web Hosting for Your Business?

Almost all businesses have a website these days and therefore require web hosting. Which hosting to choose is an important decision, though, with not all business sites requiring the same type of hosting. This article looks at the type of hosting that may be suitable for new, growing, small and large businesses as well as e-commerce websites.

New Businesses

If you are starting a new business you may be wondering if stating off with inexpensive hosting makes sense. This may be an attractive option as you are unlikely to have a large turnover to begin with. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea, although you shouldn’t go as low budget as free hosting. Free hosting is usually very limited and in most cases you won’t even be able to choose your own domain name but will have a subdomain of the hosting company. Relatively cheap shared hosting might be suitable to begin with though. Traffic levels to the website can be low in the early stages of a business so it may be wise to save on hosting costs while possible. It is important, though, to upgrade hosting when required.

Growing Businesses

For growing businesses deciding on hosting can be difficult as predicting the exact amount of growth isn’t easy. You may be wondering if dedicated hosting is a good option as you will have the available bandwidth if traffic increases significantly. While this isn’t necessarily a bad choice, if traffic doesn’t increase as much as you expect you will be paying for capacity that you are not reaching. Cloud hosting might be the best option. With cloud hosting you only pay for the hosting resource you are using at any particular time. Scalability is one of the main benefits of cloud hosting; when traffic is low you will not be paying for extra capacity while it is still available should you require it. When it is needed the additional resource is automatically dedicated to your site and you pay accordingly.

Small Businesses

This does depend on how small a business is and the requirements of the website itself, but for many small businesses shared hosting will suffice. If traffic is consistently low then there is little point in paying for more advanced hosting and shared hosting is the best option. Should traffic later increase you can switch your hosting as necessary.

Large Businesses

For large businesses that attract a large number of visitors to their website shared hosting will not be sufficient. Shared hosting means sharing a web server with the hosting company’s other clients, in other words, only having a proportion of the server available for your website. For large businesses dedicated hosting, whereby an entire server is dedicated to your website, is likely to be the best option.

E-commerce Sites

The key thing with e-commerce websites is that security is crucial. Financial transactions will be taking place over the website so this is the main consideration when deciding on hosting. You need to ensure customers can purchase products in a safe and secure way and make sure you, as a business, are secure. If anyone hacks into your payment system it would be a disaster, not just financially but for your business’s reputation.

There are many hosting options with different ones suiting different businesses. The one thing that isn’t recommended for businesses is free hosting due to the lack of flexibility. While dedicated hosting is considered the most advanced form of web hosting is isn’t necessary for all businesses. Websites of different sizes and of different types can benefit from different hosting plans.

Andrew Marshall ©

What is BACS and CHAPS?

BACS and CHAPS are payment terms within the British banking system and are methods of transferring funds from one bank account to another. They are both electronic payment systems that can be used to transfer funds between accounts of the majority of the financial institutions in the UK.

What is BACS?

BACS stands for Bankers Automated Clearing Services and are a way of making bank transfers free of charge. The downside is that they are not immediate and normally take three days from the transfer being requested by the sender and it being received by the recipient.

How BACS payments work

BACS payments can be made through a banks physical premises, over the telephone or through internet banking. The sender needs to state the monetary amount of the transfer and the account details of the recipient. The funds immediately leave the sender’s account but it takes time for it to be processed before appearing in the recipients account. The sender’s bank will enter the transfer into the system and, all being well, the transfer will be processed and cleared. This will generally take place the day after it was entered into the system with the funds eventually appearing in the recipients account the day after that.

What are BACS used for?

BACS can be used for a large array of bank transfers. The most common are direct debits, such as the payment of rent, bills and insurance payments. Businesses usually use BACS to pay their employees and state benefits are normally received via them. Individuals can also use BACS to make transfers between one another for any reason.

What is CHAPS?

CHAPS stands for Clearing House Automated Payment System and is actually a UK based company that was established in 1984. The company has a system for offering same-day transfers of funds between UK financial institutions. Unlike BACS, CHAPS are not free as the company charges institutions for the service. This is usually passed onto the customer making the transfer and on average costs between £20 and £40. There is a cut-off point for transfers to be completed on the same day as the request. This cut-off point varies from one institution to another and is usually around 3pm.

How CHAPS payments work

CHAPS transfers are initiated by the sender. They have to fill out a form detailing the amount and the details of the recipients account. Once signed this is handed to their bank who will process the payment. Assuming sufficient funds are available they will clear the transfer to go through and this will be transferred to the recipients account.

What are CHAPS used for?
CHAPS are used for transfers that cannot wait three days. Faster Payments is a method of fast BACS transfers but these carry limits so CHAPS are normally used to pay for high value items such as property and cars.

Should you use BACS or CHAPS?

Whether it is preferable to use BACS or CHAPS depends on how quickly the payment needs to be received by the recipient and the size of a payment. For small value transfers that can wait three days or more BACS is preferable as it won’t cost the sender anything. If it needs to be processed immediately or is too large for BASC then a CHAPS transfer will be necessary.

Andrew Marshall ©

Five Reasons why Quality Web Hosting is Important

For a website to work successfully for a business it is important that a quality web hosting service is used. There are a number of reasons why quality web hosting can benefit a website as well as reasons why failing to choose the right host can harm the potential of a site.

1. Fast Load Times

From a consumers point of view acceptable load time are important. With the speed of the internet getting faster people expect a website to load almost immediately. If your site isn’t loading then visitors are not going to hang around and wait; they are likely to give up and visit the website of one of your competitors instead. Load speeds can also impact search engine rankings. Over the last couple of years Google has started to use website load times as a factor in their result pages. This is only one of over two-hundred factors in a ranking but very slow load times are still likely to impact a sites ranking and, in turn, impact their business.

2. Little Downtime

For many reasons a large amount of downtime is a problem. You are paying for a website to be live and if it often isn’t then you shouldn’t accept this and should switch providers. That doesn’t mean you should jump ship at the first sign of any downtime, as some is inevitable, but it shouldn’t be a regular occurrence. The aim of a website is to attract a good number of visitors but it doesn’t matter how successfully you do this if they can’t view the site. As with fast load times, a large amount of uptime is important in the search engine rankings, perhaps even more so. If the search engine robots crawl your site and there is no content then they will perceive the site as having little (or no) worth. This is a big problem if this happens repeatedly, for example if your site is offline for a matter of hours, let alone days or weeks. Quality business hostingproviders will provide clients with an SLA (service level agreement), whereby a certain amount of uptime is guaranteed. While 100% guaranteed uptime is unrealistic, uptime in excess of 99.9% is achievable. Contracts should include penalties if these promised standards are not met, for example a return of some of your money.

3. Security

The importance of security largely depends on the specific site. It is particularly important for ecommerce sites; they need to be secure if people are going to purchase products through them. Any websites that collect information about visitors or use databases need to be secure, with hosting an important factor in this. You don’t want your site to be impacted by viruses or malware, which is another reason why secure hosting is important.

4. Support

To some businesses quality hosting support is crucial. If there is the possibility of something going wrong then you want this to be established and, if possible, prevented. If something does go wrong then you want it to be resolved as soon as possible. This is particularly the case if the hosting is completely in your providers hands or you don’t have the expertise to resolve these issues yourself.

5. Bandwidth

You need sufficient bandwidth to cope with the traffic you receive. The exact amount required is dependent on how much traffic you expect. The consequence of not having sufficient bandwidth could be slower load times or even visitors not being able to view the sites content at all. Paying for a little more bandwidth than you think will be required is preferable to the risk of paying for too little. Good business hosting providers should be able to advise you on how much bandwidth you require, including options to increase this if it becomes necessary.

The above are just five of the main reasons why choosing quality web hosting is important. For a business website choosing the wrong hosting is likely to have a negative impact on the success of the business as a whole.

Andrew Marshall ©

Is Family Law Biased Towards Women?

We often hear stories of men who claim that divorce settlement and child custody arrangements are biased towards women. Is this generally true though, or is it a false perception amongst those who have seen cases go against them? This partly depends on how this subject is viewed. It is more common for men to pay maintenance towards women than the other way round and Mothers have primary custody of children more often than Fathers. The reason for this is not that the system is biased but because circumstances are more often such that this is necessary or more convenient.

When a woman “wins” a divorce case or child custody it is usually for a good reason. Men, on average, work more hours than women with the majority of stay-at-home parents being Mothers. This means that post-separation she may be in a better position to have primary custody of their children purely from a practical point of view. In terms of both child maintenance and spousal support, the fact that men earn more than women means they more often pay this. Where it is the other way round it is usually the woman who pays support.

There are many cases of women giving up work after having children or cutting down the hours they work, therefore limiting the opportunities of career progression. Where this is the case the entire family is usually mainly financially supported by her partner. Most of the time it is deemed that after a separation this should, to some extent at least, continue.

Family trends are changing to some degree. There are more stay-at-home Dad’s than ever before and more women are high-earners. Looking at the population as a whole though, men still work and earn more and women staying at home to look after children is more common. The slightly changing trends have seen a rise in the number of Fathers having primary custody of children and women having to pay support.

Some arguing that family law is biased towards women point to some of the data regarding the high number of men paying maintenance to former partners and the high proportion of women who have child custody. In the majority of cases, though, this is not decided through the family law courts, but between former couples themselves. The majority of child custody cases do not go to court. More often than not parents decide between them that children should primarily live with their Mother with men deciding it makes sense due to their work commitments. This means the majority of children live with their Mothers post-separation but not because family law is in their favour but because a former couple decide between them that it is the best option. Decisions regarding finances are more often decided through the legal process.

There are two key reasons for women more often being supported by men after a separation and for women more often having primary custody of children. When decisions are made through the legal system women are not “favoured” because they are women but because of the circumstances. They tend to be lower earners so receive spousal support and are often in a better practical position to look after children. The other important thing to remember is that decisions are often made between former couples rather than through the courts.

Andrew Marshall ©

Families need over £36000 for Acceptable Standard of Living

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has published a report on the minimum income require for an acceptable standard of living. This is not based on the bare minimum required but what is required for a “socially acceptable” standard of living which includes being able to afford certain things that are not considered essential. This includes a UK holidays once a year, mobile phones and occasionally going out to eat. They cover two examples: a couple with children and a single person.

The findings of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report were that a couple with two children needs to earn £36,800 between them to achieve this standard while a single person needs to earn £16,400. At present 25% of people are in a situation where they earn below this amount. The report concluded that a couple with two children with both parents working full-time have to earn fifty-two percent more than the minimum wage to reach this income while a single person needs to earn thirty-six percent more than the minimum wage. These figures are an increase on the same survey carried out in 2008.

There are a number of trends that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has highlighted from their research. Some of these are below:

Parents are spending less on Christmas and Birthday presents and buying certain things, such as bikes, second hand.

People are still going out to eat but less often and more cheaply.

Activities for children, such as swimming, are still important to families but while it was previously a weekly activity it is now more often a monthly activity.

People are more likely to need a car. While this may seem strange if people are struggling this is actually becoming more essential because the cost of public transport is rapidly increasing. Bus services are also becoming less sufficient and more inflexible so are less likely to meet people’s needs.

A couple with two children is the example that has been particularly focussed on in the media, with increasing childcare costs being highlighted. This is said to be £148 a week on average. According to a BBC report some of the other increasing costs for families have been for meat (£18 a week), vegetables (£11), social activities (£30), saving for a UK holiday (£19), running a car (£60) and public transport (£12). These are averages with this data varying from one family to another.

What does this report tell us? It tells us that costs are increasing despite the current state of the economy. This means that some are experiencing lower incomes (or no income at all) while their costs are increasing. Both individuals and families need to earn more (even once inflation has been taken into account) than they did in 2008 to reach the same standard of living. For those with children childcare is the cost that has increased the most, and a parent with one child working full-time on minimum wage is only effectively earning £4,000 a year after tax, national insurance and childcare is paid.

Andrew Marshall ©

For information on helping your children financially once they become parents visit Junior ISA.

Types of Businesses that can Benefit from Cloud

An increasing number of businesses are utilising cloud services, from cloud storage to cloud hosting. Various types of businesses can benefit from using cloud technology.

SME’s

While cloud has been taken up more by larger businesses rather than small and medium enterprises, you do not have to be a large corporation to benefit. There are a number of reasons why SME’s can particularly benefit from cloud usage. They will be able to pay for service as and when they need them without the upfront costs that they would otherwise need to invest in. There are numerous examples of services that small and medium enterprises can make use of that are more cost efficient in the cloud. This includes software where companies would be unable to invest in the IT infrastructure to support it were it not for the cloud. There are many software packages that are now available on a pay-as-you-use basis and the smaller the business the more beneficial these can be. They allow businesses to use software they would otherwise be unable to afford.

Businesses that are Concerned about the Environment

Over the last few years there has been much in the media about human’s impact on the environment. Many businesses take their carbon footprint very seriously and are interested in green methods of doing things where possible. It is inevitable that hosting has an impact on the environment but cloud hosting can lessen this impact. Cloud providers are able to serve large numbers of users on one shared infrastructure therefore limiting the processing power required. This is beneficial to the environment.

Educational Institutions

There are a number of ways that educational institutions can benefit from storing data in the cloud. One example is universities that carry out large research projects. They may need a large amount of storage space on their network while carrying out a project but not need this space at other times. Utilising cloud storage means they can pay for additional storage when they need it without having to pay for it on an on-going basis. Another area where financial institutions can benefit is students own space on an internal network. Not all students require the same amount of network space with this depending on the course and the specifics of a project a particular student is working on. Those studying courses that involve sound or video production, for example, may need to store larger files. It is very difficult for a financial institution to accurately judge the total amount of storage space they need. Cloud storage means not having to pay for contingency resource they may not use without having to apply a limit for each student, therefore resulting in better student productivity.

Growing Businesses

Businesses that are growing or are expected to grow can benefit from cloud. The resource they require will be increasing, and at times increasing quickly, meaning they can benefit from the scalability of cloud. One area where this is the case is by opting for cloud web hosting. Website content may increase over time and businesses may wish to include additional functionality as they grow. The bandwidth required will also increase as visitor numbers go up. Companies that keep data on customers may also require additional storage space as the number of customers they have increases. Every business wants to grow but growth, especially sudden growth, can be problematic is certain aspects. The speed of growth can be difficult to judge but cloud makes it much simpler, with extra resource being available on an ad-hoc basis.

Seasonal Businesses

Seasonal businesses can certainly benefit from paying for what they use. A good example of this is an e-commerce business that is particularly busy in the lead up to Christmas. They will need a large amount of website bandwidth and other resource in November and December but significantly less throughout the rest of the year. They are much better off paying for resource as they require it than paying for it for twelve months of the year when they only need it for two.

Andrew Marshall ©

The Logic Behind Drinks Packging

Part of the reason why drinks are packaged as they are is for marketing purposes. Companies want to market their products so they look as attractive as possible to the consumer. But packaging is not just about the look; it is also about practicality. Certain types of drinks are packaged in certain ways for a variety of reasons, including to keep them in the best condition possible and to keep costs down.

Milk

One of the first drinks to be sold in bottles was milk. The reason for clear bottles being used was so consumers could see the contents. This was partly for a marketing purpose – to make it look fresh and tempting to drink – but also for practical purposes. Nowadays products contain best before dates but this wasn’t always the case. Milk was placed in clear bottles so people could see if it was going off. Milk bottles are now usually only used for milk delivered to homes with cartons and plastic bottles more common in shops. Cartons were originally used for marketing purposes with manufacturers able to illustrate them with text and images to attract consumers. The use of plastic bottles is simply cost as they are cheaper to produce.

Wine

A distinguishing feature of wine bottles is the inward concave shape at the bottom of bottles. This didn’t just come about because of aesthetics though. It is called a punt and was originally necessary to prevent the opposite; an outward concave shape. This goes back to when bottles were hand-blown. It was not possible to ensure that the shape could be perfect and to mitigate the risk of an outward concave, meaning the bottle could not stand, a deliberate inward concave shape was created. Bottles are not typically hand-blown these days but this trend has continued, though not for any practical reason. Another distinguishing feature of wine bottles is corks. These are used because they release a small amount of oxygen into the bottle which helps it mature. Bottles are then usually stored on their side to keep the cork moist. This is to prevent the cork shrinking, something that would otherwise result in too much oxygen entering the bottle. This is not so important for sparkling wines, such as Champagne, as there is enough humidity from the gassiness of the wine to prevent the cork from shrinking too much. The colours of wine bottles are partly for marketing purposes although there is a practical reason too. This is more about distinguishing wines rather than absolute necessity. Some wine makers have certain types of wines poured into particular colour bottles so they can more easily identify them. Darker coloured bottles can also be advantageous in protecting wine from the sunlight.

Carbonated Drinks

A well-known cola brand created a now iconic class bottle which was used to market the product. A clear bottle was used to make the contents seem tempting with the bottle shaped with groves and curves to make it look roughly like a cocoa bean. Carbonated drinks are not completely filled to the top. This is not, as some might believe, so consumers don’t get as much as they think they are paying for, but because there is a risk of expansion. If the contents got too hot there could be slight expansion causing the bottle to explode.

Cans

Drinks cans were introduced in the 1960’s. They are made of aluminium or tin-plated steel and were first used for beer followed by carbonated drinks. The main reason was that it made drinks cheaper to package. There was originally a problem though, with some drinks reacting with the metal therefore affecting the taste. An interior plastic lining is now used to prevent this.

Andrew Marshall ©

For more information about packaging, visit Packaging Suppliers. Visit Wine Comparison to compare wines.