Why Use a Web Hosting Service?

This page explores many of the reasons why businesses should use a domain name of their own and host it with a quality Web Hosting Service.

Credibility.
First impressions are important. A web address (known as a URL) may be the first that your potential customer knows about your business. A web address with a tilde in it (such as http://someisp.com/~joeblow/) is a give away that you're using a personal web site for your business site. An address with one of the free sites (such as http://www.freewebsite.com/yourname) will give potential customers the impression that you're not serious about your web presence, and they haven't even viewed your site yet.

By taking advantage of Web Hosting services, you can have a web address with the name of your business, or a word that describes the type of service or product you offer. This tells your potential customers you've planned your web presence and take it seriously. Before visiting your web site, visitors already have a good impression.
Increased traffic.
People and search engines take more notice of top level web addresses as opposed to those that are in subdirectories. For example:

http://yourname.vcsweb.com/ ........... Top Level URL.
http://someisp.com/yourname/ .......... Lower level URL.

Of the two addresses, the first one will be visited more often, and it has the advantage of displaying your business name first. You can have this type of web address with Virtual or Full Web Hosting. There's an initial slight disadvantage in that it takes a little longer initially (a month or so) for your new domain name to be discovered, but this is taken care of if you list your site with search engines and include the web address on your business cards and other advertising.
A matching Email address
An email address that matches your web site is more than an Internet fashion statement. The main advantage is in advertising your business name whenever you send an Email, or when others send you mail. Why advertise for your ISP when you can advertise your own business?
Reliable service.
We've heard horror stories about web sites that are only available to the public a few days or hours in a week due to the poor service of the hosting company (free or otherwise).

Our servers are on an extremely reliable, fast (100Mbps) direct connection to multiple Tier 1 Internet backbones. This type of Internet connection is used by most of the world's largest websites including Yahoo, MSN, and CNN. The servers are in a secure data centre with multiple backup power systems.

We backup data using two different off site systems. We provide full reports for web statistics using not one but four different systems to give a better overview of how your site is doing overall.

We offer consistant, reliable service, and are available to assist you should problems develop. As we're a small business, we can offer you more in the way of customer support than many of the larger services. Our weekly uptime over the last year has been 99.9%, consistently.

Last modified: 23-Apr-2006

VCSWEB / http://vcsweb.com.au