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Selecting a Website Host
Choosing the right website host is an important decision to make. In addition to supporting the software that you may want to install and having a good email service, your host is the best place to get statistics on how your website is performing. There are many sites that go into the various features of different hosting providers. Generally I'd recommend finding one located in your own country, look for a provider that is responsive and friendly, and make sure they have backups in case something happens. It's also a good idea to use a provider that doesn't lock you into a long-term contract.
Keep in mind that you get what you pay for. Typical costs of a good provider seem to fall in the $8.00 to $20.00 range unless you have specialized needs such as for a Secure website.
Most important from the perspective of succeeding with Internet marketing is to make sure your hosting company has a good site statistics package that captures important information:
- Search phrases used
- Referring sites
- Unique visitor counts (NOT hits)
- Visitor counts for entry pages where visitors first arrive or at least visitor counts by page
- Dwell time if possible (how long each stays on your site.)
- Information should be available over time (by day, by month, since the site went live) and allow graphical interpretation of the data as well as statistics alone.
- Additional information can also be useful.
If you're locked into a host that is in other respects good, you might want to check out some other possible third-party stats packages:
- Analog
- Clicktracks
- Google Analytics
- Webtrends
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