Is Your Web Site Trustworthy? 10 Ways to Earn Visitor Trust On The Web

Tips from your Green Website Hosting Provider

When visitors land on your web site, you want them to do something. You want them to opt-in in exchange for your ethical bribe eBook download, you want them to sign up for your weekly newsletter, buy something, complete a form or pick up the telephone and call you.

Given the number of options web users have, you’re actually asking site visitors to do you a favor. And they’re more likely to perform a favor for you if you establish trust on your web site. In 1999, 6% of web users bought something on the world wide web. That number is expected to rise to 60% in 2010. Anybody see a trend?

More and more people use the web to make purchases, comparison shop, find directions to a local business or buy their insurance on the web, the fastest growing marketplace ever. But think about your own web use habits.

Do you opt in for that free eBook? Do you provide name, address and telephone filling out a survey so you can get a coupon for a free box of Wheat Chex? Do you buy from an on-line store that you never heard of before half-way around the globe? Probably not, if you’re like most of us.

Why? We know that if we give you our email addresses you’ll load up our email in-boxes with spam. We know if we buy insurance on-line we’ll get a sales call. And who knows what sites like Facebook do with the marketing data they collect. Data has value. It’s currency on line so collecting it while members take a fun little quiz generates cash for the social media giant with over 500 million subscribers.

The answer is simple. Add trust-building elements to your web site – elements that not only encourage the performance of an action, but make the site visitor comfortable in the performance of that action.

So here are some trust builders that will deliver more sign-ups, inquiries, bookings and sales. In the commercial sphere of the world wide web, trust is a must to increase conversion ratios.

1. Join the On-Line Better Business Bureau.

This little logo defines a client-centric corporate culture – a business that values customer or client satisfaction.

Membership in the BBB also requires that your business agrees to abide by ethical business practices established by the BBB. If the trust-building organization receives complaints about your business practices, i.e. you don’t run a trustworthy web site business, the BBB will give you the boot and you can’t display that trust-building logo anymore.

2. Add the VeriSign logo on all checkout pages.

Visitors leave an awful lot of stranded virtual shopping carts on web sites that sell products. They put an item or two in the cart, ready to make the purchase, but they get cold feet somewhere during the checkout process.

Often, prospective buyers back out at the last minute because they aren’t sure they’re on a secure page. The little padlock in the lower right hand corner of the screen was duplicated years ago by hackers so you need to provide an indication that all sensitive data – including credit card numbers – are transmitted on a secure circuit, encrypted (coded) by VeriSign or a similar on-line security provider.

Also, during the checkout process, keep reminding buyers that they’re on a secure path, that all data is encrypted and stored securely. This builds trust when accompanied by an authority logo with a strong reputation of secure, on-line transactions.

3. Add your picture.

People like to know there’s a real human being behind the sharp looking, well-designed web site so if you’re “Smilin’ Bob with the best prices this side of Waco,” don the Stetson and smile, Bob.

Smilin’ Bob.
We got the lowest prices in town.

Have a professional photographer take a business portrait of you against a neutral background. Wear your best clothes and look good. Look professional. DON’T look like Smilin’ Bob! Would you buy a car from this man? I wouldn’t.

4. Make your privacy policy clear.

Offer warrantees, guarantees and honor them.

A lot of web owners bury their privacy policies deep in the boilerplate section of their on-line enterprises, accessible through a simple text link at the bottom of the home page.

Why hide it if you’ve got nothing to hide. Add a PRIVACY POLICY link to your main navigation bar and spell it out in the simplest possible terms. Pages and pages of “lawyer speak” do not build trust in buyers who believe (and rightly so) that somewhere in all of that fine print are loopholes through which you could drive a semi.

Keep it simple, keep it accessible and keep your word.

This is one of the all-time best trust builders. Guarantee your products. Warranty your services with a 100% money-back guarantee: IF YOU’RE NOT 100% COMPLETELY SATISFIED…

Buyers feel better about making a purchase they know they can return it for a full refund if it doesn’t fit, if it’s the wrong part or it’s not the service they thought they were buying.

Why is a guarantee one of the top trust builders? Because few people actually go to the trouble to return a product – even one they don’t want. They have to wrap it, address it, provide a copy of the invoice, drive to the post office and send it registered mail. For a lot of buyers, this is just more trouble than it’s worth for an 8-gig thumb drive that only costs $14.95 to begin with.

Of course, it’s essential that you honor your promises and provide a means for returning payments made. Any good customer management software (CMS) tracks orders, returns and paybacks so it’s not like a big pain in the neck – and it builds trust fast. Hey, the buyer has nothing to lose.

5. Provide clear terms of service.

If you sell a service, what are your terms? Do you expect a 50% payment upfront? Do you guarantee prices for 12 months? Under what conditions can you close a service-based account?

Again, the TOS are often buried deep in the web site, accessible only by a miniscule text link right next to the privacy policy. If you deliver good services, and you back them up, you should be proud of your TOS and display them in large text available through a large, clearly labeled link.

6. Provide complete contact information.

Where are you located? If your site is optimized for local search, provide a map and written directions showing site visitors how to get to your brick-and-mortar store.

A toll-free telephone number demonstrates a corporate concern for assisting customers and clients. So does a street address.

It’s also a good idea to add an email module to your “Contact Us” page so site visitors can drop you a line with questions, or to fix problems with billing. Simple rule: the more ways you provide for site visitors to contact you, the more trustworthy your on-line business.

7. Keep your site text honest.

Not every tax accountant is the best, the lowest cost, the most experienced, so cut down on the hype, whether you’re selling shoes or tax preparation services.

Regular web users have become numb from over-exposure to hype text pushing one product or service after another. Keep your text simple, define benefits, explain return policies and be upfront with site visitors. THE BEST doesn’t fool anyone any more. We all know that every site offers THE BEST.

8. Provide a picture of your storefront.

If your web site is an adjunct to your store on Main Street, show us a picture. It helps local residents find your store and it demonstrates a solid, stable business to prospects miles from your real-world outlet.

Signage should be professionally done and straightforward, just like your web site. If you build trust in town, you’ll build trust from prospects in Asia so show the shop and let them see your business is for real.

9. Use real client testimonials.

Any one can spot a fake testimonial from Sue K., Boston, Massachusetts. Good luck trying to confirm that testimonial from Sue.

Instead, ask satisfied buyers to write a short testimonial that includes credible attribution, such as: John Smith, CEO, Intecture, LLC. That’s a credible testimonial from a real person, and a recommendation from a satisfied customer is one of the best trust builders available to the small web business just starting to get traction.

Keyword Selection: A Key Key to Web Success

Tips from your Green Website Hosting Provider

Keywords are the words search engine users enter into Google’s search box. So, if you’re looking for baby shower gifts you might type in “baby gifts” and start clicking on links found on page 1 of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

As a web-based business owner, the keywords you select define the topicality of your web site – the products and services you sell and where you sell them. Thanks to localized search, a small boutique on Main Street can target local shoppers and not unqualified prospects in Mozambique.

Your web site should employ a number of keywords because you never know what a search engine user will enter into Yahoo’s search box. However, too many keywords, ambiguous keywords and keywords that don’t make sense to a search engine spider (also called a bot) will often get a web site slammed, panned and even banned if the search engine “thinks” you’re trying to mislead its users.

The objective of any search engine is to deliver the most relevant web sites, ranked according to their relevance. The most relevant site ranks at the top, with sites of decreasing relevance filling up page after page of SERPs. That’s why most search engine users never get beyond page 2 or 3 in any SERPs.

If your site doesn’t rank in the top tier of SERPs you won’t see much organic traffic – visitors who found your site via a search using keywords as part of their query.

Selecting the Right Keywords for Your Web Site

The right keywords deliver more traffic because a link to your web site appears on page 1 of Ask, Bing, Google, Yahoo or any of the other 4,000 search engines crawling the web today. Here’s why.

Think of a search engine as an elephantine file cabinet with literally millions of file folders stored in millions of drawers. This is the search engine index – its taxonomy, the way it sorts web sites, blogs and information associated with digital spaces. Your web site will be placed in one of those file folders based on the keywords you use in your HTML code (the code that actually produces the presentation layer of the web site) and the site skin itself.

If you’re a certified financial planner, you want to make sure that “certified financial planner” and “CFA” appear in your HTML keyword tag and in the site text itself. Typically, search engine optimizers recommend a keyword density of 2%-3%, though some of these on-line marketers will go as high as 5% meaning that out of every 100 words of site text, five will be keywords.

An overload of keywords should be avoided. It’s a practice called keyword stuffing, something search engines frown on.

Start by making a list of intuitive keywords – the keywords that you, the business owner, believe would be entered by search engine users looking for your goods or services. You, better than most, know what your prospects are looking for so start by making a list of 10 to 15 intuitive keywords.

Then do a little research on each one.

The Google Keyword Generator

Use it. It’s one of the most valuable tools available to new web site owners:

• The Google Keyword Generator doesn’t project results, it delivers actual search terms and phrases entered by Google users in the past 30 days.

• These are real users of the most popular search engine in the world.

• It indicates the number of searches conducted for each keyword or phrase.

• It will expand and refine your list of intuitive keywords.

• It’s really simple to use and interpret the data.

• It’s Google, for goodness sake.

Enter each of your intuitive keywords and phrases to determine how often these terms were used. Simple changes to your list will make a huge difference in the delivery of visitors to your website through organic search results.

Long-Tail Key Words

Long-tail keywords are typically keyword phrases. The disadvantage to using long-tails is that fewer search engine users enter these keyword phrases. The advantage is that those who DO enter these long-tails see your web site at the top of page one of SERPs.

Example: if you own a bicycle shop that specializes in high-end, Tour de France quality racing bikes, then using “bicycles” as a keyword won’t deliver as much traffic as “high quality racing bicycles.” Why? EVERY business related to bicycles will use “bicycles” as a search term so your little site may be buried deep in the SERPs, never to be seen be serious biking enthusiasts.

On the other hand, fewer search engine users will enter “high quality racing bicycles” into a search box, but if you use that long-tail, your web site will rank higher. And as a side benefit, you get more qualified buyers – buyers willing to spend a great deal of money on their hobby.

Add a couple of long-tail keywords to your list and track their performance. Your keyword list is always a work in progress with successful keywords added and poorly performing keywords – long-tails or otherwise – dropped.

Specialty Sites: It’s Not ALL Business on the World Wide Web

Most of us think of the web in terms of business. We buy books, clothes, refrigerators, wedding rings and a bunch of services from the fastest growing marketplace ever. But it’s not all business. A lot of times, it’s all about convenience.

When you open an account with a quality web host, expect to get everything you need for less than $5 a month – less than you pay for a double shot latte vente. Anyone with pocket change can rent disc space from a web host and have instant access to all the features of the world wide web.

That’s why lots of people are turning to the W3 for the features it offers in connectivity, convenience and easy communication for stakeholders, whether family, friends or soon-to-be-friends.

There are lots of reasons to open an account with a quality web host and build a simple site for just about any purpose. Here are some suggestions to get those creative juices flowing.

Family Sites

Family sites are available by invitation only. In other words, you create an on-line family web site that’s password protected, then provide family members and other special friends the log in information via email.

• post family updates – The Flanders’ Family News

• upload family pictures to be shared with remote friends and relatives. Guaranteed, you’ll get book marked by all of those closest to you.

• organize a family reunion. Use the site to collect RSVPs, provide an events agenda, and even provide links to local hotels and motels, simplifying accommodations. Click, book, “Hello Cousin Liz!”

• Share family news with service men and women who are far off and, more than ever,  enjoy news from home. You can also make it easy for family members to upload pictures and posts so the whole family can share.

• Using simple templates and modules (add a blog module for easy communication), you can have a family site up and running in a few hours, and change it as often as you or the family wants. It’s a cool way to keep in touch and costs a lot less than one long-distance telephone call. How can you lose?

Friends’ Networks

The average American family moves every five years due to job transfers or new opportunities out West or back East. And that means a lot of sad good-byes as we leave our friends and neighbors behind and move to a new time zone.

Stay in touch with the old gang by creating your own, private network of friends – the people you shared good times with, the people who babysat the kids, the people you shared your life with.

Again, these private web sites aren’t available for public access, they don’t get spidered and they don’t appear on search engine results pages – unless you want them to. Otherwise, keep the conversation going even if you’re on the other side of the world with those close friends you had to leave behind.

Class Reunion Web Sites

If you’re in charge of organizing the 20th reunion of your high school class, build a website – today! You won’t believe how easy this makes your life.

Simply notify all invitees of the website’s existence, with complete URL, and let the web site take care of the chores associated with organizing these fun-filled, albeit, labor-intensive, get-togethers.

It’s simple to design a template-based web site that equips old classmates to RSVP. Post the URL to your Facebook wall and ask your FB friends to spread the word. With 500 million Facebook users, news of the reunion web site will spread quickly.

Be sure to include:

• all contact information including the name of the main contact, email and telephone number

• an RSVP opt-in page that syncs up with a database module (really, it’s easy because everything is modular so you don’t have to do anything but click, click and you’re opt-in module is in place and fully functional)

• directions to the reunion venue

• links to airline booking sites

• links to the local hotels and motels you’ve contacted

• an email link that automatically opens an email response box so your chums can contact you with questions, comments and HELP!

Always ask for volunteers on your class reunion web site. These things are a logistics nightmare, but a reunion web sites handles most of the heavy lifting.

Wedding Sites

Again, convenient to set up, convenient to use and convenient to track. Post the same information listed under reunion sites – contact info, location and start time of the wedding, etc.

Include the web site URL on the wedding invitation! It’s really not socially acceptable to send wedding invitations via email (except maybe to your closest friends). Gram should get the traditional engraved invitation delivered via snail mail. Just good manners.

Provide RSVP capability, directions to the wedding location, reception location and links to local accommodations. You can also create downloadable directions and even a downloadable map showing out-of-towners how to get to where they’re going.

Memorial Sites

When a loved-one passes away, often family and loved ones want to honor the life of their dear, departed friend or relative.

Memorial sites are great ways to share pictures, videos, create a sign-in guestbook, create in charity site link “In lieu of flowers…” and an easy means of loved ones to share their thoughts and celebrate the life of someone close. It’s a wonderful way to connect people who honor the lives of loved ones.

It’s always a good idea to include an email link on a memorial site. You’ll be amazed at how many people want to share their feelings and memories of their common bond with you.

Event Sites

Launching a seminar for local real estate agents? Planning a mastermind round table of business leaders in your community? Planning to teach a class open to the public?

Event sites are a simple way to explain the event, provide all pertinent even information (venue, address, telephone number), a contact email and, once again, links to booking sites for both transportation and accommodations close to the event site.

If the event requires payment, make sure your web host offers a free checkout module that’s totally secure.

Track attendees, use the site as your email client in exchanges with prospective attendees and, of course, provide all registration fees, hotel/motel fees and any other costs associated with the event.

Make it easy to register, handle the accommodations and you’ll see a better response to your event.

One other tip: create URL cards. URL cards are the size of a standard business card but the only information contained on the card is your event site URL, for example: www.worldclasssuccess.com. Pass out these cards in person and by snail mail to likely candidates. For example, if you host a real estate conference, every regional real estate agent receives a URL card by snail mail.

It’s sure to create curiosity, which in turn generates traffic, which in turn converts site visitors to sign-ups.

Personal Sites

The world wide web is egalitarian. It’s a huge sandbox and all are invited to play. If your web host provides: disk space, free domain name registration, software, web building templates and even 24/7 customer care lines, virtually anyone can build a virtual presence on the web in just a few hours.

Are you an artist? An aspiring author? A poet? A thinker? A politician or just a political junkie, you can quickly and easily build a web site that’s all you – from design to content to target demographic.

You can display or share your work with the world or with close friends. You can encourage feedback and constructive criticism. You can put on your best face and show or tell the world what’s going on in your life and in your head.

Before You Launch Your Web Site: 10 Dos and Dont's

There are close to 130 million web sites on line at the moment and every day, 6,000 new web sites launch, creating entrepreneurs by the thousands. The world wide web is a great way to take control of your professional life (you’re the boss) or to add a few bucks to your household income each month while you keep your day job.

A web site launch is exciting and cause for celebration – if you do it right. If you don’t do it right, your pixel-based dream biz will end up on the trash heap along with millions of other sites built on a dream but launched on a prayer.

Even well-optimized, well-designed and -built web sites take time to get a little recognition from search engines like Google, Bing, Ask, Yahoo and the other 4K search engines crawling the web at any one time. But there are some things you can and should do before launch date to improve your chances for web-based business success. Here are a few tips that’ll tip the scales of success in your favor.

1. Don’t do any SEO…yet.

Search engine optimization is tricky business but one thing is etched in stone. A search engine is based on the relevance and utility of its search engine results pages or SERPs.

So, no search engine is going to send its users to a web site that is “Under Construction.” Until you have all of your pages in place, your navigation bar hooked up and your opt-in module in place, stay off-line. If your half-built site is inadvertently spidered by Google, you’ll get slammed for delivering a half-built site and lots of blank pages.

And it can take years to recover, Search engines aren’t very forgiving.

2. Create an off-site blog.

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t advertise your upcoming launch. Create an off-site blog using Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad or another blogging platform and start posting articles of interest to your target demographic – your market.

Don’t link these blog posts to your web site until you actually launch. Search engine bots and people follow links and, again, if a bot or a human discovers a half empty web site, chances are they won’t be back.

Instead, provide blog visitors with useful, helpful, FREE information. Announce the launch date of your web site but don’t send your blog fans to your web site until it’s locked down tight.

3. Develop your list of keywords.

Keywords are the search terms that people use when trying to find your web site. Start by taking a look at Google’s Keyword Generator, a great tool for first-time web biz owners. The keyword generator provides actual search terms that have been entered by Google users in the past 30 days.

Choose keywords that are specific to the topicality of your web site. For example, if you sell alternative medical cures and supplements, you’ll discover that the search term “self help” is used over one million times each month. But “self-help” can include everything from career coaching to weight loss to strength training. It’s too broad a term for your web business that sells tinctures and alternative medical treatments.

Developing a good list of 15-20 key words and keyword phrases is one of the most important pre-launch steps you’ll take. And, you’ll, no doubt, tweak your keywords over time. Some keywords will drive more traffic than others. The ones that drive traffic are keepers. The ones that don’t drive traffic are dropped and replaced with stronger keywords.

4. Open and finance an AdWords account.

Google’s AdWords is a pay-per-click advertising program. It’s a little complicated for first-time users so some practice and some study will improve your AdWords results.

With AdWords, advertisers bid for certain keywords – the words that search engine users enter into the search box when they conduct a web search. Some keywords are used more frequently. Others not so much.

You can open an AdWords account, set the parameters for where you want your blue cubes to appear (and not to appear) and even tell Google when to begin your AdWords campaign for just $5.00.

You may pay $3, $4 or $5 for the most popular keywords. The highest bidder gets the best position in the skyscrapers that appear on the right hand side of each Google search engine result page (SERP). Take your time, here. Sure, you can start for as little as $5.00 but you can quickly find yourself spending hundreds of dollars on AdWords and not seeing the results you expected.

That’s why a pre-launch practice session or two will pay off long-term. Understand how PPC programs work and you’ll make the best use of this advertising channel.

5. Create payment gateways.

How will prospects pay for your products or services? There are several options, here. PayPal has a commercial account option. Google Checkout is growing in popularity. The problem with these payment gateways is that they take visitors off your web site and they may never return.

Not all visitors have PayPal accounts so that’s a dead end. Consider adding a merchant account to your web site. These payment gateways enable buyers to pay securely with their credit cards, though the merchant account company will take a big bite out of your profit margins, often collecting 3%-4% of the total purchase each customer makes.

That slows down web site growth to profitability but it keeps buyers on your site and provides a payment gateway that anyone can use – as long as they have a credit card.

The more ways buyers can pay, the more buyers your site will attract. Make it simple and secure to buy from you and, in no time, you’ll start to see repeat buyers – the best friends a new web site owner has.

6. Create a compelling headline.

Why should your first-time site visitors stay on site?

You have less than 10 seconds to capture the attention of new site visitors. So, create a headline for your home page that clearly and simply explains what your new web-based business is all about.

The headline should indicate that your site delivers solutions to visitors’ problems. Low prices, free give-aways, free shipping – all attract attention and keep visitors on site longer. And the longer a visitor stays on site, the more likely she is to buy something, or pick up the telephone and give you a call. Consider your headline the most important piece of site copy you develop.

It is.

7. Refine your web site text.

Add your strongest keywords to strong text – headlines, sub-heads or text that’s bolded, italicized or underlined. This tells search engine spiders that this is important information.

Also, your site text should focus on the objectives of the site visitors, NOT your objectives. Your objective might be to generate sales of your products, so you might be tempted to load your text with sales hype. Remember, your objectives and the objectives of site visitors are not necessarily the same. Attend to the needs of visitors and success will follow organically.

8. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Everything about your web site should be simple.

The text should be simple to read or scan. Use bullet points and avoid using jargon or industry-specific words that might be unfamiliar to some visitors. If the site visitor doesn’t get it, he isn’t going to buy from you. Write text in simple, short sentences at an 8th grade reading level to ensure that visitors understand what your site is about and why it’s worth exploring further.

9. Stress test before launch.

Your pre-launch web site resides on a web host’s server. It might be the server your programmer uses or it might be your own server with your own domain. In either case, you can ask friends and family to put your site to the test – the stress test.

Send the link of your site-in-progress to friends and family and ask your testers to try to make the site crash or mis-perform. Are all links connected? Does the color motif shift depending on the browser the tester is using? Ask testers to do everything wrong – to intentionally crash the site. Why? Because if testers can find the dead-end link, a lot of your site visitors will find it, too.

10. Just before launch, submit a site map to Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

Invite search engines to visit and crawl your site the day before you do a hard launch. A soft launch is just for friends and family who will provide their input on how to make the site better. A hard launch occurs when you “go live.”

The day before you undertake a hard launch, submit a site map to the major search engines. This is an invitation to Google and the others to crawl your site and index it within the taxonomy of the search engine index.

Meeting Visitor Expectations: Hate To Tell You This, But It’s NOT About You

Tips from your Green Website Hosting Provider

Consider your own web use practices.

When you access a web site, do you think about the owner of that site? Do you care if that web site succeeds as an on-line business? Do you have certain expectations when you visit for the first time?

As the owner of a web-based business, you have certain objectives. Your objectives might include:

• selling a product

• selling a service

• collecting email addresses through an opt-in module

• signing up subscribers to your newsletter

• enticing site visitors to pick up the telephone and call you

• providing incentives to visit your store or place of business (local search)

• gathering information through the completion of a form

These are one or more of your objectives. However, they aren’t the objectives of the site visitor who may be shopping around for a better price (comparison shopping), seeking the advice of a business or financial consultant or printing out directions to your store across town.

The fact is, the objectives of site owners and site visitors are often at odds and that leads to a high bounce rate. Visitors arrive on site, at some expense and effort on your part, however they fail to find the information they’re looking for and they bounce – they leave before they perform your most desired action.

The key to site success is to meet all of your site visitors objectives simply, clearly and transparently. Any attempt to “fool” visitors is bound to fail. Today’s sharp web users know a come-on when they see one. The tactics that worked five years ago don’t work today.

For example, when you offer a free eBook download in exchange for an email address opt-in, that visitor knows that her email client inbox is going to be loaded with spam as you send out auto-responder after auto-responder in a fruitless attempt to back sell that visitor to the grave. Even capturing an email address with an ethical bribe no longer works. Web users know why you want their email addresses and many are reluctant to provide that information in exchange for a 10-page download on keeping tropical fish. It’s just not worth the hassle.

Navigation Simplified

As a web site owner, you don’t know where a new visitor is going to land on your site. It MAY be your glitzy home page with a fancy Flash animated carousel and a complete, 20-minute video sell piece, but a site visitor is just as likely to land on an interior page – a landing page deep within your site accessed by an in-bound link from another site, a pay-per-click ad (PPC) or even organic search engine results.

The fact is, many visitors arrive on a site page that doesn’t interest them. That’s why web site navigation is so important. Clear, concise navigation enables visitors to find the information they’re looking for quickly, keeping them on site longer. And the longer a visitor stays on site, the more likely they are to perform that all-important MDA.

Website navigation simplified:

• keep the navigation simple

• always place the navigation bar or column in the same place on every page of your site

• use descriptions that are unambiguous for navigation tabs

• always provide a HOME link that equips new visitors to start at the beginning, or to start over in their searches for specific information

• never mislead visitors by redirects or “tricks”

• make navigation pop, i.e. stand out from sales text and informational content

• use navigation to draw visitors deeper into the site through the use of drop-down and fly-out sub menus

Use navigation to simplify and enhance the on-site experience for the uninitiated. Confusing navigation creates confused visitors – visitors who don’t want to “figure out” what a navigation tab means. Keep it simple and keep them on-site longer.

Benefits, Not Features

Features describe an aspect of a product or service. A benefit describes an advantage given to the site visitor.

For example, if you sell lawn mowers, you might be tempted to stress the fact that this particular model uses a key to start the lawn mower engine. That’s a feature.

The benefits? No more pulling the start cord. Starts the first time with the turn of a key. Simplifies lawn mowing chores. Translate features of your product or service offerings into benefits that site visitors recognize and understand immediately. Tell them what’s in it for them in no uncertain terms.

It’s not about features. It’s about benefits. It’s not about you. All of your web site copy should be targeted at meeting the needs of site visitors.

And don’t expect site visitors to determine benefits of features. TELL them what your products or services do to them and for them.

3-2-1 Contact

This is perhaps the single-most important step you can take to create a client-centric site.

Provide numerous means for site visitors to contact you. They may have questions before they buy. They want more information before they sign up. They may want an order status update. The ability to contact your help desk or order desk easily, using a number of common tools, indicates that your on-line business is all about site visitor satisfaction.

So, how can visitors reach your people? Some suggestions:

Choose a Web Host That’s On Your Side: The Ethics of Web Hosting

A web hosting company, just like any other commercial business, is a for-profit enterprise. The company hooks web sites to the world wide web, but that’s just the start of your relationship with your web host. In fact, your  web host (at least a good one) works with you as you build your on-line business.

And a good web host wants you to be successful as much as you do. Unfortunately, not all hosting companies share the same business values and some are downright unethical, placing your web-based business in danger and lessening your chances for on-line success.

So what should you expect from your web host? Honesty, integrity, concern, help and a corporate friend that puts your best interests first.

Green Hosting Technology

The air is getting dirtier. The seas are turning black. Clean drinking water is scarce in many places in the world and we all have a responsibility to use less energy. It’s the ethical thing to do.

So, to start, look for a web hosting company that shows concern for the environment today and in the future – a web host that employs green tech to deliver services to you. What to look for?

• more renewable energy sources like wind turbines and cold water cooling for web host servers

• Energy Star rated, highly efficient servers, which are nothing more than huge hard drives on which your web site resides on the server side

• responsible disposal of outdated equipment to prevent heavy, toxic metals from seeping into our water supplies

• an ethical, corporate value to employ the least amount of energy while delivering the highest quality of service

Green hosting services are the future. Only a few hosts employ green technology end-to-end. Choose one of these vanguard companies. That commitment to a cleaner future makes an ethical statement about what’s important to the web hosting company’s management team.

More Shared Access

A web hosting company is a collection of servers – huge hard drives that connect web sites to the world wide web.

Now servers cost money and energy efficient servers cost a LOT of money. So, there’s always the temptation to stuff as many web sites onto a server as possible. In fact, it’s not at all unusual for some web hosts to cram 3,000 web sites onto a single server to recoup the cost of that server as quickly as possible.

The problem with loading up a single server with a few thousand web sites is accessibility to server assets. For example, a server uses a common CPU – central processing unit. If the server is overloaded, you may not get instant access to your server’s CPU, and neither will site visitors.

Bandwidth is another shared asset – how quickly does your web site interact with site visitors. Studies show that 90% of web surfers will sit through a 10-second download while only 10% will sit through a 30-second download. In the space of 20 seconds, you can lose 80% of visitors trying to access you site because the web host has placed so many web sites on your server that adequate bandwidth isn’t always available.

And you lose site visitors. If you use a shared hosting account to store your web site, ask about the number of other websites that’ll be competing for access to shared, server side resources. You want your fair share and so do site visitors.

Take a Test Drive

An ethical web host doesn’t want a bunch of unhappy clients. It wants happy, satisfied buyers of the host’s services.

An ethical web hosting company will let you try out the back office while providing a money back guarantee. A 30-day, money back guarantee shows that the web host cares about client satisfaction more than making a few extra bucks.

If a web host you’re considering doesn’t offer a cash back refund, find an ethical web host that does the right thing – every time.

Locked In

Also, take a look at the terms of service (TOS) of any web host you consider. Most lock you into a 12- or 24-month contract with lots of boilerplate and fine print so tiny no one can read the real TOS.

If you’re locked in to a long-term contract, you continue to pay a monthly hosting fee even if you take your site down! Does that sound fair to you? Does it sound ethical?

An ethical web host doesn’t want to lock in customers. It wants customers who are happy with the delivery of services and stay because they get their money’s worth every month.

Also, watch out for teaser rates – a big come on to get you to sign up at $4.95 a month for six months, at which point the hosting fee jumps to $39.95 every 30 days. Does that sound like a company you want as your on-line partner? Sounds highly unethical but a lot of web hosts tease you in to signing up before hitting you with a whopping jump in your monthly hosting fee.

Surprise! You’ve been duped by an unethical web hosting company that hides the truth. Look for total and complete transparency. And check out the terms of service. If the TOS are loaded with legal gibberish, that web host isn’t being transparent in its dealings with you. And that’s just not ethical.

Help When You Need It

When you choose a web host, look for one that delivers more than server space. Look for a host that wants to help you reach the highest levels of success in every way.

And one of those ways is a 24/7 toll-free hotline so you can get tech support or answer to a billing question at any time – even 2:00 AM if you have a question. The help desk should be available, totally knowledgeable, empowered to solve problems and 100% patient. If it takes a while to walk you through how to hook up a blog module, you want someone on the other end of the line who has the knowledge and endless patience to help you accomplish your on-line objective.

Reliability

An ethical web host is a reliable web host – one you can count on to deliver the highest levels of service, a full bag of web site building tools and applications and an uptime that makes the other web hosts jealous, because when your server is “down,” your business is off-line and your prospects can’t find you.

With today’s state-of-the-art technology, you should expect your web site to be “up” 100% of the time using redundant systems and procedures that kick in automatically, even if the power grid goes down in the city where your web host is located.

Longevity

Any one can become a web host. In fact, there are thousands of host resellers – small businesses that rent server space at wholesale prices and sell that space at retail. These small companies are in business to make money – period. They often lack customer support, some have only been in business for a few months and still don’t have all the “bugs” worked out and some disappear overnight.

You go to bed after checking your web site and wake up the next morning and get a 404 error message telling you that your web site isn’t available. Why? Because that low-ball web host you chose flipped the switch and walked away with thousands of customer profiles – personal data that’s now up for sale on hacker sites around the world.

Dissecting Search Engine Optimization:

Why Google, Yahoo and Bing = Web Success

Tips from your Green Website Hosting Provider

If you’re just starting out in the world of e-commerce, welcome to the shark tank. The world wide web (W3) is the fastest growing, most competitive and most exciting marketplace in the history of buying and selling.

The world wide web is also the place entrepreneurs have the opportunity to actually build a successful business for just a few bucks. The W3 has changed everything, which is why you’re thinking of diving in.

Optimization is probably NOT at the top of your  “to-do”  list. But it sure should be.

SEO often makes the difference between web success and a “down in flames” scenario you don’t even want to think about.

Introducing the Search Engine

The first search engine was introduced by Yahoo in 1994 and as soon as Yahoo released this now-essential tool, search engine optimization began. Search engines, like Google (the 800-pound gorilla of search engines) provide the “address” of the web site that contains the information or products you’re looking for. Prior to 1994, we were all wandering around the web without a road map or an address book.

Today, simply type in a search query, using keywords, and Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other 4,000 search engines crawling the web, and you’ll see dozens of Search Engine Results Pages, or SERPs, offering suggestions for web sites that would interest you based on the keywords you entered into the search box.

The War Between Google and SEOs

Search engine optimizers (SEOs) somewhat understand how search engines evaluate a web site and their job is to manipulate the machine – to get search engines to rank their clients’ web sites higher in the SERPs.

The chances of a search engine user clicking on a SERPs link are much higher if that link is on page 1 of Google’s SERPs rather than on page 152. Think about your own use of search engines. When you make a search query, you look at the results found on the first few pages. When was the last time you drilled down to page 152 of Google SERPs? Never!

The reason is simple. The prime objective of a search engine is to deliver SERPs links that are relevant to the keywords entered into the search box. The more relevant the web site based on the query, the higher the web site ranks in SERPs.

Search engines employ top-secret algorithms – complex mathematical formulas – to assess what a web site is all about, to classify a web site within the search engine index and to deliver relevant SERPs to users.

If you type in “snow tires” into the Google search box and a bunch of SERPs listing knitting stores, sports memorabilia and health food stores appeared on Google’s SERPs, pretty soon you’d stop using Google because it was a waste of time.

On the other hand, if you type in “snow tires,” and find local retail tire stores, you can do some comparison shopping on prices, look for special sales and even print out a map to get to the tire store. When it comes to search engines, it’s all about relevance – how relevant are the search results based on what the search engine user types into the search box.

Positive and Negative Ranking Factors

Search engines use small snippets of code, called bots or spiders, that “crawl” a wide site to determine the topicality of the web site and how good that web site is in terms of relevance to the keywords entered by the search engine user.

Bots move through a web site looking for letter strings – the repetition of the same sequence of letters. So, if a bot finds numerous references to “snow tires,” the bot assumes the web site is about snow tires.

Now, it could be a tire store, research on snow tire performance, a national manufacturer snow tire web site, a PhD thesis on snow tires, but search engine spiders look for repeating letter strings to assess into which category a particular web site should be indexed or classified.

The natural inclination, therefore, is to use the words “snow tires” a lot. The more the better, right? Well, search engine algorithms are created to recognize what’s called keyword stuffing – the overuse of certain keywords and terms designed to attract the attention of search engine bots.

If you sell bananas on line, and every other word of your web site text is “banana,” search bots are programmed to recognize keyword stuffing and when it does, the web site ranks lower in relevance than the web site that provides helpful information on the purchase of bananas.

Linkage – the number of web sites that link to your web site – is another ranking factor. The more web sites linking in to your web site, the higher your web site is ranked. The thinking here? If other site owners link to a web site, they’re recommending it to their own site visitors, an indication of a really good web site.

There are dozens and dozens of ranking factors and endless debate on which factors matter most. Even SEOs – men and women who earn their salaries optimizing web sites – don’t agree on which factors have a positive effect on SERPs rank and which don’t, creating an endless debate.

Search Engine Bots Never Bought Anything

Okay, so now you’re thinking about search engine optimization and how to improve your site’s rank on Google’s or Yahoo’s SERPs, right? Well you should.

The better optimized your site is, the higher it will appear on SERPs. And SERPs drive a lot of traffic to a web site. In the case of many web sites, Google accounts for 60% of all visitors who visit that particular web site so ranking highly in Google SERPs sends visitors to your web site.

However, it’s important to remember that search engine bots never bought a thing. These computer code snippets crawl your web site, gobble up letter strings and index the pages of your web site.

They don’t buy anything, so even if your web site does rank highly on Yahoo’s search engine results pages, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that web success is within your grasp. On the contrary, you may rank highly for obscure, little-used keywords. If you own a hearing aid repair web site, you’ll see organic traffic only when search engine users type in “hearing aid repair” – and that’s not going to happen a million times a day, that’s for sure.

The Web Screen

Your web site consists of two key components – the HTML or XML code that actually creates the web site and the presentation layer or web site skin – the web site that humans actually see.

Think of a web site as a screen. Behind the screen are lines of code that search engine spiders see. Googlebots never see the other side of the screen – the presentation layer. That’s for humans only. However, humans never see the underpinnings of the web site – the source code – the lines of HTML code that create the look, feel and the structure of your web site.

This actually simplifies the process of optimizing your web site for search engine spiders. The code, crawled by spiders, should be optimized for spiders so these search engine tools accurately identify all of the content your web site contains.

On the other side of the screen – the presentation layer – optimize for humans. The color scheme, the type font, the navigation architecture and navigation bar – everything on the presentation layer should be deigned to appeal to humans. Bots never even see your pretty choice of colors or the cool graphics you had created. In fact, bots can’t read any web site element that has a graphic extension like jpg, gif, bmp or other non-text extension.

Balance Creates Web Success

The key to long-term web success is balance. That’s what search engines want so give it to them.

A good SEO copy writer can effectively work in the words “snow tires” up to 5% of the total site text – about the maximum you want before search engines slam you for keyword stuffing.

Populate Your Blog with Good Content FREE: A Good Web Site Is Deep In Good Content

Tips from your Green Website Hosting Provider

The world wide web eats content like I eat chips. Here one minute, gone the next. So, the content that you maintain on your blog won’t deliver impact for long.

Search engine bots will view any content over 31 days old as yesterday’s news and your site ranking doesn’t get any better. And if a repeat visitor stops by and sees that same content you had up three weeks ago, well, after a while, those repeat visitors stop visiting.

So, new, fresh, juicy content improves your web site in the eyes of search engines (who love fresh, informational content) and in the eyes of site visitors who keep coming back for more helpful information.

But here’s the thing. Content generation – good, optimized content generation is expensive and a lot of start-up web businesses simply don’t have the capital to pay a copy writer for new content every day.

Now, what are your options, and what are the pros and cons of each option.

Content Mills

Primarily located off-shore in India, the Philippines, Pakistan, the Ukraine and elsewhere, these companies turn out content by the mega ton for as little as $1.00 a page. So, for $50 bucks, you end up with 50 different, one-page articles on camping or urology or whatever the topicality of your web site.

Is the content any good? No. It’s written by English speakers but English isn’t the native language so you get some humorous translations. One of these content mills sent a client an article that claimed that the U.S. government was “up to the business of the monkey.”  “The business of the monkey?” What the heck????

Well, after reading it over and over, we figured out that the writer meant “monkey business,” an English idiom that was translated literally.

These rooms full of off-shore writers don’t spend a lot of time on research, the content is usually general in nature and, of course, it has to be Anglicized to the Queen’s English before posting. You can provide a list of keywords and the off-shore writers will do their best to work them in but don’t expect miracles.

There are also U.S.-based content mills. The price is a little higher - $5 an article – but the syntax still won’t be perfect, the grammar would make my 8th grade English teacher cringe and, again, very little research is conducted. These content mills offer low cost content – somewhat optimized – but it isn’t very impressive and, frankly, it won’t “WOW” readers.

Use this content spam as a last resort.

Ask An Expert

Working on a urology web site. I’m no expert on urology or urological conditions and treatments. So, I work with a content expert – a urological surgeon who provides the hard information that I edit and make sound good. I also pepper my expert content with keywords at about a 2% density – two keywords for every 100 words of text.

Ask an expert to contribute content to your site. Have her write up the document and provide a link back to the author’s site. This builds authority for the expert, it adds credibility to your web content, it builds trust, and readers get expert, authorative information. Everybody wins.

Content Syndication

You’ll find heaps of good articles on content syndication sites like ezine, helium, zimbio, goarticles and other sites that distribute articles and blog posts free. You simply download the article, post it to your site and provide a back link to the author’s site in exchange for the use of the content.

The upside to syndicated content is that it provides readers with articles and information that they’ve never seen before. That’s good.

There are several downsides, however. Syndicated content is downloaded to many different sites, all targeting the same demographic. This is duplicate content and when search engine spiders discover duplicate content, you encounter a negative ranking factor – part of Google’s algorithm.

Another downside? Part of the deal is you provide a link to the author’s site – an opportunity for a site visitor to leave your site with a click. It’s not tough to imagine a scenario in which one of your site visitors reads a syndicated article, likes what she reads and clicks to the author’s site for more of that helpful content.

The general rule in web site marketing: once you have visitors on site, keep them on site for as long as possible. The longer they stay on site, the more likely they are to buy a product, engage your services, opt-in for your free newsletter or download your eBook for $19.95.

Add Free Videos

YouTube and other video sites contain libraries of videos on everything from how a hearing evaluation is conducted to all-accordion bands playing Led Zeppelin tunes (very funny). These videos can be embedded in your web site free, again, as long as you provide a link back to the original YouTube URL – the place the video appeared.

Search for videos that will appeal to site visitors. Understand that search engine bots are incapable of “reading” videos so a spider won’t know what information the video includes.

Add an <alt> tag describing the content in the video to get a little search engine love, but don’t expect a huge jump up on Google’s search engine results pages, also called SERPs.

Also, once again, by posting a video clip, you do, indeed, provide fresh content to readers. However, by clicking on the video, visitors are taken to the source of the video and off your site.

To add a video you believe will be useful, find the embed code located on the same page as the video itself. Cut and paste this embed code into your site’s HTML code, place the video on the page, and location on the page, you think will deliver the most impact and engage visitors with a “talkie” instead of page after page of static, (Yawn) boring text.

Hire a Friend, Your Kid or Do It Yourself

Lots of people are convinced they can’t write and you know something, they can’t. They’re downright awful writers.

But a lot of folks are better writers than they give themselves credit for. A site owner knows his demographic, understands the mission of her web site – in fact, site owners are the ‘content experts’ when it comes to any site’s mission.

So even if you don’t know the difference between their, there and they’re, you can at least get it down on paper. And if sitting at the keyboard is a hindrance or stumbling block, set up the voice to text option under the “Accessibilities” link and talk it. Most of us can wax eloquently when describing our web-based activities but freeze up as soon as we sit down at the keyboard to write our first blog post.

(Darn schools scared us into thinking that if it weren’t perfect it wasn’t right, scaring millions of people from creating their own content.)

Write out a 600-word blog post about the topicality of your site. If you sell macramé supplies, post a new knot configuration with pictures YOU take with a cheapie digital camera. (Don’t spend beaucoup bucks on your camera. Images, like pictures, are usually compressed in transmission and are delivered in low-resolution format that looks just fine on a computer screen.)

If your site is all about paper airplanes, provide a couple of freebie folding templates every few months. Free content. Few words.

Or, if you’re a stock picking guru, post real-time prices of the stocks in your portfolio. Talk about site stickiness. That stock picking guru has a couple of thousand subscribers glued to their computers watching their stock prices rise and fall all day long.

Hire someone from the local paper or do something really nice and talk to the advisor of your town’s high school newspaper to find budding reporters who would LOVE to see a by-line on your web site. Pay them a few bucks, too. Low-cost good-will and you’ll have a stable of eager content providers who are getting virtual world experience writing for your web site.

Web Success On the Cheap: The $5 Start-up

Tips from your Green Website Hosting Provider

Got $5.00?

You can start a business. Hey, you lose more than five bucks in the couch each month. Skip one fast food meal and start a business.

For 12 years, Susan had been an office manager for a service provider in an affluent, Connecticut community. She WAS the office for this sole proprietorship so Susan had developed an enviable skill set.

She did order capture, kept the books, maintained the client d-base and she was the only one who ever figured out how to use the dusty old copy machine. She was indispensible to the company, or so she thought.

In 2009, with the U.S. economy in the tank, Susan was laid off in a last-ditch effort by the company owner to stay afloat. So, at the age of 54, Susan got her pink slip and left a career that had helped support the family since 1997. Stunned, she wasn’t worried. Like most of us, she figured another job was just a classified ad away.

Didn’t happen. Susan updated her resume and cover letter and undertook a methodical campaign to find a new job. But even with an enviable list of office skills, Susan couldn’t even get an interview, much less a job. No one was hiring and living off unemployment didn’t cover the bills.

She spent months trying to find another office job. ANY office job, but companies weren’t hiring. Every small business owner was laying off, not hiring. Then, one day, Susan got an idea.

She spent some time on line, did a little research and started her own business on the world wide web. She became a virtual assistant with an on-line presence that cost her $5 and took a day in front of the computer to construct.

Susan built a web site through Green Host It. She created an on-site blog, she signed up with the big freelance connections like Elance, odesk and findafreelance, she posted her virtual assistant resume on Craig’s list and optimized her digital classified to the geo-specific region of Connecticut where she lived.

Success in 14 Days

Really. Once Susan launched her on-line presence through a variety of low-cost and no-cost means, within two weeks she was making more money than she’d ever hoped to make working as the office manager for the past 12 years.

Here’s what happened. Her first client was a local cell phone B2B who worked out of his car and, so, he was on the road all day. He needed someone to capture incoming calls and short message them to his cell each business day. A simple assignment and one Susan could easily handle, though the client was only willing to pay $9.00 an hour, way below what she’d been earning. But it was a start so she took the long-term assignment.

A few days later, Susan gets another call from a small overseas company looking for call capture services in the U.S. Pay? $10 an hour. Now Susan was making $19 an hour, about what she was making as an office manager.

Next, she received a request for virtual assistant services, including bookkeeping, from a small plumbing company. Pay? $12 an hour. In less than 14 days, Susan had landed three regular clients – one from the European Union – and was earning $31 an hour working in her slippers.

In 14 days, Susan had created a successful on line business – one that she controls. She cherry picks requests for work, she’s gradually raised her hourly rates, she’s in a position to say ‘no’ to prospects to best manage her workload and, best of all, Susan started her on-line business for $5.

Just $5.

Here’s How She Did It

Okay, she had a set of skills. You do, too. What have employers paid you to do in the past? There are people reaching out via the world wide web for those skills. You just need to connect up.

Make a list of the things you do that people will pay you to do. Hand stitching? Babysitting? Bookkeeping? House cleaning? All of us can do something that others will pay to have done. Make your list.

Once you’ve decided what you want to do (Susan chose to use her office skills to become a virtual assistant), choose a web hosting company. A web host will place your web site on line so visitors can find it.

Choose a host that offers lots of freebies:

• 24/7, real-time tech support

• 100% uptime (when your web host is “down,” so’s your business)

• web site templates (you don’t have to be a programmer. Create your site using good old cut and paste. And change your web site as often as you like.)

• free software like a free checkout, a free payment gateway, free blog, free content management software, free web site creation software (if you want to get fancy), free everything

• free customer support. Building your first web site may require some hand holding, though it really is easy. Look for a web host that delivers hand holding tech-heads who will walk you through the web site creation process.

• no advertising. You might be tempted to go with free web hosting. DON’T! These companies make money placing advertising on your web site, and you have no control over who or what’s going to appear on your site hosted free.

• low monthly cost. Here’s where the $5.00 comes in. You should be able to find a web host that delivers all the tools and information required to design, build and run a web site for five bucks a month.

• a 30-day guarantee. Any web host that doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee is more concerned with its own success than in the success of its clients, a skewed corporate value that reveals a great deal about a company that, in actually, will be your business partner providing access to the W3.

• no long-term contracts. You may change your mind down the road or have built a stable client base and want to eliminate maintaining a web site. If you’re locked in you could be spending money you shouldn’t have to spend – again, the sign of a company that recognizes the importance of client success to its own, long-term growth and profitability.

Choose a domain name that is keyword dense

Green Host It and Austin, Texas: Right At Home In The World’s Most Planet-Friendly City

Austin, Texas holds the distinction of being the greenest city in the entire world – a city taking a multi-pronged approach to reducing energy use in all sectors of trade and governance, making web host, Green Host It, feel right at home in the thriving, vibrant capital of the great state of Texas.

Austin's Energy Resources

The city is the hub of a global energy industry that includes traditional energy sources such as oil and natural gas, and far-horizon energy resource technology that includes:

• solar power generation

• highly efficient wind turbines

• fuel cell technology that cuts down on cradle-to-grave energy consumption

• deep earth core energy generation (geo-thermal)

• bio-fuel technology

• a full list of sustainable energy producing and energy conserving technologies

The city has brought together numerous sectors of the community to work in tandem to lower the entire region’s energy consumption and shrink the carbon footprint of a major, metropolitan area. City leaders have reached out to: elements of the private and public sectors, energy generation services, major consumers of energy, non-profit and educational organizations, including tax-funded schools that teach green energy practices from recycling to responsible personal use of energy.

This coalition has created the greenest city in the world, ranking number one in both the National Renewable Energy Lab’s green power rankings and SustainLane Government’s Cleantech Incubation rankings. Austin, Texas leads the way in current usage and cutting edge technology developed by an expanding base of businesses that have accepted the challenge of creating a cleaner, safer environment using best practices to deliver quality of life benefits now and tomorrow. It’s all happening in this growing center of energy conservation research and manufacture.

"We are committed to purchasing and generating renewable energy. We feel it's vital to our economy and our environment to develop and implement clean energy. We look forward to the opportunity to purchase plug-in hybrids for our transportation needs.”—Will Wynn, Mayor of Austin"

Austin’s Clean Energy Incubator (CEI)

The city’s leaders have created an environment that encourages new initiatives in all areas of energy generation and conservation with the introduction of Austin’s unique Clean Energy Incubator.

CEI encourages and supports young companies to develop and deploy clean energy and renewable energy resources. The goal? To facilitate innovation among the knowledge-based industries that form Austin’s revenue base. These companies deliver cutting-edge solutions and technologies, employ state-of the-art energy resources and benefit from the assistance of such organizations as the University of Texas and Austin Energy, the city-owned energy generation company that has set the bar higher for clean earth technology.

Austin Energy has ranked first in the nation for its Green Power program for seven consecutive years, providing the latest in green-based energy generation now, with plans in place to generate 30% of the city’s energy needs using earth-friendly technologies by the year 2020 – an ambitious goal that adds up to 100MW of power. That’s a lot of green juice.

Green Host It: Right At Home in The Greenest City In The World

Green Host It takes the lead in energy conservation through the creation of the city’s first front-to-back, green web site hosting service. From its 80,000 square foot facility, Green Host It employs the latest in Energy Star rated servers, water cooled servers and a full menu of hosting services, using wind turbines and other renewable energy resources.

In addition, Green Host It leads the way in responsible disposal of hardware to avoid the build-up of toxic, heavy metal contamination to Austin’s water supply. A company spokesperson described Green Host It’s corporate values this way:

“Green Host It is founded on two core values – green hosting technology and unparalleled levels of service to our clients. To this end, the company, which opened its doors in 2010, has taken the vanguard position in green hosting. We’re changing the web hosting industry today. Others can only follow the lead of Green Host It.”

Indeed, Austin, Texas is the greenest city worldwide, in part, because of the environmentally friendly strategies employed by city government, industry, energy generation facilities and large consumers of energy like Green Host It.