The recent acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart, the biggest deal of 2018, shows the expanding dominance of E-commerce space. Having learned from the deal unfolded, where Walmart speculated the high-level of user engagement with high-frequency use cases in retail space, dictates the startups and small-to-medium E-commerce companies to take a plunge into soaring market opportunities.

People have been shopping online for more than two decades, and we have seen a number of iconic brands originate online. Scaling and plugging in e-commerce startups with a full-fledged website and app comes as a right decision and a perfect investment for the business.

There have been multiple advancements in this online retail ecosystem from websites to mobile apps; among the points to ponder is whether to choose an on-premise or a cloud-based online interface.

This article covers the main cloud hosting benefits for e-commerce websites.

1. Enhanced Accessibility

Give your users an easy access to any standard web browser through cloud computing. E-commerce business hosted on a cloud server enables suppliers, employees, partners and distributors to get easy access to information and make the processing smooth and swift.

2. Increased Scalability

Cloud hosting comes with a biggest advantage of scalability and elasticity. It allows businesses to scale at a faster rate. In the festival or holiday times, when there is much greater traffic on the websites and have to meet the pouring product demands, in such case installing a simple cloud system, adds a layer of scalability and on the same time gives you a flexibility to downgrade the scale later on when your demands are met.

3. Flexibility

For constantly evolving businesses, cloud-based e-commerce solution helps brands to quickly and conveniently add new sites for new business models (B2B or B2C), countries or brands all on a single platform and hence making it easier for brands to grab and respond to new upcoming market opportunities.

4. Security and Reliability

Cloud carefully monitors security, which is significantly more efficient than a conventional in-house system. Files stored in reliable cloud services are some of the most secure files one can have, provided they are protected by good passwords.

5. Easy Recovery

Reduce application downtime during IT interruptions, unexpected power interruption or system failure without compromising compliance by choosing cloud hosting for your Ecommerce business.

More or less, the four critical challenges notably scalability, flexibility, security and recovery can be mitigated in cloud computing deployment easily.

Seize the power of Cloud computing for your ecommerce website development. It takes your business to next level by providing improved cost efficiencies, faster time-to-market and upscale innovation that renders you an exceptional ability to scale applications on demand.

I have been an active internet user and have recently launched an online business service website. I have been hearing lately lot of marketing gurus taking about the use of social media to have better business scalability and was keen on knowing how can social media benefit my business?

The findings that I came across are very overwhelming. It has completely changed my prospective on how easy it is to expand your business by using the various social media tools available. I am today going to share with you what I have learned so far.

What is social media marketing?

Basically it is a process which is used for promoting your site or business using the various social media channels. It helps in driving all the relevant traffic to your website and is a powerful marketing strategy tool.

When we talk about the advantages of Social Media Marketing to Business, they are endless.

· Online Conversations: Using a social channel helps in building a brand value online. A strong social message can create a huge impact on building brand name for your online business. It is more like a viral marketing which keeps multiplying on its own without having to make much effort once initiated using the right methods.

· Quick Turnaround: If you plan your social media marketing strategies right, you can see a quick response. Instantly you can see an increase in your website traffic. But it does not mean that your conversion rate will increase however it will surely generate the momentum.

· Cost Effective: Business social media marketing is the most cost effective and therefore it is being used by many marketers in different ways to directly connect with the customer instantly.

· Search Engine Ranking: When you do it the right way it brings large amount of backlinks that also impacts your search engine ranking.

· Compatible with Other marketing strategies: You can run both the traditional marketing campaign and the other advertising campaign along with your social media marketing promotion.

Connecting with your target audience using the social media tools is the best way to have a more saleable online business. Not only does it helps in building traffic but also helps in improving your search engine visibility level.

Social networking sites and other social methods of marketing have helped many small business houses to achieve their business targets. It is the best way of developing link baits and getting popular. You can have both primary and secondary traffic to your website and increase your chances of getting leads converted to profitable business.

If you are running a new website then having a social presence online will get you noticed and help in familiarizing your services or products with the community of target audience. It is a medium through which gives you chance to be heard or read. An impressive and enticing social media campaign will definitely help you in drawing people to your website. It is the fastest, cheapest and the most reliable way of building relevant traffic to your website.

In part 1, you learned various aspects that underline the importance of quality of service followed by the essential indicators that every business decision-maker should consider before building an association with a service provider. Similar to the segment one, scope of service too embraces multiple aspects that include redundancy, scalability, and control.

Let’s get started with the first and the most important factor:

Redundancy: Capability of a system or data center architecture to reciprocate unwarranted issues that can occur on account of technical or human flaws connotes how redundant it is. Power outages, server failure, component malfunctioning, and environmental catastrophes are some of the factors that impede business functionality while suspending ongoing operations. Look out for a facility that is armed with failsafe equipment and dual power sources to back your mission-critical website against uneven conditions.

Scalability: Sometimes also referred to as flexibility. It is the capability of a data center to respond to the growing market demands by adding multiple nodes or computing resources. The more the data center is scalable, the more competent it is considered. Scalability is measured both in terms of addition and reduction of computing capability. Let me explain it in the simpler words – suppose if you own an e-commerce website that attracts approximately 200 visitors per day. You have resources that can efficiently handle 200+ visitor traffic. Now, Diwali is approaching and you know that your website will attract more visitors. Insufficient storage capacity and bandwidth will not only make your website slow for your visitors, but also can lead to downtime. Hence, it raises a question on business sustainability.

It is always important to partner with a host that maintains high scalability. For your information, cloud technology provides immense scalability for business websites and applications.

Control: There is a multitude of options available today that a client can choose from such as dedicated server, cloud server, VPS, etc. Some of the substitutes do not provide full control to the server, such as shared hosting. Lack of control leads to lack of productivity. It refrain clients from any requisite tasks that they wish to perform on their server. For example, if they wish to add/delete a software application, they need to seek the host’s permission. If you are looking for complete control on your dedicated resources, you can either opt for a dedicated server or virtual private server.

I am optimistic that these pointers will aid you in making a right decision for your business. I will be back with the final post soon.