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The GartnerGroup estimates that by the end of 2012, there will be 150 million people using mobile devices to purchase goods and services worldwide.

An ABI Research study predicted that shoppers will order $2.2 billion in physical goods via mobile devices in 2010 and by 2015, $119 billion worth of goods and services will be purchased via a mobile phone.

The data is clear – the trends speak for themselves – now is the time for you to develop and implement a mobile e-commerce strategy.

If your Magento store has been running for any amount of time, you may be seeing your database growing beyond what you expected. Magento does some of its logging to the database and unless those log tables are cleaned out periodically they can quickly get quite large.

To set up automatic log cleaning, go to ADMIN: System->Configuration->System tab->Log Cleaning panel. Set the “Enable” field and the number of days worth of logs to save. (Set this according to your needs and server capacity.) Then set the frequency for ongoing log cleaning. (Remember, cron must be set up and running so this can be scheduled.)

If your version of Magento doesn’t have the Log Cleaning feature, you’ll want to manually clean out the log_visitor and log_url tables every once in awhile. Either of these methods will help keep your database size in check.

If you’re going to sign up with a web hosting service, you’ll obviously want to sign up with the best one you can find. After all, it’ll be difficult to build your entire website and advertise its domain name to your customers, only to have to change it and start all over again at some point. Below are some tips that should help you when it comes to how to choose the best web hosting service.

There are so many web hosts out there it can be difficult to know where to begin. First, decide what type of web hosting service you want to work with. Dedicated servers are very expensive, but ideal if you’re going to need a ton of bandwidth and web space for your site. Shared hosts are the cheapest but can be slower and a little more restricted. Virtual private servers are somewhere in between when it comes to price, speed and space. When you’ve decided what kind of server you want, look for companies that advertise an uptime of ninety-nine percent or higher (meaning the server works—and thus people can access your site—at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred). Try logging onto sites hosted by that company. Are they fast or slow? Make sure you can add shopping carts to your site if you’ll need them. Try to work with a hosting company that will offer you a control panel. And when you work on your site, you should have at least several options when it comes to the scripts you can use. Finally, try to estimate how many gigabytes of bandwidth your site will use each month—consult a computer expert if you need help with this calculation. Then make sure that whatever company you sign up with will allow you at least that much bandwidth each month. If not, you’ll be charged for however much you go over your allowed bandwidth, and even if your web hosting company offers cheaper rates, it still won’t be worth these additional charges. (Of course, chances are strong that if you’re running a small business you won’t need too much bandwidth anyway, but it’s good to be sure.)

Finally, when you’ve narrowed your list of potential web hosting services to a few that meet all of your needs and desires, you should compare their prices and choose the one that will offer you the most value for your money (meaning, the cheapest). You might be tempted to go with a free website, which is fine if you’re just setting up a family page, but a bad idea if you’re making it your business site. You won’t have many options or much control over your site for one thing, and many customers probably won’t take seriously a business with a free web page. It’d be kind of like making your own billboard out of construction paper.

Ten or fifteen years ago, people might surf the Internet for an hour or so in search of a little information and entertainment.  Now, people live a good part of their lives there.  Businesses rise and fall, romances blossom and crumble, friendships are made and dreams are fulfilled, and people go to college and to work, all in that magical virtual world they access through their phones and computers.  As such, it’s critical that businesses, no matter how small, reach their customers on the Web and advertise there. And the best way to do that is through web hosting.  When you sign up with a web hosting service, you can publish a website available to the entire world on the World Wide Web.  In basic terms, you use space on the web that the hosting service either owns outright or leases.  On this space, you build the site on which you’ll upload your informational files.  Now, there are three main kinds of web hosting services: shared, virtual private serving, and dedicated hosting, and we’ll examine these presently.

Shared hosting simply means that you “share” your web space with a bunch of other people.  If you imagine your web page as your apartment, then the shared server is the apartment building.  You might have only a few “roommates” on your server, or you might live in a giant, sprawling apartment complex with thousands of others living in the same building as you.  You and the other tenants not only share the server, but you share an Internet Protocol address as well.  While there are many great things about shared serving, including the low price, keep in mind that response times can be slower and the server can occasionally crash, shutting down all the websites on it.

A virtual private server, or VPS, is one where a server is split, as though that one server were actually multiple servers.  Each of these partitioned pieces of the server actually employs its own operating system.  VPS costs more than shared hosting does (and its users are less prone to spam than those who sign up with a shared hosting program) but does not cost as much as a dedicated server.  Again using the metaphor of a place to live, a virtual server might be thought of as a condominium complex, where each individual condo is sold separately and functions as a separate unit, while all the condos are still part of one complex, a complex owned by the same people.  At ChimeHost, we specialize Xen VPS hosting, OpenVZ vps hosting and Windows VPS hosting.

Last, a dedicated hosting service is one where you’ll get your very own web server, a server you can control, configure and operate however you’d like, even though you most likely won’t own it.  You can have as many domains as you like, and response times are usually fast.  You can also use as much space and bandwidth as you like, and the IPU is all yours.  Naturally, dedicated servers are very expensive

When it comes to Magento hosting, you should look into VPS hosting.   VPS hosting is basically a dedicated server but at a less price.   One of the main reasons for recommending VPS is because Magento requires a lot of system resources and it performs well under VPS environment.  Yes, it is possible to run Magento on shared web hosting but it can lead to slow loading of web pages.   Also, you will get more security with VPS hosting because you are not sharing server resources with other users.  Furthermore, VPS hosting comes with a dedicated IP which is required for SSL.

Some of the core features of Magento include -

• Search Engine Optimization:
  • It is 100 % search engine friendly.
  • Provides meta information for product and categories
  • Generate site map automatically
  • Offers Google site map
• Site Management:
  • You can control many websites and stores from one administrative panel
  • Provides multi language support
  • Google website optimizer is integrated with the software
  • Also, includes powerful content management system
  • Ability to support Multi Language and Multi currency
  • You can use customized template to create unique website
• Order Management:
  • The tool can create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order
  • Also, it can view, edit and create order from administrative panel
  • Additionally, it provides discount, select address and fix customer price
  • You can notify order through email
  • Provides the ability for new order through RSS feed
  • Can create Call center order
  • Can look into shopping cart, last ordered items, and compared products list
• Web services API to make it easy to integrate third-party tools.
• Integration with the United States Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS for real time rate quotes
• Elaborate analytics and reporting options.
• Can generate site map by itself
• You can create many campaigns and buddy coupons with useful coupon rules.
• Ability for digital and downloadable products.
• Can integrate 50 payment gateways.
• Can rewrite URL

There are many alternatives online when it comes to e-commerce but we strongly believe that Magento is one of the best e-commerce solutions that is available online.  Many users might go with e-commerce hosting solution that limit the ability of site admins and prevent them from having full control of their website.   However, with Magento hosting on VPS, users have full control over the server and the website backend.  Even when it comes to paying for Magento hosting, once can expect to pay around $40 per month with unlimited number of products and it will come with cPanel to help manage your website.  Overall, Magento hosting on VPS will give you full control of your server by giving you the ability to setup the server to your website needs.

Shared web hosting is a form of web hosting service where you and other users share space on the World Wide Web, and share an Internet Protocol address as well.  There are some drawbacks to this kind of web hosting: you don’t get to control everything that goes on the server; the response times can be a little slow now and then; if there are spammers on your server, they could send you spam email as you both share an IP address; and a problem with one webpage could send the entire server crashing, which means you might not be able to use your site for a while.  But many website creators, especially people who run small businesses or use web hosting for personal reasons, will tell you that the benefits of shared web hosting far outweigh any potential drawbacks.

For one thing, shared hosting is the most affordable kind of web hosting available.  You can get on the Web, and build and maintain your web site for as little as four dollars a month!  Think of all the customers you can reach for that tiny sum.  (By contrast, a dedicated serving program could set you back a couple hundred dollars every month!)  And if you have a relatively small web site, you won’t need the larger amounts of bandwidth that a dedicated server could provide anyway.  In fact, it’s fair to say that the amount of CPU, webspace and bandwidth that the average shared web hosting service provides is enough for most Internet users—most Internet users by far.

Another benefit of shared web hosting is that it’s very easy to use.  You don’t have to be an expert in computer technology to get on the Net and start designing your page.  The software is controlled and maintained by the server, so there’s nothing to worry about there.  And in many cases the server will even offer you templates or help you get started with your web page creation and design, so you’ll be well taken care of if you happen to be a Web novice.  And there won’t be anything for you to have to install or program, either.

To sum up, there are good reasons why shared web hosting programs are so popular and so sought after.  Their ease of use and low prices help make webpage design a joy instead of a cause of stress.  After all, if you’re starting a small business, you’ll have plenty of things to take care of and to worry about; why add your website to that long list?  Simply sign up with a shared web host, send a few dollars their way every month, create your website with the site builder and use it to tell the world about the great products or services you offer.  It’s so easy, you might want to get a webpage for your dog or your goldfish while you’re at it, just because you can.

One of the easiest ways of getting traffic to your website is through article marketing.  Article Marketing involves writing articles on your main site topic and submitting them to article directories.  Most of these directories rank high in search engine and can generate a lot of traffic to your article.  The way to get that traffic to your site is through the “author  resource box” that will have your website link with your anchor text.  The resource box helps with both traffic and search engine optimization.

This is how it works -

- User searches for a keyword in search engine

- If the keyword is not that competitive, it is possible the search engine might return the article on 1st page of results

- The user clicks on the link and read the article that you wrote.

- After finish reading the article, they will see your author resource box with your site link.  If they enjoy your article, there is a high probability they will click on your link and visit your website.

You can easily outsource article writing to freelancers who might charge you anywhere from $10-$20 per article.  However, one should make sure that articles they write or get are unique otherwise they will be rejected by the article directories. Copyscape is an excellent tool to make sure your article is unique.

Another problem with article marketing is duplicate content.  Google is very clever when it comes to detecting duplicate content and all your hard work will go to waste if you are submitting same article to all article directories.  Therefore, it is recommended to either write different articles or spin the content of the article to make sure they are unique.  Spinning might help for the short term but I am sure search engines will catch on eventually.  If you don’t have the funds, you can simply focus on top article directory and submit an article every day.

Using the Google AdWords system can bring the ideal sort of traffic to your website. Research has proven that AdWords advertising has a conversion rate up to 10x bigger than organic or natural traffic. It is this conversion rate that makes pay-per-click advertising and AdWords particularly such a robust tool.

One of the keys to improving your Google AdWords campaign is the relevancy of the keywords that you use. There are a number of sorts of search phrases that could be included in your AdWords campaign. These phrases will work out how your ad is triggered.

As an example we’ll be selling products related to the phrase “leadership training.” Let’s imagine that our product is a DVD video course teaching leadership abilities.

One. ) Broad Match : leadership training

With this kind of match the keyword or phrase is entered into AdWords without quotation marks or brackets. Any search that involves the keyword in any form will trigger the advert.

Example : boy scout master training and community leadership

This phrase would trigger the ad as it has both “leadership” and “training” in the search phrase, but won’t be the only solution for the search. Broad match keywords can result in bigger click thru rates but less sales.

Two. ) Phrase Match : “leadership training”

A phrase match is entered by placing quotation marks round the keyword or phrase. In this example the ad would only be turned on if a users search contains the phrase in the cited order. Example : boy scout master training and community leadership would not trigger the ad, but leadership training for boy scout masters in the community would.

Three. ) Exact Match : [leadership training]

To enter a precise match phrase in AdWords the phrase is enclosed by brackets.

In this example a user would need to search for the precise phrase to trigger the announcement. The different keyword fluctuations will give you the facility to control the quantity and quality of your traffic. Broad match keywords might generate bigger amounts of traffic but cost money in the long run because they are so general. Phrase match keywords let you narrow the boundaries of your audience.

Actual match keywords let you focus on a target audience. All of them have their place in your Google AdWords campaign and you need to use them all. Using differing types of keyword divergences gives you the power to control how and when your ad is presented. Broad match keywords will trigger the ad when the keyword is placed in a search phrase in any mixture. Phrase match keywords will only trigger your ad when the phrase appears in the search in order. Precise match keywords will only turn on the ad when the precise phrase is searched. Google AdWords is a robust tool and can increase the standard of your internet site traffic massively. To take merit of the system you want to know how it works and the way to make it work for you.

Do you have unique content? Are you a convincing website? Are you able to supply a good user experience? These are all significant questions you should be asking yourself as you consider developing an inbound linking method.

Tip 1 : Here and Now

Start with an idea of where you are. In any case of what sort of tool you use ( free or paid ) to guage your present SEO standing : rankings, keywords, sites linking in, etc, ensure you have a smart idea of where you are beginning from – and eventually where you ant to get to. Additionally, plan to test your progress at least one time a week.

Tip two : start with the competition

One of my fave link building systems is to begin with the competition.

Who’s linking to them? Are the links from high Google PR sites? What else are you able to study your competition linking strategies? Begin with your competition or who is ranked in the #1 position for the keyword term or phrase you are improving for.

Tip three : target Anchor Text

Another great SEO tip for inbound linking is to judge all the existing inbound links to your site. Whether you use the easy “link:” code thru the Google search box, Alexa, or another tool, create a catalogue of sites linking in and work with them to apply the right anchor text to the link related to your keyword. For instance, getting into contact with a site and asking them to update your URL ( ex : http://www.yoursite.com ) with anchor text ( ex : Improve search rankings ) can make all of the difference.

Tip four : Quality Content and Social Media

If you provide quality content on your internet site or cover something that might be relevant to your market, permit others to comment, bookmark and share.

Quality content is what search engines like and so will your readers. Develop quality content and inspire others to share it. This creates quality backlinks to your site.

Tip five : 3 Way Linking

OK , “reciprocal linking is dead”. Yes , I am getting it.. Don’t always agree but we wont debate that here. The good news is that we do not need to chat about it since the best linking option is one-way linking. This is achieved thru a three way link. Attempting to make a tough to explain idea comparatively easy, exchange links with another website but do it employing a third site, not your own. This allows one-way links in either direction. These tips cover a large amount and have worked for me when it comes to helping my internet sites and blogs, as well as others, build a major number of inbound links to their internet site gradually over a period of time.

Caution : you could be the concerned type, looking to build hundreds or maybe thousands of inbound links to your internet site ( s ) in the following 48 hours – do not do IT! Though I successfully did this during the past, Google is punishing sites who are too swiftly out of the gate when it comes to link building. You need to look to ad three – five quality links to your website on a regular basis.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Website owners are increasingly integrating social media marketing (SMM) right alongside their SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns. This has changed into an awfully possible practice because of the superiority of next generation web technologies and social networking.

SEO outside the Box

SEO has for a while been viewed as the most cost-effective way to raise rankings, increase traffic and sales. However, this critical SEM strategy has been heavily disparaged in its capability to help in conventional PR efforts. This strategy can be used to utilize the power of press releases, online stories rooms and article syndication to persuade organic search engine positions. For instance, by incorporating URLs or tracking codes into a PR release, an SEO campaign can be simply transferred into a vehicle that prompts direct replies while enhancing at the same time.

SMM (Social Media Marketing) Avenues

Though SMM is still coming into flower, it is quickly developing into a well-liked technique and effective element deserving of SEM. With MySpace and Facebook pages now showing up often in search engine results, SEM gurus can’t reject the impact of social media and social networking platforms. SMM can deliver a treasure house of benefits when integrated properly, including branding.

Additionally, popular content syndication sites like YouTube and Flickr provide possibilities for distributing an organization’s media assets to a bigger and plenty more various audience. The same can be done with normal content thru blog and micro-blogging platforms like Plurk and Twitter. SMM extends its benefits in such a lot of ways as social networking sites are quite successful for ORM ( online reputation management ) at the least.

A Measure of Success

The vehicle you select will help you more exactly gauge your audience and set benchmarks also. Conventional media frequently relies on surveys and focus groups to assemble discernment on the efficacy of an add or campaign. For online selling, web analytics tools and services have proved to be much more correct and reasonable. The marketplace for online measurement solutions is growing fast, now offering common services that include total details of search engine visibility, PPC impressions, and most significantly, conversions. In this model, conversions may consist of sign ups, downloads, lead generation and sales. It might also include offline activities like leads tracked through toll-free telephone, internet site address or promotional code.

Marketing Conclusion

As it is related to SEM and SMM, integrated selling calls for a company to exploit its existing assets and enhance its web presence thru increased exposure, leads and sales. There are plenty of advantages to be reaped when grabbing hold of the 2 strategies and employing them efficiently. In the final analysis, this may be the one alliance your business wants to climb to the apex of the pile and stay there.