During the Holiday season, your products and their descriptions should be well displayed so you can increase your conversions as you drive lots of traffic to your eCommerce website. Read our blog about how to take your product descriptions to the next level. Before explaining what makes up a well-written product description (i.e. a description that increases your sale conversion rates), we first need to ground ourselves on what a product description is.

What is a Product Description?

A product description is a statement that gives the characteristics of some type of product or service that should elicit a mental image to your customer. The real power of product descriptions comes from the intent behind them. When you’re writing product descriptions you shouldn’t just be writing copy about the characteristics of what you’re selling, you need to show your target customers what they will experience if they purchase your product. This is a great example of experiential marketing. You want to immerse your target customers in your products so they can see how what you’re selling them will change their lives for the better if they decide to purchase it.

Who Is Your Target Customer?

Before you can properly describe this “ideal product experience” to your customer you need to identify who they are and empathize with them. If you don’t know who your target customer is, you won’t be able to write proper descriptions and your efforts will fall short of the mark.  If you’re saying to yourself “but I sell to a wide audience and I have more than one target customer” then now’s the time to pinpoint the consumers that are most important to your business.

You can do this by using the 80/20 rule. On average, 80% of sales come from 20% of your customers. If you’re trying to narrow down and find your target audience it would make sense to start by examining the top 20% of those who purchase from you already. Use past purchasing data and gather customer profiles of your top 20% of customers. Now examine these profiles and look for patterns in their demographics and psychographics. Use these patterns to create personas. Personas are fictional customers that you can give a name, sex, age, career etc. By visualizing your customers in this way it is easier to write directly to them and create product descriptions that they would find appealing.

How Do I Show and Not Tell?

When writing product descriptions, it’s important to remember to use clear and descriptive language. You need to show your customers the benefits of your products rather than just telling them what they are.

For example, for a service product don’t just tell your customer, “Our _______ service is reliable.” Instead, show them how reliable it is in your description: “Our ____ service is backed by uncompromising Service Level Agreement that guarantees 99.9% uptime, a support staff with expert admins availability 24/7/365, and a 30-day hassle-free 100% money-back guarantee.”

Now that you’ve written the second description put yourself in your personas’ shoes and see how reading your description makes you feel. When you read the second attempt do you feel safer in your choice of purchasing the above service? Do you visualize the support that is available and understand how this service is actually reliable rather than it being an abstract idea? If you answered yes to both questions then it means this description is effective. It’s showing your customers what you want them to experience with your services rather than just telling them something that they can easily forget.

Can’t I Just Use Pictures of My Products?

While high-quality images are important, search engines can’t see images – or not yet anyway. Images of your products may speak 1,000 words to your target customers and convey the emotion you’re trying to share, but they do little for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To get your site to rank and become visible to potential customers, you must include product descriptions that are loaded with potential keywords. That way your site will begin to rank for related words to your products and your site will show up in more relevant Google searches.

How Do I Make My Product Descriptions Uniquely Mine?

The bottom line is, your brand needs to be authentically itself and your product descriptions should embody this.  To get noticed, your description copy needs to break through any commoditization noise that may surround your product.  Don’t just look at your competition and try to write a description that’s 10% better, add something unique in your product’s description copy that directly taps into your brand’s authentic self.

In Conclusion

Business owners that take the time to write great product descriptions can gain an edge over the competition. Great product descriptions can mean the difference between success and failure for eCommerce sites. So remember: embody your target customer, show rather than tell the experience you’re promising, include keywords for better SEO, and let your brand’s unique personality shine through. Follow this simple advice to boost your conversions and eCommerce sales during the Holiday season!

Do you know what else has a big impact on conversions? Your website’s speed and uptime! Keep coming back to our blog this week to read advice from our A2 Hosting experts on how to get your site ready for Q4! We’re also running a sale on all of our A2 Turbo products so check out our website today for deals and discounts you don’t want to miss!

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How to Write Better Product Descriptions that Drive eCommerce Sales During the Holidays appeared first on The A2 Posting.

The holidays are fast approaching and many e-commerce retailers will be looking to increase sales. During this busy time, it’s easy to lose track of those potential clients who might have had additional questions and didn’t end up making a purchase.

However, a little extra time spent addressing those questions now can go a long way when it comes to building a relationship with your clients and having a repeat customer. Investing in interaction now with a potential client could lead to a fruitful relationship for you both in the future.

Here are a couple of fundamental tips to help reach those clients who aren’t yet comfortable making a purchase:

Adding a human element to a website can help potential clients feel more comfortable and be more willing to make a purchase. This provides a method of receiving expert advice about a particular product that’s being offered on the site. There are many options available to help discuss options with potential clients:

• Live chat is a popular solution as it allows real-time conversation and proactive chatting if desired by a prospective client.
• A separate telephone line for the business is another fantastic option. Of course, while the live formats are best, it may not always be possible to keep them active 24 hours a day.
  If a separate telephone line isn’t feasible for your business, then a simple contact form would also work.
• Ultimately, the idea is to have an open line of communication with your potential clients for further discussion.
• Once that line of communication is opened, then it’s time to start thinking about conversations with potential clients. When discussing options with clients, take the time to get to know them and their situation. The reasons they’re shopping with you will vary, and each individual interaction should be given the proper attention and assistance to help find the right solution. The goal here isn’t just to answer generic questions about a product or sell the most expensive option available. Instead, try to find out:
  • why the client is looking to make a purchase
  • if they have any particular pain points
  • what is the reason they’re interested in your product

By investing the time to properly understand the client, it’ll help set up future interactions and hopefully create a long-term relationship. In the days of internet selling and fast purchases, the human element can be the difference between a client purchasing from you or another retailer. While these tips may be simple, the fundamentals of human interaction can often have the largest impact.

Do you know what else has a big impact on conversions? Your website’s speed and uptime! Keep coming back to our blog this week to read advice from our A2 Hosting experts on how to get your site ready for Q4! We’re also running a sale on all of our A2 Turbo products so check out our website today for deals and discounts you don’t want to miss!

Related Resources:

• A2 Hosting’s Ultimate Guide to Getting Your eCommerce Website Holiday Ready
• A Developer’s Checklist for Getting Your Site Ready for the Holidays
• How Your eCommerce Business Can Nail Holiday Customer Service
• How to Handle Heavy Traffic to Your eCommerce Site During the Holiday Season

The post How to Increase eCommerce Conversions This Holiday Season appeared first on The A2 Posting.

With so much riding on your choice, you may want to consider bare metal dedicated e-commerce hosting for your online business. Compared to some popular alternatives, dedicated hosting gives you a greater degree of control and better performance. It also makes future growth easier.

In this article, we’ll explain why you should think about dedicated hosting for your website. Then we’ll cover seven key criteria to look for in a provider. Let’s go!

An Overview of Bare Metal Dedicated E-Commerce Hosting

When you opt for dedicated hosting, you get an entire server to yourself. The setup is very different from shared hosting, where the server and its resources are divided among several websites.

If you’ve already done some research into dedicated hosting, you may have noticed that you can choose between a managed or unmanaged server:

With an unmanaged plan, you typically have a bit more control, including full root access. If you’re confident in your technical abilities or work with someone who is, this option is highly customizable.

On the other hand, if you’re less tech-savvy, you may be better off with a managed plan. You’ll still reap many of the benefits of dedicated hosting, but you’ll also have a lot more support. This is an excellent choice if you’re just starting out or are switching from shared hosting.

The Advantages of Dedicated E-Commerce Hosting

Dedicated hosting has some distinct advantages over other types, especially when it comes to e-commerce sites. One is that you’ll be able to configure your server to best support your store and install software that you’re comfortable using. Depending on the e-commerce platform you’ve selected, there may be preferred tools to help you get the most out of it.

You’re also likely to see better performance from dedicated hosting. Since your website is essentially your storefront, it’s a significant part of most people’s first impression of your brand. Having a fast, reliable e-commerce store is an excellent way to show that your business is trustworthy and professional.

Of course, dedicated hosting isn’t the only option you have. Many shop owners start with shared hosting, as it’s almost always the cheapest option. However, because you’re sharing resources, it tends to be a less reliable solution. Successful online stores often outgrow shared hosting plans pretty quickly.

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is another type of hosting you could use. While you won’t share as many resources with others as you would with shared hosting, you’re still hosted on a server with multiple site owners. If you want a server and its resources all to yourself, bare metal dedicated e-commerce hosting is the way to go.

7 Things to Look for in a Bare Metal Dedicated E-Commerce Hosting Provider

Now that you have a better understanding of dedicated e-commerce hosting and why it may be advantageous for your online store, let’s cover what to look for when choosing a provider.

1. High Performance

When it comes to website speed, there’s no such thing as too fast. In fact, nearly 70 percent of consumers say page speed impacts the likelihood that they will buy. Losing out on conversions due to slow loading times can hurt your bottom line.

As mentioned, an advantage of dedicated hosting is not having to share resources with other sites. You have full access to all the power the server can provide. This also eliminates concerns about other sites using more than their share of the available resources.

In addition to site speed, uptime is also worth paying attention to. This is simply the amount of time a website is available. On hosting websites, you’ll see the uptime guarantee expressed as a percentage. Perhaps not surprisingly, you’ll want it to be as close to 100 percent as possible.

Avoiding downtime is crucial for your business’ reputation. After all, if customers can’t access your e-commerce store, they won’t be able to purchase from you. A failed visit may also result in a negative opinion of your brand.

Compatibility with a Content Delivery Network (CDN), such as Cloudflare, is something else to look for. Being able to implement a CDN easily can do a lot to bolster your store’s performance:

If you’re unfamiliar with the technology, a CDN is a widespread network of servers that reduces the distance between your website’s servers and your customers. This helps eliminate poor performance due to latency. Some CDNs also offer additional benefits, such as added security.

You’ll want to be sure your website’s performance won’t suffer during traffic spikes. These surges can happen around the holidays and other heavy shopping times, depending on your industry. You might also experience heavier loads if you’re running a sale, publishing new content, or implementing new forms of advertising.

2. Scalability

One of the main reasons you may opt for dedicated e-commerce hosting is that you want the flexibility to grow your business. However, you also don’t want to have to pay for resources you may not need yet.

Therefore, when you’re shopping for hosting, we recommend taking scalability into account. Swapping providers or plans can be quite an undertaking, so consider giving yourself a bit of room to grow. You also don’t want to get locked into a long-term contract that doesn’t grant you access to more resources when needed.

While it’s tricky to anticipate future business growth, there are a few aspects of scalability you can consider. Perhaps one of the most obvious is increased traffic.

As we discussed above, various events can result in temporary traffic spikes. However, hopefully your number of visitors will steadily increase over time as you gain popularity. When you notice this happening, it’s helpful to have the option to upgrade to a more powerful server.

In addition to an increased traffic load, you may also need more resources to expand your catalog. For example, you’ll likely need storage to add pictures or videos of your offerings, and optimized media can take up a lot of space on your server. We suggest checking the upper limit for potential hosts’ Random Access Memory (RAM), so you can anticipate when you might need to upgrade.

3. Security

Whatever your business is, it likely involves handling your customers’ personal information, making you a target for hackers. A data breach can be catastrophic for an e-commerce store and its reputation.

While you really can’t be overcautious when it comes to your shoppers’ data, there are a few specific security features to look for when making your hosting decision. One is the provision of a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate:

An SSL certificate encrypts your customers’ information, keeping it safe from anyone attempting to steal it. While there are free SSL certificates available, there are advantages to paid options. You’ll likely receive better support and may be able to display a seal on your website, which can help to establish trust.

Some hosts bundle an SSL from a reputable provider with some hosting plans. This is certainly worth considering, as you can save a bit of money while still enjoying the advantages of a paid certificate.

You might also want to look for a host that offers to monitor for malware. It’s a lot easier to stop your site from being hacked than it is to recover a site that’s already been compromised. With security monitoring, you’ll be alerted of any problems, and your host’s support team may be able to help stop hacks before they can do lasting damage.

Of course, sometimes cybercriminals are successful. If that’s the case, you’ll want to know that your hosting provider can help you with site recovery. For example, at A2 Hosting, we offer Server Rewind, which you can use to restore damaged files or databases.

4. Pricing

Running a business is expensive, and you probably don’t want to exhaust your budget on hosting. Scalability also comes into play here because, while you want to grow your business, it’s best not to pay for resources you’re not using. It’s a balancing act, but a host that offers several pricing tiers can make budgeting a bit easier:

Even if you’ve done your homework, you may end up choosing a host that you’re not happy with. Therefore, it’s wise to look for a money-back guarantee. Not only will it give you peace of mind, but it’s also an excellent indicator that a hosting provider is confident in their product.

5. Support

When something goes wrong with your website, you risk losing out on business. So it’s essential that you feel confident you’ll be able to get operations back up and running quickly. Considering hosting providers’ support services may help narrow your decision.

While most hosts offer support, it may look a bit different from one company to the next. Many use ticketing systems where you’ll submit a ticket either via email or a contact form to get started:

Ticketing systems are excellent for solving a variety of problems. You can easily send screenshots of the issue you’re experiencing, and agents can work on the problem themselves or share resources if you’re the DIY type.

If you’re more comfortable on the phone, you may want to look for a host that offers support through that channel. However, in many cases, you’ll have to pay extra for this service and may have to wait for a callback until someone is available to help. Depending on your issue, you might still have to submit screenshots to get sorted out.

Live chat can be an efficient way of getting assistance with quick fixes. Your wait time will likely be shorter than with email or phone support. If your issue requires escalation, the chat agent can help get your ticket in front of the right person:

A robust knowledge base is another possibility for accessing help with simple issues quickly. Whatever your problem, it’s likely been encountered before, and your hosting provider may have documentation on how to fix it.

In addition to how you access help, you’ll also want to investigate when you can contact the support team. Some hosts offer assistance around the clock, which is ideal for online shop owners since you likely have customers wanting to access your site 24/7. Other providers may have more limited hours, so you’ll want to be sure these are workable for you.

6. Ease of Setup

Getting your dedicated server set up can be a stumbling block if you’re not careful. When selecting a host, you’ll want to look into how much technical ability you’ll need to get started, and to maintain your online store in the future.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll want to check for compatibility with your e-commerce platform. If you already have an established storefront, you won’t want to waste time doing the hard work of configuring your shop all over again with a different solution:

If you plan to handle the technical aspects of your e-commerce store yourself, another consideration is the interface you’ll use to interact with your hosting server. For those who aren’t comfortable with File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or command line management, the better choice may be a plan that uses a control panel such as cPanel:

The main difference between the two is that the command line is text-based, while a control panel is a graphical interface. While the latter offers a bit less customization, it’s much more beginner-friendly. CPanel is an excellent tool if you’re not a developer and don’t plan on hiring one to work on your site.

The availability of a one-click installer can also be highly advantageous for a busy entrepreneur. This feature enables you to install a variety of software without spending the time to configure it. If you’ve ever used a setup wizard, it’s a very similar concept.

Not only might a host offer fast installation for your e-commerce platform, but you may also find additional software that you can add quickly. For example, you might be interested in exploring invoicing or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to help streamline some of your business management operations.

7. Automatic Backups

When you back up your website, you’re simply making a full or partial copy of your site and storing it for later use. You can keep the copy locally on your machine or store it in the cloud.

Having a recent backup ready to go can be a lifesaver. If your site is hacked or isn’t working correctly after an update, restoring a backup might be the fastest way to get your e-commerce store back on track:

How often you back up your site will depend on the kind of e-commerce website you have. For instance, if your content or stock changes frequently, you may want to perform weekly or even daily backups.

On the other hand, if you have mainly static content, you can probably get away with less frequent or partial backups. However, you’ll likely still want to perform a full backup if you do a significant overhaul of your shop or add many new stock or services.

In addition to how often you perform backups, you have a choice when it comes to what type of backup to use. A full backup will include your entire website with all of its files. While you’ll undoubtedly want to have one of these handy, full backups can take up a lot of space and may not always be necessary.

Between full backups, you may want to do partial backups. You can download a backup of a specific area of your account. For example, you can create a copy of just your MySQL database.

Your level of comfort should also help to inform your decision. There’s nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution when it comes to your business.

Regardless of the type you choose for your backups, you may want to select a host that offers this service automatically. Being able to “set it and forget” can offer you additional security and free up some of your time.

Conclusion

Choosing a dedicated e-commerce hosting provider is no easy task. It’s a decision that will impact both you and your customers as you interact with your online store.

There’s a lot to keep in mind when shopping for a host. However, performance is one area you won’t want to overlook. Security is another factor that is critical to the long-term health of your online business. You’ll also want to take your own skill level into account to help determine what you’re comfortable handling in terms of setup and troubleshooting.

Ready to get your e-commerce store off to a stellar start? Check out A2 Hosting’s Dedicated Hosting options.

Image credit: Pexels.

The post 7 Things to Look for in a Bare Metal Dedicated E-Commerce Hosting Provider appeared first on The A2 Posting.

By following some simple steps, you can find the plan and provider that will set you on the road to blogging super-stardom. With the right plan, you can be confident that your blog is delivering the performance, reliability, and security that readers expect. This leaves you free to concentrate on what really matters – writing quality posts.

In this article, we’ll discuss why choosing the right plan for your blog is crucial. We’ll then discuss the different hosting options that are available. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Blog Hosting Plans

All web hosting starts with a server. This is a physical computer that remains online continuously, ideally without any interruptions. Every website or blog that exists online is hosted on a server – and yours is no exception!

Web hosting is an online service that enables you to publish your blog on the internet. When you purchase a hosting subscription, you’re renting space on a server. That server is owned by your hosting provider, and it’s responsible for supplying the hardware, software, connectivity, and associated services required to make your blog live. Your web host is also responsible for keeping that server online, and protecting it against malicious activity such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

Web hosting is the key to making your blog available for other people to view online. As part of your plan, your chosen provider will allocate space on its server for your blog’s CSS, HTML, images, and all its other resources. It will also store all the data necessary for your website to display and function correctly. Whenever someone enters your domain name into their address bar, your host will transfer all these files and data from its server to the visitor’s browser.

If you’re going to launch a blog, therefore, you’ll need a web hosting plan. There are hundreds of hosting providers to choose from, and most offer a range of plans:

This can vary from free options with limited resources and strict restrictions, to pricier options that give you complete control over your server’s hardware and software. To set your blog up for success, it’s important to choose your hosting plan carefully.

Why the Right Hosting Plan Is Crucial to Your Blog’s Success

Your hosting plan is the foundation of your blog. It’s vital that your plan has all the resources you need to provide a strong visitor experience. While there are steps you can take to boost your blog’s overall performance, ultimately you’re constrained by your hosting plan.

When you’re creating a blog, it’s easy to assume that performance isn’t a huge issue when compared to business-critical sites such as e-commerce stores. However, today’s internet user has a short attention span, and high standards.

It’s estimated that 40 percent of people abandon a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. If your blog is slow to load as a result of your hosting plan, your reader retention rates may suffer. You’ll also likely struggle to grow your audience.

Google has also confirmed that it uses page speed as a ranking factor. If your blog is performing poorly, you may struggle to climb in the search results:

Over 28 percent of Google users click on the first organic result. Therefore, you’ll want to do everything in your power to optimize your blog for search engines. However, you’ll face an uphill battle if your hosting plan is working against you.

When combined with a solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, your blog can quickly start to attract a larger audience. This means more requests for your server to process:

If your plan doesn’t provide the firepower you need, then your blog may start to lag. In the worst case scenario, your server will become completely overwhelmed by this heavy traffic and your blog will experience downtime. This can damage your reputation and alienate your readers.

Over time, there’s also a chance that your blog’s requirements may change. If you’re consistently publishing high-quality content then you’ll require more storage space, for example, which your plan will need to provide. In other words, your web hosting has to keep up with your blog’s growth over time.

What to Look for in a Blog Hosting Plan

Most hosting providers offer a range of plans. When choosing one, it’s important to consider how much disk space you’ll require.

If you’re searching for a new plan for an existing blog, there are several ways to see how much disk space you’re currently using. Assuming that you have access to cPanel, you can view this information by navigating to Files > Disk Usage:

If you’re a WordPress user, version 5.2 introduced a Site Health tool. This enables you to view the size of your WordPress directories and database:

However, it can be difficult to judge how much disk space you’ll need for a new blog. It may help to consider the kind of content you’ll be publishing. For example, if you plan to host large video files or high-resolution images, then you’ll typically require more disk space.

You should also consider the plan’s bandwidth. This is the amount of data your blog can transfer within a specific amount of time. This will determine how quickly you can deliver content to your visitors. A good amount of bandwidth is vital for retaining loyal readers and growing your audience.

However, the ‘right’ amount of bandwidth can be difficult to calculate, and will vary depending on the number and size of your pages and your volume of traffic. The kind of content you publish on your blog will also have an impact on your requirements. For example, a blog with lots of heavy files will typically require more bandwidth when compared to a blog that features mostly text and images.

As a general rule, a new blog will attract less traffic, and will therefore have more modest bandwidth requirements. However, it’s also important to future-proof your blog by ensuring that your plan can accommodate a growing audience, plus the occasional spike in traffic.

The Most Common Types of Blog Hosting Plans (3 Choices)

Whether you’re launching an entirely new blog or migrating an existing one, your choice of hosting plan is crucial. The right plan can deliver the levels of performance you need to attract an audience in the short-term, and retain them in the long term.

To help you make the right decision, let’s look at the different hosting options that are available. We’ll then explore what they have to offer your blog.

1. Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is when you share a server with other websites. You’ll also share that server’s resources, including CPU, RAM, and hard drive space:

It’s common for blogs to start with a restricted budget. Your new blog may even be a hobby, or a side project that you hope to monetize at some point in the future. With shared hosting, the provider can place multiple sites on the same server, which helps reduce its operating costs. This often makes shared hosting a more affordable option when compared to other solutions, which is great news for bloggers.

Shared hosting is also ideal if you don’t need to install any specialist software, or require any complex or unique server configurations. Most blogs have fairly minimal needs, and many use a popular Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress. This makes shared hosting a popular choice among bloggers:

However, since you’re sharing resources, your blog may struggle to withstand huge spikes in traffic. There’s also a chance that you may wind up sharing a server with bad neighbors, who consume an unfair portion of resources. This can impact your blog’s performance, and in extreme cases may even result in downtime.

If you’re hunting for a new hosting plan for an existing blog, it may help to evaluate the amount of traffic you’re currently receiving using a tool such as Google Analytics. If your blog is attracting high levels of traffic or experiencing dramatic spikes, then shared hosting may not be the ideal plan for you:

However, if you’re launching a new blog, chances are you’ll initially be attracting lower amounts of traffic. In this scenario, shared hosting can be a way to minimize your hosting costs while still providing enough resources to support your blog.

2. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

A Virtual Private Server (VPS) uses virtualization technology to split a single physical server into multiple virtual servers. The hosting provider can then partition each account on the server at the operating system level. Although you’ll continue to share the same physical server with other websites, a VPS simulates the experience of having your own dedicated server:

By opting for a VPS plan, your blog will have guaranteed access to a set of resources. This includes CPU, RAM, and bandwidth.

Since your provider can host multiple sites on the same server, VPS plans tend to be more affordable when compared to some alternative options, particularly dedicated hosting. This pricing makes VPS a good choice if you require exclusive access to a set of resources, but don’t necessarily have the budget to invest in a dedicated server. For example, your blog might attract large volumes of traffic, or you plan to host resource-intensive content such as high-resolution photographs.

It may also make sense to opt for VPS hosting if you plan to aggressively grow your blog. For example, you may have developed a packed content marketing plan, or partnered with an agency that promises to help you climb Google’s search results fast.

If you expect your blog’s requirements to increase sharply, it may make sense to invest in VPS hosting now, even if you’re launching a brand-new blog. This ensures that you’ll have guaranteed access to a set amount of CPU, RAM, and bandwidth, and will be in a stronger position to withstand spikes in traffic. This makes VPS hosting a popular choice among freelancers, startups, small businesses, and anyone else who’s creating a blog with the intention of attracting a large audience and/or generating revenue.

3. Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is when your site lives on a server that’s reserved for your use only. This ensures that you have access to 100 percent of that server’s resources. Since you’re the only customer on the server, dedicated plans are typically more expensive than VPS or shared options.

This kind of plan typically only makes sense for blogs that attract huge amounts of traffic, or make a significant amount of revenue. Most of the time, you’ll upgrade to dedicated hosting from a VPS plan, since dedicated hosting is rarely required for a brand-new blog.

If you’re considering upgrading to dedicated hosting, then it’s wise to monitor your blog’s performance. As you publish more content, you may see a drop in your blog’s page loading times. This can indicate that your current hosting plan isn’t providing enough RAM to support your site’s growing requirements.

At this point, switching to a dedicated plan may help you scale your blog without sacrificing its performance. It’s also a good idea to monitor your traffic. If your visitor numbers are consistently growing, then switching to dedicated hosting may help you avoid future problems:

If your blog’s performance is free-falling and your traffic is on the rise, this is a strong indication that it’s time to upgrade your plan. When you’re experiencing these issues on a shared plan, we’d typically recommend upgrading to a VPS first, rather than jumping straight to dedicated hosting.

If your new blog has complex or unusual technical needs, however, then you may need to invest in dedicated hosting immediately. Since you’re the only website on the server, you’ll have near-total control over its configuration. This may even include modifying your server’s core software and hardware.

How to Choose the Right Hosting Plan and Provider for Your Blog

Choosing a hosting plan is one of the most important decisions you can make for your blog. If you get this decision right, you’ll have everything you need to provide a strong visitor experience.

While each type of hosting plan has its benefits, many bloggers opt for shared hosting. The majority of blogs have manageable requirements, and are built using standardized CMS’ such as WordPress.

In addition, few blogs have complex technical requirements. When it comes to blogging, shared hosting can be a good way to avoid paying for resources and functionality that you don’t actually need.

When choosing your plan, it’s also important to consider your hosting provider. We always recommend checking any potential candidate’s uptime rates. This is the length of time the provider’s servers have been up and running. If your blog experiences frequent downtime, even your most loyal readers may lose patience and look elsewhere.

Wherever possible, it’s smart to look for a provider that offers an uptime guarantee. This indicates that the company is confident in its ability to keep your blog online.

As we’ve previously discussed, performance is a crucial factor in achieving blogging success. While your choice of hosting plan is vital, it’s also wise to look at the bigger picture, and consider the provider behind the plan.

At A2 Hosting, our Turbo servers are fine-tuned for performance, and can deliver up to 20x faster page load speeds as compared to competing hosting providers. Regardless of the plan you opt for, you can be confident that we’ll deliver a high level of performance:

It’s also a smart move to research what customers are saying about your potential hosting provider. Third party review sites such as TrustPilot are a great place to get an honest opinion.

How to Choose Between Managed and Unmanaged Hosting

At this point, you’ve chosen your plan and provider. However, there’s another decision you need to make: do you want unmanaged or managed hosting?

When it comes to web hosting, the majority of plans are unmanaged. This means that your hosting provider provides and cares for the server, including protecting it against attacks and ensuring that it remains online. However, you’re responsible for managing your website. This includes performing important tasks such as installing updates, creating regular backups, and protecting your blog against various digital attacks.

Since you’re performing the majority of day-to-day maintenance yourself, unmanaged hosting plans tend to be more budget-friendly. However, it’s important to factor in all of that additional work. If you’re unfamiliar with managing your own blog, you may also need to perform some background research before you feel confident in performing these tasks.

With a managed plan, the hosting provider carries out many key tasks for you. What this means will vary depending on your provider, but it commonly includes automated backups, installing regular updates, and constant security scanning.

Since the majority of tasks are handled by your hosting provider, you’ll need to spend less time on day-to-day maintenance. If you have limited blog management experience, you may also prefer to have these important tasks handled by a professional.

However, all of this extra work does come at a cost. Typically, managed hosting plans have a higher price tag than their unmanaged counterparts because the hosting provider’s  experts manage many of the behind the scenes tasks for you.

Conclusion

Choosing the right hosting plan for your blog can be a challenge. However, if you do find the perfect hosting plan, you’ll have a strong foundation to launch and grow your blog.

By choosing the right plan now, you’ll have access to the resources you need to provide a high level of performance in the short and long term. This is essential for impressing your visitors and search engines, which use performance as a ranking factor. However, it’s also important to balance your requirements against your running costs. Many blogs operate with limited budgets, so you’ll want to avoid paying for resources and features you don’t need.

When it comes to hosting, many blog owners opt for a shared plan as a way to minimize their costs. To really maximize your Return On Investment (ROI), we recommend purchasing your shared plan from a hosting provider that has a proven record of providing reliable, high-performance hosting to a wide range of blogs!

Image credits: Pexels.

Related Resources:

• A Beginner’s Guide to Web Hosting
• Three Methods to Protect Your Site From Malicious Intent
• How to Improve Speed and Performance of Your Site
• 3 Ways Your Hosting Plan Can Affect Your SEO

The post How to Choose the Right Hosting Plan for Your Blog appeared first on The A2 Posting.

While shopping around for a web host, it may seem like fast hosting is a “nice to have” feature. In reality, fast hosting is a “must have feature”. That’s because fast hosting is a leading contributor to how fast your website loads. Faster websites have better SEO rankings, lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates. That all leads to a better bottom line. View our hosting performance infographic below to learn more.

Your web hosting performance can make or break the success of your website. Choose A2 Hosting where it’s “Our Speed, Your Success.”

The post How Fast Hosting & Fast Sites Improve Your Bottom Line [Infographic] appeared first on The A2 Posting.

If you’re going to earn money from reseller hosting, you need to get ahead of the competition. This means offering the right services to the correct customers, with strong branding and a consistent marketing message.

In this article, we’ll cover all of these points. If you’ve been debating whether to start your own reseller hosting business, we have a ten-step plan to turn reseller hosting into a profitable online venture. Let’s get started!

A Brief Overview of Reseller Hosting

As a hosting reseller, you’ll purchase a hosting package from an established hosting provider. You’ll then divide these resources into smaller hosting packages, and sell them to your customers for a profit.

As a business, it’s a bad idea to depend on a single revenue stream. By adding hosting services to your repertoire, you can diversify your income and protect your business against fluctuations in the market. After all, just because your flagship product is in high demand now, doesn’t mean it’ll be flying off the shelves forever.

In today’s market, it’s difficult to think of an organization that doesn’t need a website. If you have an existing customer base, you already have an audience for your hosting services. In this way, reseller hosting can help you maximize your revenue without the added expense of acquiring new customers.

As a reseller, you can generate additional income while also eliminating the upfront costs typically associated with launching a new business venture. This includes purchasing servers and software licenses, and configuring your own network. It also removes many of the ongoing costs, including hiring staff to manage your hosting infrastructure, and repairing broken hardware.

Reseller hosting can be effective for building long-term relationships with your existing customers. Since it’s a subscription-based service, hosting can transform one-off or occasional purchases into loyal, repeat customers. In the best case scenario, reseller hosting will provide your business with a reliable, recurring revenue stream that lasts for years.

How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting (10 Ways)

You now know the answer to the question: What is reseller hosting? Next, let’s find out how you can turn reseller hosting into a lucrative sideline, or even an entirely new business venture. Here are ten tips for making money with reseller hosting.

1. Find Your Relevant Niche

Becoming a successful hosting reseller isn’t about competing with the big hosting providers. These established companies are often in a position to provide highly competitive pricing. They also have the funds to target a large, diverse customer base.

Many successful hosting resellers target a niche audience. By focusing on a specific audience, you can create services, features, and marketing that speaks to the deep needs of your chosen niche.

As such, your potential revenue may be smaller as a niche hosting provider. However, you’re not trying to compete with the big hosting companies. This means your costs should be lower – which is great news for your profit margins.

When deciding who to target, it’s important to find a niche that’s large enough to sustain your business. Here, it may help to use a tool such as Google Trends. Using Trends, you can gauge how many people are searching for keywords related to your potential customer base.

You should also pay attention to the areas where relevant searches are originating. You may be able to increase your appeal, by adding a local slant. For example, if a large number of relevant searches originate from the Florida area, you can incorporate this location into your branding.

2. Plan for Future Expansion

Targeting a niche audience can help you reduce costs, while improving the customer experience. However, if you get too specific, you’ll limit your future growth opportunities.

You may have already chosen your niche. However, before committing to this niche it’s smart to consider future expansion opportunities. One solution is to transition into new niches as your business grows. This might involve expanding into related industries, or related locations.

For example, your business might target local restaurants that require web hosting. This is great for positioning yourself as an expert in the local hospitality industry. However, eventually you may struggle to find new customers who fit this very specific demographic.

In this scenario, you might expand your geographical reach to include restaurants in neighboring cities and states. Alternatively, you might target other segments of the hospitality industry, such as local hotels, gyms, and theaters. When identifying expansion opportunities, it may help to refer to Google Trends.

By planning your businesses’ future now, you can ensure you’re targeting a niche that has growth potential. If you need to adjust your niche, it’ll be far easier to make these changes now, rather than waiting until after you’ve launched your business.

3. Position Yourself in the Market

Once you’ve found your niche, it’s time to identify what they want from a hosting provider. To help you understand the needs of your target audience, you should examine the providers already operating in your chosen niche.

Wherever possible, try to identify at least five competitors who are targeting your future customers. You can then examine the products and services they offer, and their price points.

These are your direct competitors. To stand out from the crowd, you can either offer hosting that’s more budget-friendly, or present yourself as the premium option. Of course, the latter might involve offering more resources, unique features, or a higher standard of customer service.

You should also gauge the size of your direct competitors, and the resources available to them. It’s possible that established providers may already be targeting your chosen niche. In this scenario, you may decide to further refine your target audience. For example, if there’s fierce competition for local e-commerce sites, you could narrow your focus to local affiliate sellers, wholesale retailers, or business-to-business sellers.

4. Choose the Right Hosting Provider

As a hosting reseller, your services are completely dictated by your hosting provider. Choose the right provider for your business, and you’re off to a strong start.

For the best results, you should find a hosting provider that closely matches the resources and features your customers need, without providing any unnecessary added extras. It may be tempting to opt for the provider offering the latest features, or uncapped resources such as bandwidth, memory, and disk space. However, this doesn’t represent good value for money if your customers don’t actually need these features and resources.

If you’re launching a new business, it can be difficult to predict what your target audience might need. Here, it can help to study your competitors. You can also opt for a provider that offers a range of bandwidths.

When choosing a provider, we’d also recommend paying attention to uptime. If your hosting provider’s servers go down, it’ll take all of your customers’ websites down with it. According to Gartner, unscheduled downtime can cost a company as much as $5,600 per minute.

A recent study by Moz also found that intermittent 500 internal server errors can cause issues with tracked keywords. Choose the wrong hosting provider, and your customers may see a drop in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) after switching to your reseller business.

Wherever possible, we’d recommend opting for a provider that offers an uptime guarantee. You should also check the provider’s reputation amongst customers, including their rating on third party review sites such as TrustPilot.

When you have a network of customers relying on your hosting services, it’s also vital that you can contact your hosting provider 24/7. Ideally, your chosen hosting provider should be contactable via multiple channels, and provide self-help resources including a detailed knowledge base.

5. Create a Strong Brand

Your branding should reflect your chosen niche, and communicate what makes you unique. By creating a consistent message that runs through your entire branding, you can clearly communicate who you’re targeting, and what you have to offer.

By creating a clear, consistent brand now, it’ll be easier to market your business in the future. Strong branding can also help obscure your identity as a hosting reseller.

There are some misconceptions surrounding hosting resellers. Some customers believe they can get a better experience, by cutting out the middleman and purchasing directly from your provider. Other customers may believe that reseller hosting is more expensive, since both the provider and the reseller have to earn a profit.

At A2 Hosting, we provide extensive white labelling functionality. Our resellers can use these features to re-brand all of our A2 Hosting products and services.

Our white labelling options include customizing your customers’ cPanel accounts, your nameservers, and even your billing software. By taking advantage of these features, you can build a strong brand identity.

6. Launch Your Reseller Hosting Business

Once you’ve chosen your provider, the next step is creating your hosting packages. This process can vary, but at A2 Hosting all our reseller accounts include Web Host Manager (WHM) as standard.

WHM is an essential tool for managing any reseller hosting business. You can use WHM to perform important tasks, including creating client accounts, monitoring bandwidth usage – and creating your web hosting packages.

To create a package, log into the WHM console and select Add a Package. You can then specify the resources that you want to include in your hosting package.

You’ll also need a way to get your hosting packages in front of potential customers. If web hosting is a natural extension of your current services, you might add a landing page to your existing WordPress website. It’s possible to create landing pages using WordPress’ built-in features. However, you may find it easier to create beautifully-designed landing pages, using a dedicated page builder such as Elementor.

Another option is to launch an e-commerce store dedicated to your web hosting business. When it comes to selling products and services online, WooCommerce is a hugely popular option.

7. Excel at Customer Support

As a smaller hosting provider, your customer support has the potential to make or break your business. Provide a high level of customer support, and you’ll stand out from your direct competitors – and potentially even the major hosting providers.

Happy customers can be the best way to advertise your business. Today, it’s difficult to think of an organization that wouldn’t benefit from an online presence. In a world where everyone needs web hosting, every satisfied customer could potentially recommend your company to a huge number of people. To grow your business, it’s essential to provide a good customer experience.

The best customer support starts as soon as someone lands on your website. If they have questions then it should be easy for them to get answers. This might involve posing their questions via live chat, or researching the answers themselves using self-help resources such as FAQs.

Ideally, there should be multiple ways to contact your customer support. This might include telephone support, live chat, and a dedicated ticketing system.

Some customers may prefer to find answers for themselves. For these customers, you should provide self-help support. Popular self-help resources include a wiki, or a knowledge base. There are plenty of WordPress plugins that can help you build an effective knowledge base, including Echo Knowledge Base.

However, it’s important not to over-promise and under-deliver. It’s far better to offer a few support options and provide excellent customer service across these limited options, than to offer inconsistent support across all channels.

If you’re an A2 Hosting reseller, you can display information about how to contact customer support, as part of the customer’s cPanel account. This ensures your customers know exactly where to turn if they ever encounter an issue.

8. Connect With Your Ideal Customer

When you focus on a specific niche, you can market your business more effectively. Instead of marketing to everyone (which rarely works), you can concentrate on connecting with a specific target audience.

First, it’s a good idea to determine whether there are any platforms, websites, publications, or other channels that target your ideal customer. These niche channels will usually have a smaller audience, which helps reduce your marketing costs. There should also be a strong correlation between the channel’s audience and your ideal customer. This means the Return On Investment (ROI) for these marketing activities will likely be very high.

9. Do Your (Keyword) Research

Targeting a specific niche also makes it easier to market your business using tools such as Google AdWords. Keyword research can often reveal keywords that strongly relate to your business and target audience, but have very low competition. This can help get your adverts in front of your ideal customer, at minimal cost.

To create Google Ads, you’ll need to sign up for a Google Ads account. You can then access the Keyword Planner, and research keywords that are related to your business. You can also filter these keywords according to search volume and level of competition.

As a smaller or newer hosting provider, we recommend avoiding popular keywords, as these tend to be hard to rank for. Instead, it’s a smart move to focus on keywords that have a decent search volume and low competition.

There are many more factors that go into marketing your business. When creating a marketing plan, it may help to ethically ‘spy’ on your competitors. For example, you can review a competitor’s marketing activities, using tools such as SEMrush or SimilarWeb. This may involve gaining an insight into your competitors’ SEO strategies, and much more.

10. Monitor Your Site’s Performance With Google Analytics

At this point, your website is up and running and you’re actively promoting your hosting services. This is a great start, although to grow your business you’ll need to continuously monitor its performance.

By consulting key metrics, you can identify content, actions and campaigns that aren’t delivering your desired results. You can then remove these activities from your business plan. On a more positive note, you can identify the actions that are delivering the results you want. You can then focus more time and effort into these activities.

You can monitor your website’s performance, using analytics platforms. Using analytics data, you can make more informed decisions about the future of your marketing campaigns, and even the future of your business in general.

There’s lots of analytics platforms that you can use to monitor your website, but Google Analytics is one of the most popular. Platforms such as Google Analytics provide access to metrics that are critical to your businesses’ success, including bounce rate, traffic sources, and conversions.

The sheer amount of data in platforms such as Google Analytics, can be overwhelming at first. To start, we’d recommend focusing on your overall traffic, and time spent on site. These two metrics provide an insight into your ability to attract visitors, and your ability to keep them engaged with your content.

It’s also a good idea to monitor your primary sources of traffic. This can help you identify any third parties or platforms that are supplying you with a significant amount of traffic. You can then invest more time and effort into nurturing these sources.

Conclusion

Turning reseller hosting into a profitable business isn’t always easy. However, many people have already successfully added hosting to their offerings, and have even launched entire businesses dedicated to reselling hosting services.

The ten-step plan we’ve given you in this article is a great start for making money from your new business venture. Of course, identifying a niche audience with lots of room for future growth is one of the first steps to take. Also, building and marketing your brand as a respected hosting provider in your own right is key to success.

As a hosting reseller, the service you provide to your customers is ultimately dictated by your hosting provider. If you’re going to make money with reseller hosting, it’s important to choose the right provider. This will vary between businesses, but we recommend opting for a reseller provider that offers an uptime guarantee, prioritizes performance, and provides 24/7 customer support.

Image credits: Pexels.

How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is a great way to earn extra revenue, but it’s also a competitive industry. These ten tips will help you get ahead of the competition!

The post How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Knowing what those features are is key if you want to maximize conversions. Excellent copy, for example, is essential for any website, but doubly so for landing pages since you have a limited amount of ‘room’ to convince users.

In this article, we’re going to talk about when it makes sense to use a standalone landing page for your WordPress e-commerce website. Then we’ll go over three features that every successful landing page should include. Let’s jump right in!

When to Use an E-Commerce Landing Page

Most websites are built with the purpose of converting users in one way or another. However, landing pages perhaps encapsulate this more than any other online facet. In fact, some of the best we’ve seen are one-page affairs employing high-pressure sales tactics to maximize conversions:

Landing pages can be amazing tools to drive conversions if you have very specific goals. As an example, for an online store selling dozens of products, a landing page might not be the best approach because it’s hard to promote so many products in limited space. As such, once you start adding multiple product pages and other navigation aspects, you’re no longer talking about a landing page.

If, on the other hand, you’re promoting only one or a group of products and services with a tangible link, a landing page becomes much more effective:

We’re using e-commerce as an example, but the same logic applies to landing pages with other goals. You can use landing pages to collect leads before you launch a product, to get subscriptions, and much more. To succeed, there are a few elements your landing page should include.

3 Key Features of a Successful E-Commerce Landing Page

The best landing pages succeed in keeping your attention and convincing you to perform specific actions. It’s no small feat, so let’s talk about the elements they employ, starting with the design.

1. Engaging Design That Keeps Visitors Scrolling Down

The anatomy of most landing pages is simple – they’re built to keep you scrolling down until you reach a Call to Action (CTA). To do this, the design of the page itself needs to ‘push’ you along.

There are a myriad of ways you can design a page to drive visitors from one section to another. For example, you could implement arrow navigation to point you down when you’re browsing from a mobile device:

Other landing pages use numbers to differentiate each section visually, which helps them deliver information in the best possible order:

A great way to keep visitors engaged while they’re scrolling is to implement transition effects that play out as the page moves down. In this example, you can see how the hero image changes as you scroll:

Design plays an essential role in your landing page’s success. Put simply, if it looks boring at first glance, you’re going to lose out on a lot of potential conversions, even if your copy is amazing.

2. Direct Copy with Compelling Headlines and Multiple CTAs

If you take a second look at all the examples we’ve shown you so far, you’ll notice they all feature multiple subheadings and short, direct copy. Generally speaking, this is the best way to keep visitors as they scroll down your landing page.

With most successful landing pages, your copy should follow a natural progression that covers:

1. What you’re offering and its purpose.
2. The elements that make your product or service unique.
3. Social proof and testimonials.
4. One final CTA (with potentially more dotted throughout your copy at natural points).

In practice, the formula can change; however, in essence you want to condense the entire buyer’s journey into a single page. You’ll want to be as succinct as possible and make sure that visitors don’t overlook key aspects of your copy. Subheadings can help here:

By including CTAs throughout the landing page, you target visitors that might convert earlier along the journey. As such, you give them the easy decision to convert now, rather than after content they’re not interested in engaging with.

3. Elements of Social Proof

Reviews are key when it comes to building trust with your customers. They’re an element of social proof, which can drastically increase conversions if it’s implemented correctly.

When it comes to landing pages, there are two general approaches to social proof you can use. The first one involves showcasing customer reviews, so visitors can see what others are saying about your products:

The second approach involves leveraging other brands or businesses to increase the value of your offerings in the eyes of visitors. E-commerce landing pages often do this by showing you some other sites and publications products have been featured in:

The more prestigious the publication, the more effective the social proof. If you want to be proactive, you can always reach out to publications in your landing page’s niche to get them to take a closer look at your products or services.

WordPress Landing Page Conclusion

WordPress landing pages are an excellent way to drive conversions for your e-commerce operation. If you’re selling limited types of products, it makes sense to use a well-tuned landing page rather than to create a full store from scratch.

However, for your e-commerce landing page to be successful, it should include the following features:

1. Engaging design that keeps visitors scrolling down
2. Direct copy with compelling headlines and multiple CTAs.
3. Elements of social proof.

Image credit: Pixabay.

The post 3 Key Features of a Successful WordPress E-Commerce Landing Page appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Keep it simple. It always sounds so easy, and at the start every design is simple and clean. But as things progress, what started out as an elegant mockup turns into a garbled mess of gradients and images. The only way to avoid this is to truly value simplicity and clean design. Don’t add things just because you can add them. Make sure anything you add is truly needed.

Choose a color scheme ahead of time. This is most important when thinking about the call to action on a page. It should pop out and be unambiguous in its purpose. In order for that to happen the entire color scheme of the page must be constructed carefully and considered. If you use too many colors, it all becomes jumbled and your call to action (no matter how bright or punchy) will get lost.

Use a grid. A page designed without a grid will feel off. Viewers may not be able to put their finger on a specific element that they don’t like, instead it will be all the individual elements failing to coalesce into a seemless whole which creates a feeling of unease in the viewer. Making sure all of your elements fall along a common grid, and line up with each other as appropriate will make your site look and feel as carefully considered and crafted as it really is.

Of course, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Entire books, and series of books are written about good web design. But these few basic principles are ones that will start you off on the right path. If you have a solid foundation, it’s a lot easier to build what you envision on top of it.

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On the surface (no pun intended), touchpads and touchscreens may seem to be identical and an interface that works for one should work for the other; right? Nope. Not remotely. A touchpad is much more like a mouse, a touchscreen is a whole different beast with different needs, advantages and disadvantages.

To cite one repeat offender; drop down menus which only appear on mouseover/hover state. These are often a user nightmare on tablets, where there is no “hover state” generally speaking. If you’re designing a site for today or tomorrow, it’s probably best to abandon all interface elements that trigger on hover and focus on click/touch events as the reliable and easy source of customer interaction.

Beyond the different input needs of touchscreen devices, the generally smaller screens present a different set of challenges. The smaller screens mean that either your site must be simpler with larger interactive elements (buttons, links, etc.), or users will have to zoom in and only view a portion of your page at a time; which means that everything they need to see to make a choice and decide what to interact with needs to fit in that view at once. If a user has to scroll around while filling out a form, or deciding what button to press, it’s going to be much more frustrating than using a site where the designer has put the thought and effort in to make the site usable.

A lot of modern sites are being designed under a Responsive paradigm; which means the site recognizes what kind of resolution / device it’s being presented on and adjusts itself to better suit the device in question. This is obviously great, and more and more Responsive templates are coming out for popular web platforms like WordPress, Drupal, etc. But if you find yourself in a situation where pursuing a Responsive design is not viable, the minimum you should do is test your site on touchscreen devices and see how usable it is. Better yet, observe someone else who is unfamiliar with your site attempting to use it on a mobile device. Note what elements work and what don’t, and see what can be adjusted to make life easier for these users.

For most sites, sooner rather than later, more of your visitors will be on touchscreen devices will outnumber those coming from PCs and laptops. It’s better to be ready for them now than trying to fix it down the road once it’s already a major problem.

The post Designing for the Touchscreen World appeared first on The A2 Posting.

How do they work? Just like a regular barcode, a QR code holds information. The information that can be displayed is endless; from URLs to Vcard information, QR codes can also compose email messages, display text for coupons or other information. You can find them on magazine ads, business cards, websites, billboards, commercials, and even in Japan (where they have them on grave markers!). When you see one, make sure to scan it into a QR code scanning application to reveal some neat information!

Want to view this neat information? Use a camera phone or a tablet device with a camera. Simply download a QR code reading application, such as QR code Reader for iPhone, or QR Droid for Android phones and tablets (both are free apps). Use the camera on your phone and scan away!

Want to use QR codes? You can generate your own by going to one of many QR generating sites and entering in the info you would like stored. Here is just one example – http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/.

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