Web Hosting Services

By Richard Guzzo
I am often asked what are some of the ways web hosts can improve their websites conversion rates.

The first thing I look at (and this has only come on board within the past year or two) is does the website offer a live chat option.

It’s not hard to figure out why its so important, the web hosting industry can be a non personal industry where most consumers like to go about their business in a behind the scenes role. Retrieving answers to their questions in a quick and easy online fashion allows consumers to make informed decisions right then and there.

Not to mention, the live chat feature must be easily accessible but not too intruding on every page. What I mean by that is to have the live chat icon accessible on all pages so that if the consumer would like assistance they know where to ask.

There are some websites who like to take a pro-active stance with the tools provided and try and initiate a chat with the visitor. It’s usually started with a pop-up asking if you have any questions or would you like to see our current specials not posted on the site. This is a great way to initiate a conversion with a potential customer should they not know the live chat option is even available and/or if they might have any questions that need addressed.

The one problem I see with the pro-active approach are those websites that soon as you land on their homepage and or any other sub page within their website you are embarked with a pop-up asking to chat. I recommend a few minutes before requesting a chat and not to ping the same customer twice if they did not accept the first request. This will ensure the potential buyer is not turned off by this feature as it can sometimes be quite annoying when it pops up on every page.

Looking to purchase a live chat software for your website? Here are three that I’ve used in the past that I recommend:

Live Person
http://solutions.liveperson.com
You receive all the tools mentioned above with the added benefit of not having the host or configure the system on your own server. All systems are hosted with Live Person so little knowledge on setup is required.

PHP Live Support
http://www.phplivesupport.com
I personally like this live chat software. You have the optioin of hosting it on their servers or buying the software outright and running it from your very own servers. Features are very similiar to Live Person and installation assistance is available if needed.

Kayako
http://www.kayako.com
The live chat feature from Kayako is built into their ticketing system software. So not only do you receive a Sales, Billing, Support ticketing system but each department can have their very own live chat. Considering this live chat feature comes with the support ticket system, its great when your trying to keep everything under the one roof, however both Live Person and PHP Live Support are superior when it comes to features and reliability.

Feel free to comment on experiences with any other live chat software programs.

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PHP is probably the most popular server side scripting language and is also a free part of any good web hosting company’s services. With Lunarpages, the newest versions of PHP are kept up to date and are always free. This is mostly because PHP is open source and does not require any licensing fees, so Lunarpages can provide it free for every webmaster! This is great news for website owners who would like to add some incredible features to their repertoire.

But though many people have heard of PHP web hosting, what exactly can you do with PHP? Well I’m here to show you 5 awesome things!

Create & Manage Contests & Drawings

PHP scripting does a lot of really amazing things and one of them happens to be contest-related. Using PHP scripts, you can create daily contest drawings, weekly winners, or even random giveaways by installing simple scripts to your site. You can also run a variety of contests this way, such as photo or design contests, quizzes, and more. Add questions, delete unnecessary responses, post results, tally winners, or select a winner at random to display on your website. PHP gives you that added edge and ease of management.

Visitor Tracking

Have you ever wanted an active count of customers (or potential customers) who visit your site, their geographical location, or even how often specific visitors come back and how long they browse your site? This is valuable information for any business owner and something pretty cool for personal website webmasters as well. You can do all this through some great PHP tracking scripts. With these scripts, you can monitor daily clicks, watch and track specific users to find out where they came from and what they were looking for, and you can even find out personal information, such as geographic location, IP address, browser type, operating system, and more! This can mean the difference between gaining a new customer or losing them to the competiton, so as I said, businesses will really benefit from this tool.

Customer Blogs & CMS


Blog Web Hosting and Content Management Systems like Joomla are great ways to manage your sites, and PHP can help! With these PHP scripts, you can edit and offer specific web page subdomains to your customers, utilize a PHP-based CMS like Mambo, create a social network, and much, much more. This could really raise your business in the ranks of Google, especially if the users who run your subdomains are offering unique daily content. This is also a great source of revenue, as almost all of these PHP scripts are free and open source.

Install a Shopping Cart

Lunarpages offers a variety of shopping carts for you to choose from (see my last blog post about shopping carts), many of which are PHP-based. However, if you find a better open source or paid PHP-based shopping cart, you can run it on your Lunarpages Web Hosting account for free and with ease! There are many resources for open source shopping carts and even more opportunities to test demos and find the perfect one for you, so look around before you decide – PHP shopping cart software is available via simple searches or by asking experts in PHP forums.

Run WordPress & Forums

With PHP, hosting a blog or forum is a piece of cake! Here at LP, we really specialize in PHP websites, so we offer a ton of PHP resources as well. From WordPress (whcih we love!) to discussion boards, we’ve got you covered. We’re the only web host in the world to accommodate our users by allowing you to turn on or off our PHP5 capability, so if your software requires this important and secure version of PHP, you’ll want to ask us for more information. Installing WordPress and forums has never been easier as well, since we offer one-click installs for the most popular platforms via Fantastico.

PHP scripts are a great resource, so if your website host doesn’t offer PHP, you should move up to one who does. This added functionality can do some incredible things, and there are an amazing assortment of sites to find these free scripts on

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