Posts from — January 2010

Ever purchase a big-ticket item or a product that you weren’t entirely familiar with?  Ever spend a significant amount of money on something, only to realize that it wasn’t exactly what you wanted, that it didn’t work as effortlessly as advertised or worse, that it didn’t function at all?  And while you’re surely not the only unsatisfied customer in the world, don’t you ever wish that you could just rewind the clock and do things right the first time, so that you don’t have to fix what you’ve already done?  Here are 3 reasons why consumer market research can help you make smart choices, and why you should never make another big purchase without proper consumer research.

1. Save time. There’s no doubt that thorough consumer research takes time.  But it usually doesn’t take as much time as dealing with returns, contesting charges on your credit card, or taking broken items to be repaired.  Depending on the item you’re interested in, consumer research can be done almost completely from home, by reading reviews online and seeing for yourself whether others enjoyed their purchase.
2. Save money. Another significant benefit of consumer market research is the ability save money, which can be accomplished in two ways.  Consumer research can help you ascertain whether or not you’ve found the best price for your desired item.  And, of course, by using research to confirm that you’ve made the best decision, you can save yourself the money that it might cost to ship the item back or have it repaired.
3. Save your sanity. In today’s busy world, few things are less convenient than standing on line at the return counter when you should be at work, at the gym, or spending time with your children.  Although consumer market research can’t guarantee that you’re choice will be perfect, but it does increase the likelihood that you’ll avoid the aggravations associated with making an imperfect purchase.

It goes without saying that even informed, smart decisions may not always be ideal.  But by hearing the feedback and experiences of other users, you can receive a satisfactory idea of whether or not your desired item may be reliable, or whether you should look for a better solution.  You may not need to embark upon consumer research before purchasing a new pair of socks, but if you’re purchasing anything pricey or anything that you hope will last a while, consumer market research is definitely a must.

The year 2009 is officially over, and now we can look back at some of the interesting events that took place, regarding web hosting.

There’s no doubt that the major issue of 2009 in web hosting was security threats – spam, phising scams, scripts and hacks were very common, and hit some of the major web hosting services.

Although spam levels are down from this same time last year, spammers and bot creators continued to harass the Internet Many more institutions  and authorities are picking up the fight and are actively attempting to counter the botnet threat, in one way or another.

The competition between web hosting providers grew hotter in 2009. As the demand for cheap web hosting services grew, the prices went down, and hosting services went for as cheap as $1.99 per month.

According to Webhosting.info, the fastest growing domain registrar is GoDaddy, followed by xinnet.com and onamae.com.

Web hosting services such as FatCow showed an impressive growth. iPage is also one of the fastest growing hosting services of 2009.

This year also saw the end of one of the first hosting services of the internet - Geocities. After 15 years of offering people the ability to set up their own website, Geocities has closed down for good. Yahoo acquired Geocities for 3.57 billion U.S. dollars in 1999. Geocities sites are no longer be accessible, but some pages will still be accessible via the  Internet Archive project.

2009 was a very good year for open source CMS. WordPress has been awarded the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. Drupal has won the inaugural Hall of Fame Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. With this award, Drupal has won two categories this year, the other one being Best Open Source PHP CMS.

Technology-wise, the original promise of cloud computing is finally being realized and implemented by both consumers and businesses thanks to advances in hosting software and technology. The developments in the web hosting arena are quickly meeting the needs of individuals and businesses, and paving the way for more exciting technologies and features.