Digital West Blog

We understand the special challenges of health and wellness organizations, especially your need to attract new clients, retain existing ones and deliver great programming, all while juggling dozens of schedules, personnel and facilities. The industry is undergoing a major shift as new providers drive down the cost of membership. To remain competitive, you’ve got to find innovative ways to cut costs, and deploying new technologies is usually a significant part of that strategy. Digital West has worked with some of the largest fitness providers in the US, and we’ve put together a suite of technology services that will reduce your costs, “wow” your customers and grow your ROI.

Tech Trends in Wellness

• Internet & Wifi. Between the hundreds of clients coming through your doors who demand wifi and the volume of data you generate, you need r 
  eliable Internet connectivity. We provide you with a minimum of 50 Mbs up and down of pure fiber optic speed! 
• Mobile Apps. Whether you want your clients to hear your tv audio on their phones, track their fitness progress, or even find your classes, we’ve got apps for that! 

Each month we like to highlight a different non-profit in San Luis Obispo to showcase the wonderful work being done in our community! One of the many non-profits that we support through complimentary website hosting is the Children’s Resource Network of the Central Coast. It began its operations in 2009 when a mother needed essential school items for her children and was not able to provide them by her own means. In its 6 years of operation, the Children’s Resource Network has served over 20,000 local children by providing them with necessities for school and home.  Books, clothes, school supplies, and diapers are just some of the items provided by the Children’s Resource Network.

There are plenty of companies out there claiming to give you unlimited website hosting for an incredibly low price – sometimes even for free.  If the thought “that’s too good to be true” comes to mind, then you are on the right track. Below we will dive into the myths behind free hosting unlimited bandwidth claims and help you determine what claims are trustworthy.

The Reality of Shared Hosting

When you choose a company to host your website, it's likely that your site will be hosted on a shared server with multiple other businesses. If all of the websites on the server suddenly have unusually high spikes of activity in a day, the server would not be able to handle the bandwidth requirements, causing some of the websites to go down.  Offering unlimited hosting and bandwidth is unrealistic to all customers on a shared server, because there is no way of being 100% sure that the server could accommodate all of those unlimited needs. To get away with their "unlimited" claims, hosting companies use the fine print to explain that they have the right to throttle (limit) a customer’s traffic to their website if their site is hoarding the server and limiting the other customers' bandwidth availability. So before signing with a company offering free hosting with unlimited bandwidth, be sure to get all the facts from them first.

A domain by any other name would not smell as sweet.  Er, or something like that.

Your website is arguably your most important marketing tool, and choosing a domain name is not a decision to be made hastily. Your website and its accompanying domain name (a.k.a. URL, web address) represent your brand, and you’ll be plastering that domain name on practically everything moving forward: business cards, t-shirts, advertisements, your @email address, letterhead, you name it. Here are some tried and true tips for making sure you choose wisely!

STRATEGIES TO CONSIDER

Support Your Brand Message – Use your URL to describe what you do, if it’s not clear. If you own a family construction business called Heath & Sons, consider a domain name such as www.HeathConstruction.com.

Keep It Short and Simple – Much of your business will come from word of mouth, so you want something easy to remember AND easy to spell – nothing that can be easily mis-typed.

Register as a .com – People tend to type in .com when they don’t know the ending of a domain name, plus it tends to sound more credible than other extensions (.me, .net, .info). Also, .coms tend to rank higher in search engine rankings.  Note: It’s still a good idea to buy up these other extensions so that others don’t buy them later and build competing sites.

Consider Search Rankings – When someone searches for a product or service on a search engine, they type in key words or phrases. Sites like Bing, Google or Yahoo search through millions of records to find websites that correspond with these terms.  So, if you’re a canoe manufacturer, consider using that word in your domain name (i.e., www.CurtisCanoes.com).