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News: Web Hosting Sales and Promos - March 12 2010
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- As last minute shoppers scour the web for presents, a new study says that more than half of Christmas shoppers now look for environmental credentials when choosing online retailers, and one in four consumers expect retailers to use eco-friendly services across their operation as well as recycling and reducing physical waste.
According to the new "Greener Shopping Survey" released by web host 1&1 (www.1and1.co.uk), 59 percent of the 1,500 consumers polled said they are more likely to buy a product from a retailer using eco-friendly practices such as recycling and using renewable energy. Consumers even place the same importance on the use of renewable electricity to power their website as using less polluting vehicles. The survey also revealed that 37 percent of Britons now expect online retailers to be reducing their environmental impact to the same degree as the brick-and-mortar shops on High Street.
Whilst many supermarkets and high-street stores loudly champion their eco-friendly policies, it would appear that consumers now have equivalent expectations for the online retailers they use.
Most Christmas shoppers consider the environment impact of their purchases not only in physical stores, but also online. And those who loudly champion their eco-friendly policies are poised to benefit. Nearly three quarters of those polled (72 percent) believe that online retailers have a responsibility to be green, 37 percent expect them to tackle the issue to the same degree as offline stores, and one in five say they are more likely to buy from a retailer that clearly explains its carbon usage online.
"As more of us think about our personal impact on the environment, there has been a surge in demand for greener practices in retail," 1&1 Internet chief executive officer Oliver Mauss said in a statement. "A significant proportion of British consumers now expect all types of retailer to power their operations with renewable energy, and for online stores that should start with their website."
Some of the other interesting findings of the survey included the demand for greener retailers varying with gender and location. According to the survey, 46 per of women are likely to buy from a retailer that uses recycled packaging compared to 36 percent of men. Londoners are most influenced by eco-friendly practices, with 70 percent committed to buying green; and residents of Yorkshire, of whom only 49 percent are compelled to buy green, are by far the least.
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Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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