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10 THINGS TO DO WHEN YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER – DOESN’T
By Frank Fiore
You’re business is cruising along, prospects are being pitched, sales are coming in, orders are going out – you’re a self-made online success. Life is good. Then one day – out of the blue - your web site is serving up 404 Errors, your email is bouncing back all over the web, and your customers and clients think you’re out of business.
You’re in doo-doo city because your ISP just went belly-up! Now what do you do?
If you’re lucky, you may get a short but polite email from your ISP stating, in so many words, that they have succumbed to the dot-com crash and will cease operations shortly. This may give you some time to scramble and hunt up a quick and temporary way to stay in business. But as the U.S. marines say it’s better to “Be prepared”.
So, you ‘make hay when the sun shines’ and prepare for the unthinkable right now. Dead and dying ISPs are littering the Net landscape. If you’re a small to medium size business or even an independent salesperson using the Net to sell, you should make arrangements now to keep your lines of communications open to your clients and customers and some modicum of web presence up and running if your ISP suddenly disappears. And by the way, if you’re using one of those free Internet access services, don’t count on keeping it. They’re dropping like flies.
So, here are the 10 things to do to prepare for the unthinkable.
ONE: Keep that analog modem in you have in your machine or in a handy place for retrieval. If your ISP goes bye-bye, you’re going to need it as a temporary measure to come online again.
TWO: Look for warning signs that your ISP might show up on the dead list. If you’re using a prominent, publicly traded ISP, read news headlines and track the company's stock prices. Bad headlines and dropping prices could mean trouble ahead. For warning signs on privately held ISPs, keep tabs on their service level. For example, if reaching someone in customer service is like getting blood from a stone, or your email or Net connection goes up and down like a yo-yo, then your ISP may be headed for trouble. Another warning sign is if your ISP starts asking you to pay by check or cash and not by credit card.
THREE: Get intelligence from the Net community. Look for horror stories on your ISP at the <a href=http://www.consumersvoice.org/1111/>Consumers' Voice</a> web site or watch for consumer alerts on the web site of your local Better Business Bureau. Also, watch for complaints and warnings posted on sites such as <a href=http://slashdot.org/>Slashdot</a> and <a href= http://www.dslreports.com/>DSLreports</a>, which serve as community forums for ISP customers. You should also monitor the <a href=http://www.cnet.com>CNET</a> and <a href=http://www.epinions.com>ePinions</a> message boards. This information is all well and good. But you shouldn’t wait until storm clouds appear over your provider. Prepare now in self-defense to maintain customer contact and a Net presence.
The most crucial capability you don’t want to lose is the ability to stay in contact with customer, clients and prospects. That means maintaining an email address. If your ISP goes down, so does your email.
FOUR: So, like most online users, sign up for a free web-based email account at one of the major portals or email services. You probably already have a personal one now get one for your business. Here are the best web-based email service survivors today. Choose one and get an email address that clients, customers and prospects can use to communicate with you if your ISP heads south.
Here’s low down on the biggest and best.
Microsoft Hotmail integrates with Outlook 2002; comes in 12 different language versions and has an anti-spam filter that claims to eradicate junk mail. The downside to Hotmail is its clunky interface that makes you work harder to get your mail, a stingy 2MB of storage space for messages and unless you use Outlook Express or Outlook 2002, you can't import addresses to your online address book. Yahoo Mail integrates with any POP3 e-mail program, provides 6MB of storage space, and synchronizes its address book with popular PIMs, such as Outlook. But sloppy security lets others see your mail and anti spam software eliminates only about 75 percent of junk mail.
Then there’s Juno and Mail.com. Juno includes free access to the Internet but the it’s software works only in Windows, requires that you reveal personal information at sign-up, bombards you with spam. With Mail.com you can select addresses with nifty domains such as poodle.clipping.com and 10MB of storage space. The downside is ads, ads, and more ads and suffers from reliability problems and can not grab mail from POP3 accounts.
FIVE: Another way to maintain contact is by suing one of the instant messaging services like AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger. If you set one of these up ahead of time and include your IM address in all your correspondence, you have a quick and immediate way to reach your most important customers and clients if your email service suddenly goes dead. IM can act as an interim means of contact until you set up with a new ISP.
SIX: Finally, you can maintain online contact the old fashion way – by phone. If you’re in business, you probably have several email addresses – orders, customer service, general info, sales, etc., - a pager, a fax machine at the office, perhaps one at home, and voice mail on your home, office, and cell phones. Why not combine all of these communication methods into one single in-box? You can. It’s called unified messaging services or UMS for short. These online services not only collect all your e-mail, voice mail, and faxes in a single Web interface, they also provide a single phone number for your voice mail and faxes and some can even read your email to you over the phone.
One such service is Onebox. Onebox offers an easy, economical way to roll your e-mail and voice mail messages into a single call center. Its email client incorporates all the standard features, including folders, filters, and a spelling checker. Plus, Onebox's computerized voice reads your e-mail to you over the phone. The price – free!
So make sure that you include in all your correspondence all the ways users can contact you and then use one of the USM services to never lose touch with customers, clients and prospects.
SEVEN: You know those CDs you regularly receive in the mail from AOL, MSN and other ISPs? Stop using them as coasters and put one aside for emergencies. Any of these large ISPs will enable you to get back online in a hurry if your current connection goes down. In fact, keep a few around as backup.
Once you have your communications ability backed up through the free email services, instant messaging and UMSs, it’s time to turn your attention to maintaining your web presence if the unthinkable happens.
EIGHT: Establish a web presence using one of the free site hosting services on the web like Yahoo Geocities, or Lycos Angelfire and Tripod. Of course you can’t totally duplicate your online business using one of these free web site services. But you can create a temporary placeholder that you can send your users to find out how to communicate with and purchase from you.
The services that these free web sites provide vary greatly. So here’s a tip. Go to <a href=http://www.freewebspace.net>FreeWebspace.net</a> and search the largest guide to free web space providers on the Net. You can search their index of 450 free web space providers by personal hosts, business hosts, non-profit organization hosts, game hosts and other types of hosts. You can also search for ASP hosts, PHP hosts and domain hosts. And if you like, you can also store your files online free.
NINE: Sign up now for a low cost ISP. You should sign up for one of them, and make your monthly payments like you would an insurance premium. <a href=http://www.cnet.com/internet/0-3762-8-6719328-1.html >CNET<a/> does a good job of reviewing and recommending the 3 top bargain ISPs.
CNET reviews DotNow, NetZero, and Juno.
Though these ISPs are not free, they are one of the cheapest ways establish web pr4nces against the possibility of your ISP may going down. Most of these cheap ISPs limit the time you spend online and force you to look at banner ads, but if you're getting something for next to nothing, you can expect to put up with a few inconveniences. Again, these cheap ISP services are not meant to duplicate your current web site. They’re there to direct your clients, customer and prospects to - in the short term - if your ISP goes down.
TEN: Don’t wait! Prepare for the worst now. You may not have the time if your Internet Service Provider – doesn’t. Like the old sage said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.
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