January 25, 2006 (HOSTSEARCH) SmallBusinessComputing.coms visitors have picked their Products of the Year for 2005 and the results feature web hosting providers GoDaddy, Register.com Yahoo! and Interland.
SmallBusinessComputing.coms non-ecommerce web site hosting category award was shared by GoDaddy and Register.coms Build-It-for-Me. While GoDaddys low prices proved a key attraction, the flexibility of the Build-It-for-Me package made it outstanding. Build-It-for-Me includes a domain name, email and a five-page web site and provides the tools users need to quickly establish functioning websites. The service also provides a monthly Web Site Fitness Program which provides a range of tools including free monthly edits and updates, search engine optimization services, online form development and competitive analysis reports. In the area of Customer Service Register.com was a clear winner with Interland (soon to be Web.com) runner up.
Other web hosting-related awards included Yahoo! Merchant Solutions hosting chosen as the top ecommerce storefront for 2005. Yahoo!s upgrade of its shopping cart in August gave the site an extremely flexible checkout manager that won it many fans. GoDaddys Quick Shopping Cart was voted runner-up in the storefront category, with visitors again attracted by the companys low-priced plans.
Winners and runners up in other categories included Webtrends 7.1 and NetSuite NetCommerce in the Web Analytics category, Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing in the Search Engine Marketing category, and Google AdSense and Amazon Associates in the Affiliate Program category.