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2003

THUS reports 300 percent rise in SME website traffic

Following internal research demonstrating a 300 percent increase in web site traffic for its small to medium sized business customers (SMEs), THUS plc today launched a new shared hosting solution, Demon Web Hosting. An enhancement to Demon's hosting portfolio, Demon Web Hosting is a fully featured package, ideally suited to SMEs requiring a highly professional web presence without the cost associated with a dedicated server. The package consists of two core products - Standard or Advanced - with an impressive allocation of up to 50 Gigabits (GB) of website throughput per month. This higher level of data transfer capability is almost ten times more than many comparable services offered by other ISPs.

THUS's internal research showed an average increase of 300 percent in website throughput - the quantity of data such as graphics, videos and downloadable collateral, that can be downloaded from a website every month - amongst its SMEs in the last 18 months. This increase includes both a greater number of web site visitors, and greater availability of more dynamic, graphic rich or downloadable content on SME websites. THUS believes this growing trend reflects the time and energy SMEs are putting into website design as more and more businesses get online and technologies such as broadband enable more interactivity.

"As a result of ongoing education about the Internet and take up of technological advances like broadband, people are doing more and more business online and their browsing habits are changing. Along with more established online businesses, SMEs now need to give customers a richer website experience in order to capture and retain their interest," said Megan Firkin, Head of Hosting, THUS plc.

"The key is to encourage visitors to stay on your website, longer. By increasing the availability of data transfer for SMEs, we are giving them the opportunity to enhance their sites with content that works harder to sell their products and services," Firkin continued. "SMEs no longer have to settle for simple, static Web pages. Too often they think of their site as a paper brochure transferred to the computer screen; instead they should think of it as an interactive television station that enables them to get much closer to their potential customers."

Demon Web Hosting is packaged as a Standard or Advanced service, with a series of value-added modules. This gives customers the freedom to choose the options they require, such as a secure server for e-commerce transactions, or ASP scripting support for more dynamic websites, rather than paying for them in a pre-bundled service. Furthermore, the modular approach ensures that as the needs of the SME customer grow, they can easily develop their own tailored package based on Demon Web Hosting's shared platform.

Demon Web Hosting is provided with a comprehensive support package encompassing a user friendly self-service control panel as well as 24/7 local rate telephone and e-mail support. In addition, a full back-up and restore facility is being developed that will enable back-ups of up to three versions of website files on to Demon's secure back-up system, and is accessed via the customer's control panel.

Additional features of Demon Web Hosting include:

• Fast script processing.
• Support for Microsoft FrontPage Extensions and ASP, PHP, MySQL databases and e-Commerce package, Web Commerce.
• An easy to use control panel, including features such as graphs providing access log analysis, hits, web space and data throughput usage information detailing the number of hits a web site has received and how much server bandwidth a customer has used.
• A painless migration path to dedicated Demon Server Hosting and multiple Demon Managed Server Hosting solutions.
• Web site templates and a full version of Adobe Go Live web design software to help customers build and edit their web site.