Why is website hosting important to your business?
It’s just a non-sexy back-office function which has little impact on what you do day to day…right?
Wrong! The right website hosting can give your business a secure footing on which to build a thriving business.
The wrong hosting can cause you all sorts of problems and hold back your business growth.
Here’s why…
- Your website could be less secure because of its hosting – That could leave your business open to cyber attacks which take your customers’ data or direct your customers to unsafe websites, or it could just mean your website is seen as less trusted by search engines which flag that up to prospects. That’s always off-putting, particularly when you’re selling from it and asking for credit card details.
- Your website could face downtime because of an overloaded server – Cheap hosting options often don’t tell you how many other websites are on the same server. The more there are, the less space there is for your site. Sometimes, they manage this situation by taking some of the websites down for a period of time. However, you need your site to be visible 24/7 to attract customers, so this could really be holding back your bottom line.
- It could take an age to load and lose you potential customers – Slow-loading websites are a real bugbear for most people. Few are prepared to wait for more than a second for a site to load these days, and the closer loading is to 0.5 seconds, the better. Think of it like this – would you be prepared to wait outside a shop while someone opened several locks on the door, then opened the door itself? You’d rather just walk in with an open door, wouldn’t you? This also applies to the checkout process. Online stores lose so many customers if their checkout glitches, pages must be reloaded, and the site kicks them out before the purchase is made. Why would they keep coming back?
What can you do to ensure you get secure hosting and a fast website loading speed?
For the sake of your business, ask these important questions…
How much support do you offer? – Is it just the basic email, ticket, and phone support or does the provider offer 24-hour support or a managed service? Math the level of service to your business needs.
How much bandwidth do you offer? – The amount you need will depend on how many site visitors you expect. If you have an ecommerce site, bandwidth could be hugely important.
What type of server will the site be on? – Is it a shared server, VPS, dedicated server, or cloud server? With a dedicated server, for example, you’ll have more space to expand your online business.
Can you guarantee 100% uptime? – With cheaper offers, you may find that there is downtime or that your site’s performance is throttled. This is when the site speed is intentionally slowed down because of server congestion to avoid a server crash.
What security measures do you use? – Secure server hosting is vital to ensure the security of your customer data. The best hosting services will understand your obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and will work with you to ensure that you comply with them.
Do you need help getting the best website hosting for your business?
Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation
