The in’s and out’s of why a professionally hosted website matters
“If your business is not on the Internet, then your business will be out of business.”
— Bill Gates
Who looks in the yellow pages these days?
Building your online presence in the form of a website or app is crucial these days in ensuring your business success. Long gone are the days of people using the physical yellow pages to look for your business. If people can’t find you online, they will find your competitors.
New technology for a new generation of customers
Many customers even prefer the use of online chat or email, over using a traditional phone line to contact sales and support staff. Times certainly have changed and so have the customers who support your business.
While a quick and dirty listing on Yellowpages, Yelp, Linkedin or a Facebook page might have cut the mustard at some stage, those days have indeed gone and the customers here today are indeed changing.
Getting Serious About Being Online
At some point in time you’re going to need to get serious about building your online presence. This involves obtaining a domain name reflective of your business or brand. And also securing a professionally hosted website capable of the speed and performance you’ll eventually need..
Start as you mean to finish. Go for flexibility so you can grow
Often people start out using a point and click website builder on one of the popular platforms like Wix or Squarespace. That might seem like the right option for someone starting off, however at some point you will most likely meet with success and your website traffic will take off.
Your web hosting needs will change and develop into possibly requiring software implementations such as SAAS or custom server installations. This is where people often regret having built their website on one of these more limited platforms.
Choose a Web Hosting Company to Partner With
A better course of action is to choose a web hosting provider that is able to provide the flexibility and scalability that you’ll inevitably require. You’ll want to find a web hosting company that can basically hold your hand the whole way through, without the need of potentially disruptive external server migrations.
Scalability is the key here. Whilst there’s no point paying for a high performance dedicated or cloud hosting plan when you’re first getting started. You’ll want to ensure that upgrading to this is as easy as flipping a switch or a toggle in your web hosts control panel.
Find a long term partner with whom you can grow
Do your research and partner with a Web Hosting company that you feel comfortable with and confident in building your online presence. You’ll want to find a company that you’re happy to partner with over the long term, as there is nothing worse than having to migrate to another company and face all the potential disruption to your website and your customers.
Scalability is Key in Building Your Online Presence
These days many web hosting companies offer truly scalable cloud based options where you’re only billed for the resources your site actually uses. So if you experience a huge spike in traffic, your website is able to cope easily with the extra strain on resources, without going offline.
Pay for what you actually use, not what you might use
The beauty of this, with the right web hosting provider, is that you’re only billed the extra when the spikes in traffic happen. So for example if you’re running a bookings site that only has two major events per year. You’ll pay for the smallest plan for perhaps 10 months of the year and only pay the extra for the two months where the bookings go off the charts.
The Dilemma of Site Speed
Another thing to consider when it comes to running a successful website is the dilemma of site speed.
It’s a known fact that most website visitors will only stick around for 4 seconds waiting for a website to load.
If your site takes longer than the infamous 4 seconds, then you’ll be losing site visitors before they’ve even had a chance to view your content. This can be devastating when it comes to PPC advertising, where you’re paying for peoples visits and depending on them to convert into paying customers.
Do the due diligence, do your research
Make sure when doing your research, that you look closely at the web hosting companies server speeds. One of the main factors to consider here is server location. If you’re opting for a cloud based plan, then usually this is well sorted through the use of CDN’s and globally distributed cloud servers.
Location, location, location
However if you’re opting for a cheaper shared hosting plan, you should check to see where the server is located. If most of your customers are based in the US, then there’s no point opting for a server based in Asia and vice versa.
Choose The Right Server Setup for Building Your Online Presence
Another consideration is server setup. Are you opting for a fully managed server or are you opting for a self managed VPS? While a self-managed VPS or Dedicated Server can give you the ultimate flexibility. It does mean that you’ll also need to mitigate any potential problems you may encounter.
Do you want the ease of a managed server or the freedom and flexibility of a self-managed server?
A fully managed server might add a few limitations like perhaps a choice between only 2 web server implementations or perhaps 1 or 2 operating system choices. But it does mean you’ll have some top gun experts on hand to fix the problems if and when they arise.
So many options, so many choices. Let us help you choose
It can be a daunting prospect sifting through all of the available options out there, trying to pin down the best web hosting company to partner with, in building your online presence and trying to find the one that fits you and your business the best, can be quite the task.
That’s why we’ve done some of the heavy lifting for you and reviewed some of the top web hosting companies in the business. Take a look at our quick and simple web hosting reviews by clicking the link below.
Hosting Reviews
Welcome to Hosting Reviews A quick and easy, no-nonsense guide to finding the best web hosting solution for you. In…sites.getthe.info
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