Digital marketing has grown at an exceptional rate over the last few years, with more businesses investing money in their online presence. When people go through the process of getting a website up and running, their thoughts are often focused on the aesthetic details. They want their website to look great, with highly rated features that impress potential customers and compel them to buy their products or services.
What is sometimes neglected is the ‘behind the scenes’ details of setting up a website. One of the most important aspects of developing a great website is to have the right web host to support it.
Here are some of the reasons you should dedicate time and research into which web host to go for:
- A slow performing site will leave your visitors feeling exasperated and they will leave your site if it takes a long time for pages to load. Getting a web hosting package that ensures high performance will make the user experience much better and is more likely to generate business.
- Having control over your website can make a massive difference to your business. What we mean by this is if you go with a free hosting solution, you have very limited control over how your website is used. The host can use your website to display ads that may bring down the level of professionalism you are trying to portray. You are also not able to use your own domain name (unless you pay extra) which can make it harder for people to find your website as the URL will be too long for many people to remember.
- You may need to rely on good customer service. Imagine if you have just sent out a carefully constructed email campaign to hundreds or even thousands of potential customers. You have painstakingly identified your target audience and are expecting to get a high ratio of click-throughs and sales leads. Disaster strikes and your website goes down and being relatively knew to website development, you are not sure what has caused the issue. A hosting option with high levels of customer service will be able to assist you in getting your website back up and running quickly. One with no customer service or limited hours will ensure that your email campaign causes more damage than good, as any potential customer who click through get an error message.
- Having a web host that has frequent periods of downtime can also result in very frustrated visitors. Most web hosts offer guaranteed Uptime of at least 99%, with many of the top ones offering even higher online availability. If someone searches and finds your website, only to find that it is offline, they are unlikely to return to your website. Some hosts are often offline due to maintenance or technical issues, so make sure that you go with one with a good reputation for online availability.
- Business growth is usually an objective for any company. Starting off with the wrong web hosting solution can impact the ability to support business growth in terms of digital offerings. For example, opting for a host with limited storage and bandwidth could mean problems further down the line. Once you get a certain number of visitors or amount of data onto your website, if your hosting package cannot cope with it, your website could crash. Again, if your visitors are experiencing this kind of situation, they are highly unlikely to do business with you and will search for another company instead.