Good web hosting is the foundation of a successful online presence. Here are the reasons why you should select a good web hosting provider for your business website.
While web hosting may feel like it is operating behind the scenes and playing second fiddle to the website itself, there is no doubt that it has a huge impact on the overall success or failure of a site. There are plenty of advantages which people who use a good web host experience over those that use a bad web host.
Essentially, you provide your site a boost in both speed and reliability – and these are two core components of running a successful site. With this in mind, let us look closer at some of the reasons why good web hosting is so vital.
Improved Website Load Time
As we have just mentioned, a boost in speed is one of the main advantages of a good web host. If your website takes more than a couple of seconds to load, this increases the odds that your visitor is going to look elsewhere. We live in an ever-more impatient world these days.
While people may have been willing to wait for sites just a few years ago, there are so many competitors out there that you cannot guarantee your customers will stick around for you. Also, a fast website automatically reflects positively on your business, whereas a slow one can only serve to make it look amateurish. A fast website improves the overall user experience and makes it more likely that they are going to make it through to the checkout.
Decreased Likelihood of Down Time
All website owners try to avoid the dreaded down time in which nobody is able to access the site at all. While no web host can guarantee 100 percent reliability, the best ones will offer above 99 percent. It should go without saying that if people come to your site when it is down, it is unlikely that they are going to come back again. As a result, you are likely to suffer from a reduction in revenue, and you can even lose the invaluable trust of your visitors.
Better Website Security
The criminals of the modern world are all looking at ways that they can hack into unsuspecting websites, access their data, and cause all sorts of damage along the way. While a good web hosting company cannot guarantee total protection, they do contribute towards an overall more positive system in which the content of your site is more secure.
They will feature SSL (Secure Socket Layers), which means that any private information on your website gets encrypted automatically – the data is hidden from the wider web and even from the hosts themselves. As a result of this, hackers are not going to be able to get hold of any private info on your site.
Frequent Web Backups
Websites of all natures go wrong for one reason or another. A high-quality web host will make sure that the data is backed up in the event of a technical fault of some description or an attack from a hacker. Therefore, it means that you will be able to access your files again and as quickly as possible. Obviously, this is highly important from a business continuity point of view.
Otherwise, there is every chance that your backed up files will be lost, leaving you needing to start from scratch all over again. Businesses need to have a backup plan in place in the modern world. A good-quality web hosting service can help significantly in this regard.
Higher Level of Customer Support
Technical issues on a website can be time-consuming and frustrating to put right again. If you choose a cheaper and less reliable web host, it is more likely that they are going to have the customer support to match. As a result, your business could be disrupted while you are trying to put the faults right once again.
Obviously, this is going to negatively impact the experience of the user, as well as potentially harming your ranking on search engines and the conversions that you achieve. Not only should good customer support be available when you need it, but it should also be competent and effective in solving the particular issue that you are experiencing.
Search Engine Ranking
You may have the most beautiful website in the world, but it is not going to do you much good unless people are actually able to find it. One of the most important factors in this is that you have a good search engine ranking. Web hosting can also play a part here. If your site is frequently not up and running, this will go down as a black mark against it. Similarly, if it always takes an age to load up, this can cause search engines to view it in a negative light.
I’ve been using Cloudways since January 2016 for this blog. I happily recommend Cloudways to my readers because I am a proud customer.
When you are searching for a web host, it is important that you take your time and choose one that is going to offer the best possible level of service to your business. While price is not necessarily everything, you should bear in mind that it does not always follow that cheap services are going to be good ones.
You should match the host to the exact needs of your website and how you expect it to perform on a regular basis. Also, you need to know the difference between a managed website host or a shared website host. This way, you will be able to work out which one of these two options is best for your company.
Final Thoughts
When you choose a web host, you want it to be for the long run. You do not want to go through the time and effort of continually chopping and changing. This can also have a significant detrimental impact on your whole business due to the disruptions that will inevitably arise along the way. As well as the functionality of the host, there is also the customer service side to think about as well. This is particularly important if your site suffers from technical issues that you need resolved quickly.
