Digital marketing has completely taken over traditional methods of getting the word out. Furthermore, current trends suggest the same thing is happening to e-commerce and virtual reality in general. The importance of a company’s website is rising daily in accordance. People are spending more time online, and it is highly unlikely anyone will make a purchase without browsing through search engines first. There are various benefits for businesses, as they can target their audience better, grow, and reach new personal peaks. The success of your campaign will depend on numerous technical issues related to your hosting provider’s reliability and infrastructure.
Web hosting: a crash course
Before we deal with individual aspects of the influence of web hosting on your website and their further consequences, let’s get the process in order. For people to be able to visit your website online, there are several steps to follow. First, you will need an address to share so they can find you, i.e., the domain name. You can choose it to be the same as your company’s name or something related to it that is not already taken since it needs to be unique. This is because it will then be translated into an IP address for your hosting provider.
When your provider receives a demand for your IP address, it means the server is locating all the files connected to it, to create your website from the code. A server is storage space for all those files. This means not only text but also images, videos, excel sheets, etc. The way your server is organized will influence how visitors perceive your website. So, depending on your budget, you’ll have shared hosting, VPS (virtual private server) services, as well as dedicated and cloud hosting. The main difference is in the number of clients (websites) per server. Within the options, you’ll have more options to choose from, as well as numerous customization alternatives.
Loading speed
Don’t you find it frustrating if a website takes forever to load? We believe that everyone does but forever is such a subjective term. You should be aware that it means between three and five seconds, or else they abandon the take. You can have the best digital marketing strategy in the world, which will lead every internet user to your website, but if most of them abandon the search due to it loading slowly, would you consider it a success? Probably not.
You need to conduct meticulous research on the topic and invest in a solution with the lowest possible downtime. There are numerous web hosting tools that are extremely useful, but loading speed really may be crucial. Some of the most reliable provider services can be found on this page on the best web hosting options. Don’t forget to ask about how often backups are included with certain options. It is not only related to potential visitors abandoning the website before it even loads, but will be relevant for loading every page on it, especially if it includes an abundance of regularly updated content, such as blogs, videos, etc.
Address Trust
When talking about rankings, the credibility of a website is one of the most critical factors. Sharing an IP address with other sites on a server can lead to breaches and do serious damage to your efforts with SEO or customer loyalty. This is especially true if you offer e-commerce. Namely, people are leaving personal details, such as their home address and credit card numbers. In case of a shared IP address, security is reduced, and a breach can happen more easily. Just imagine the impact on your reputation if someone had their credit card exploited because of you.
You would lose valuable clients and their loyalty. To make matters worse, remember that bad news travels fast. Media, social or otherwise, is ruthless nowadays, and the possible scandal coming from a breach can be a disaster for your brand. Breaches, of course, vary by their severity. For example, some malware and bots can be transferred, which would trigger antiviruses or slow down the website. This is why you need a dedicated server for storing only your data!
Uptime
If you are not using a reliable hosting provider, there is a serious possibility of your website crashing or being down for longer periods. Better hosting options such as a dedicated server will keep track and monitor your website at all times. Downtime can happen as a consequence of various errors and security issues mostly related to shared servers. All of your active campaigns will be suspended for that time, and it will damage your rankings. There are some other scenarios in which the same can happen, but if immediately noticed, technicians would be appointed to resolve the issue, so your visitors don’t even notice.
Furthermore, you don’t want your existing or potential clients to have a negative experience of your website continually crashing. They will probably switch to your competitors instead.
Make an informed decision, and don’t be shy to ask a lot of questions if this is not quite the area of your expertise. Find out how they are storing the data and how often they maintain and update the server itself. If your company is extremely large and has confidential data, you can opt for a self-hosting option to have complete control over your website. Self-hosting is the most expensive choice, but we would like to mention you would lose customer support as well.
Conclusion
To sum up, the whole point of your digital marketing strategy is to attract people to your company’s website. We hope that understanding the process better will help you realize the exact importance of a secure and reliable hosting server. This is especially true if you’ve already invested in SEO or PPC. Bringing more visitors to a crashing website is not good for a brand. Additionally, besides your traffic levels being on the line, you are compromising the trust of your clients and possibly outsourcing their data. And the only reason they’ve entered it was because they’ve believed you are protecting it.