As more and more businesses seek to augment their visibility, consumer base, and overall reach, an internet presence has moved from being an option to being downright mandatory. Most people use mobile devices and desktops to figure out a variety of details about any business before they ever visit. In fact, not having a website makes it less likely many potential customers will even walk through your doors.
Whether your business is a brick-and-mortar entity or an online powerhouse, the web host you select is important. Today, we’ll talk about why it’s not only important that you establish an online presence, but why picking the right web host is crucial.
1. Maximum uptime/visibility
One wrong move when it comes to selecting your web host and you could be dealing with shoddy, unreliable service. While virtually every hosting provider guarantees 99%+ uptime, some claims are more concrete than others. Every second that your business website is down is a second you could be losing customers. By comparing various uptime guarantees between providers (check out Hostgator vs GoDaddy vs Bluehost, comparisons for an example), you’ll avoid missing valuable business due to your website being offline.
2. Easy to use features
Many quality web hosting providers now offer a variety of services that make life easier for business owners. While you may be an expert in your business niche, you may not understand the complex steps that it takes to setup, secure and maintain your website from the back-end. Because of this, many quality web hosts have added a variety of goodies such as automatic website installers, one-click utilities, and streamlined control panels.
3. Optimal search engine performance
Some web hosts simply give you an allotted amount of space and bandwidth. Great web hosts also provide quality hosting experience that can affect how well your website performs in search results. For those hosts that do not regulate the types of content hosted via their plans and/or put everybody on the same servers, search engines may penalize perfectly legitimate websites for being on the same servers as those with questionable content. Good web hosts have policies in place to ensure that business websites are never jeopardized by other questionable websites they host.
4. Fast loading pages
Good web hosts use a variety of tactics to ensure that their websites load in very little time. One of the worst things that can happen when choosing a low-cost and/or inferior web host is that your website is relegated to slow speeds. This can ultimately test the patience of visitors and cost you valuable traffic and business. As such, looking for a good web host with fast servers is crucial.
5. Quality customer service
Last but not least, customer service matters. You may not need it often, but when you do, it can make or break your website’s functionality and/or speed at solving critical issues. By evaluating customer reviews and testimonials for each provider, you can quickly discern which web hosts provide the best customer service to their clients and then make an appropriate decision.
These five reasons are more than enough to persuade any business owner to carefully evaluate web hosts before making a decision. Whether it’s about uptime, speed or general reliability, making the right decision at the onset can save you from plenty of headaches in the future.