If a website is your house, web hosting is the foundation. Web hosting service provides the infrastructure to host your website on the internet.
A website is a valuable asset that works 24/7 to achieve your business goals. To make sure that your website functions properly and provides an excellent user experience, you need a proper web hosting service.
This blog covers different aspects of web hosting and helps you make an informed decision when choosing a web host.
Endless Opportunities of The Internet
More than 5 billion people are connected to the internet and there are more than 1.88 billion websites in the world. A website offers you opportunities to reach your audience and increase your sales. Especially, if you are in the eCommerce industry, you will need a fast-loading and optimized website to attract your customers.
So, how can businesses leverage their website to reach the audience?
How Can A Website Help My Business?
Websites can serve different purposes. It can be a place to build your online community or act as a central point for your marketing campaigns. You can also build an eCommerce website and reach millions of users online.
The website can help your business in the following ways:
The website works 24/7 for your cause:
Whether you sell products online or showcase your services, your website works 24 hours a day to serve your business.
Represents your brand:
A website acts as a focal point for your brand. Websites give you the power to tell stories and can shape people’s perceptions of your brand. A good customer experience on your website positions your brand as trustworthy and reliable.
Lets Customers Find You:
Most buyer journey starts online. Whether people want to buy a new laptop or a book, they research online before making purchases. The website allows customers to find your business.
Generate Sales For Your Business:
List and show the products to thousands of people simultaneously with the website. And generate more sales.
Know Your Customers Better:
Web analytics tool helps you make sense of customers’ interaction with your brand. Understand how your customers behave on your site, and what products they love, and make better business decisions.
Make Data-Driven Decisions:
Every interaction between your website and customers can be tracked and analyzed. Identify the most viewed products, the city that brings in the most visitors, which marketing campaign is performing the best, which pages have caused friction in the purchase process, and many more. Use this data to make better decisions.
Build A Strong Community:
Write blogs to connect with your customers and show your authority in the niche industry. You can build a strong community around your brand with a website.
Websites and Web Hosting
A website is a collection of all your web pages under a single domain name. Web hosting service providers essentially allocate computers called servers that house your entire website and all its components.
The servers must remain connected to the internet at all times. However, if your website goes down for any reason, your brand can appear untrustworthy to your customers. A negative experience causes promote negative branding and ultimately hamper sales.
But, worry not! Proper web hosting ensures safety from all these avoidable mistakes.
Web hosting service providers set up and maintain websites. They provide support when issues arise.
Components of Website and Web Hosting
To have the proper functioning website, you need the following:
Domain name:
The first step of owning a website is choosing the name of your website; also known as a domain name. Each domain name is unique to the website and helps differentiate one website from another. On the website www.azency.com, the domain name is “azency”. The cost of domain registration starts in the single digit but some costs a fortune. GoDaddy has an article that lists the domain name costing millions of dollars. Let’s just hope that your brand name isn’t on this list!
Web hosts/ servers:
Web hosts are the infrastructure that hosts your entire website. These dedicated computers make sure that your website is always connected and accessible on the internet. They play a vital role in customer experience as they are the skeleton of your website.
Content:
The most powerful aspect of your website is the content. After you have chosen the domain name and finalized the hosting partner, you will need good quality content. The content can take the form of blogs, the beautiful images of products you sell, or videos. These contents represent your brand and carry the potential to generate value for years to come. So, it is vital to have a good content strategy. Enriching your website with good quality pays for your business for a long time. Good quality landing pages help in conversion while a poorly designed page creates a negative user experience. So, you should get professional help to enrich your website with the best conversion content. Along with website development, Azency has been offering copywriting, content writing, SEO, and graphic designing services for more than 5 years now.
Types of Web Hosting
Shared Hosting: Shared hosting is the most affordable web hosting. As the name suggests the websites share the server computers. The most significant downside of this server has to be the security risk. Since many websites are hosted on a single server, attacks or exploits on one website affect others on the same server.
Dedicated Hosting: Dedicated hosting services provide a separate server for your website. Due to this, it can cost significantly more than shared hosting.
Managed Hosting: Managed hosting adds the technical support team to your hosting plan. This hosting service ensures that all the technicalities of your website are handled by professionals. It is suitable for non-technical businesses.
How much do web hosting services cost?
Some of the popular web hosting service providers are Cloudways, Bluehost, Hostinger, and GoDaddy.
The most basic web hosting plans cost around $3/ month. However, the costs can move upwards to hundreds of dollars for premium enterprise-level plans.
It is better to start with the lower subscription and choose the upgraded plans as your business grows.
For smaller businesses, the starter plans suffice, but if you are a larger eCommerce business, you need to opt for a suitable plan that can accommodate your business needs.
Web Hosting Terms and Terminology
Some of the most used terms in web hosting are described below:
Server Uptime: Server Uptime is the estimated percentage of time the server remains connected to the internet. A 99.9% server uptime or a 0.01% downtime means your website is inaccessible for about 9 hours per year.
WordPress Integration: Most of the hosting services provide one-click WordPress installation. It allows quick and hassle-free migration of your WordPress site. After installing WordPress, the next step would be WordPress outsourcing,where you can outsource the website to a WordPress website development expert.
Bandwidth: Bandwidth refers to the amount of data your website can handle within a set time. In web hosting the bandwidth limit is calculated per month. Higher bandwidth means faster website reload speed.
Server specifications: Like your computer, the servers have CPU, RAM, and storage. These factors affect the performance of websites and the cost of web hosting depends on them. More RAM, more storage, and higher core count and processor speed are better and more expensive.
Data centers: Data centers are infrastructures for storing large amounts of data. A typical data center can host hundreds of exabytes of storage capacity. More data centers mean faster websites.
SSL certificate: Secure Socket Layer or SSL certificate is a security feature for websites that encrypts the information exchanged on your website. Having an SSL certificate helps to build trust among your customers and also helps in google ranking.
Storage technology: Your website and all the content are hosted on server storage. A solid State Drive or SSD is the storage technology that offers a higher speed than traditional hard drives.
Website builder: With this tool, you can create a website without the knowledge of coding. Some of the most popular website builders are Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify. Some are better for showcasing your portfolio whereas some are better for running your eCommerce business. Azency, a Shopify expert, can provide help setting up the best Shopify store for your business.
CDN: Content Delivery Network hosts a network of servers across the globe. Web hosting with CDN can make your website faster by choosing the most-effective path of communication between your website and the web browsers.
Conclusion
A website is probably the best investment for your business as it can fulfill your branding and marketing goals. However, the smooth operation of your website requires proper web hosting.
You can consult with experts like Azency to build your website. With more than 5 years of web development and digital marketing expertise, we create websites that outperform your expectations.
Contact Azency today to build your website.
