A web host is a service that allows you to put your website on the Internet.
Many companies and individuals make the mistake of choosing a web host without considering how hosting will affect the performance of their website. For example, the website’s loading speed is an essential factor that the web host affects. Slow loading speeds lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of high-speed web hosting and how hosting affects your website, read on.
We’ll cover:
- How web hosting affects website performance.
- The benefits of web hosting
- How to choose the right web host
- Final thoughts: The impact of web hosting on website performance
How web hosting affects website performance
Your web hosting affects six critical aspects of website performance:
1. Speed
Speed and performance go hand in hand. The loading speed of a site is a crucial factor when it comes to user experience. Most users won’t wait for a site that takes too long to load, especially when they can choose between competing sites with faster load times.
According to Baclinko, the average website load time is 10.4 seconds on a desktop and 27.4 seconds on mobile.
Anything beyond that is bound to increase your bounce rates.
The speed of your web hosting is influenced by:
- Type of hard drive: web hosts can have solid-state drives (SSDs) or hard disk drives (HDDs).
- RAM: Random Access Memory (RAM) is the amount of memory your web host allocates to store your scripts.
- Bandwidth: Determines how much data your web host can transfer.
When choosing a web host, you should consider these factors before purchasing. This way, you can prevent hosting web speed from scaring away your customers.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a great free tool that you can use to check your website load time statistics and other performance metrics of your website.
2. Security
Your web hosting has an impact on the security of your website. A primary web hosting provider may not have strict measures to prevent hackers/cybercriminals from accessing your website and potentially sensitive business data.
A web hosting provider has top-notch built-in security features like a free SSL certificate and secure shell access (SSH) that can protect your website from malware, phishing attacks, and cybercriminals.
3. Uptime
Uptime is when a website is available to users in a given period. It is usually measured in percentages. Your web hosting provider plays a crucial role here as well.
If your web host’s servers go down, your website may not function. That is referred to as downtime. The most important thing is choosing a host with multiple power options and high uptime. With most web hosts, there is downtime. You can read reviews of web hosts to see if they are reliable.
4. Customer support
Any issues that could affect the functionality of your website need to be fixed as soon as possible. If your website is not working, you are missing out on important lead generation and conversion opportunities.
Ideally, your web host will offer 24/7 customer support and have experienced professionals who can resolve any issues immediately.
5. Scalability
A good web host allows your website to grow with you. As your business expands, so should your website. The ill-advised choice of a web host will have an impact on the scalability of your website.
A poor web host makes it challenging to scale. That means that even though your business is growing, you will continue with the website you started with.
6. SEO
You may not think your web host affects search engine optimization (SEO), but it does. SEO involves optimizing your website, including the backend, so it ranks better in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The choice of web hosting affects the loading speed of a website. It directly affects your SEO efforts. A poorly designed website with unnecessary scripts and bloated code makes it difficult for search engine crawlers to crawl your website.
Your SEO and digital marketing efforts will be in vain if your hosting web service cannot provide reliable backend support to keep your website running smoothly.
The advantages of web hosting
When you create a website, you need a web host. You can self-host or choose a website builder with limited hosting features for a simple website.
However, it’s time to use a dedicated hosting service if you care about your website.
Here’s why:
1. Improved website performance
When it comes to being successful online, the performance of your website matters a lot. If your website takes forever to load, then your visitors will not stay. You only have a few seconds to get your visitors’ attention before they leave your website and never come back.
In addition, your website’s performance also affects your search engine rankings. With slow loading speeds, your website will rank poorly in usability metrics, affecting how high your website ranks in search.
With a quality web hosting system, loading speeds are not a problem for you. You may have a mighty host, and your website is poorly optimized, but once you fix your website’s slow load times, your website should load incredibly fast.
2. Excellent technical support
If you offer products or services through your website, you know how important it is to have timely and helpful customer support. It should be no different with your hosting company.
Imagine you’re in the middle of a significant launch; everything is going well until your website mysteriously goes offline. What do you do now? Every moment you’re offline is costing you sales. Hopefully, you can turn to your hosting provider’s support staff, who can get your website back online as soon as possible.
If you don’t have the technical skills yourself, your hosting provider is like the technical team member you never had.
3. Domain-associated email address
You need a branded email address that uses your domain name to appear professional. For example, if your domain name is “newdomain.com,” you need an email address.“ If you are emailing customers and clients, you should not use your standard Gmail address.
If you choose a good hosting provider, you have the option to create a domain-specific email address. Some hosts limit you to one address, while others give you the option to create an unlimited number of domain-specific email addresses.
Most hosts also have built-in tools for managing Nuseveralil. For example, you can retrieve, send, and receive emails and set up email forwarding so you can manage your emails through your preferred email provider. This way, you can appear professional when reaching out to others through your website.
4. Improved website security
Website security is something that many website owners never think about. Although a 100% secure website is almost impossible, you never know where the next threat will come from. You can still take steps to make your website as secure as possible.
The foundation of your website’s security starts with your hosting provider. After all, that’s where all of your website’s files are stored. A good hoster will offer several levels of security.
First, there is the actual data center that is protected. Then you have the necessary firewall protection on the servers themselves. Finally, depending on the web hosting services, you have security measures that protect your website from other websites that use the same server.
As you can see, there are many steps to secure your website. Beyond that, there are things you can do to secure your website. That includes things like locking the login screen, installing spam software, changing user permissions, or even installing one of the many security plugins to improve your existing security.
Hopefully, your hoster also has regular backups of your website on offer. You may never need them, but if your site gets hacked, you can restore a previous version of your site instead of having to start from scratch. They can also come in handy if you accidentally shut down your website by editing one of the core files. Instead of dealing with every little thing, you can restore your website from a previously saved backup.
5. High reliability and uptime
When searching for the right hosting company, you’ve probably already come across the term uptime. It is imperative. The uptime of your website indicates how often your website will be online. You’re probably thinking, “I want it to be online all the time,” and that’s a natural reaction.
However, most hosters have a clause in the hosting contract that specifies what percentage of the time your website will be online. For most hosting companies, this number is 99.9%. This small percentage of your website is offline and is used for repairs, updates, and server maintenance.
If you choose a host based on its high uptime, you should ensure that this claim is valid. Online reviews related to downtime say a lot, as does the warranty. Some hosts even offer payment credits when your website is offline outside the warranty period.
Regardless, a hosting company with high uptime can benefit your bottom line. After all, customers can’t buy your products or services if your website is offline.
As you can see, the right web host can bring many benefits to your website. The wrong hoster, on the other hand, will only make your online success more difficult.
What should you know about selecting a web host?
To be successful in the long run, a company must choose the best web hosting service for its particular circumstances. There are many criteria to consider when choosing a web hosting service; some are obvious and measurable (e.g., cost and guaranteed uptime), while others (e.g., customer support) are more subtle and subjective.
Advanced features such as scripting support, shopping cart processing infrastructure, and guaranteed uptime vary by web hosting company. These additional and advanced features distinguish one hosting web service from another and are the factors that determine which service is suitable for your business needs.
The servers provided by web hosting services are generally classified into one of the following four categories.
Shared: Shared hosting is probably the most common option for small businesses with low traffic and means that more than one website is stored on a single server or hardware. Shared servers are often the least expensive option, making them attractive to startups and small businesses.
Dedicated: When a single server hosts only a single website, it is called a dedicated server. In this configuration, the server’s computing power can only focus on the website it hosts. A dedicated server is usually more expensive than a shared server, but this extra cost can be worth it for businesses where website performance is critical to success.
Cloud hosting (VPS): Similar to the shared server, virtual private servers (VPS) allow many websites to be hosted on a cloud-based server system. A VPS is essentially the cloud-based version of a shared server; however, the VPS can offer more features due to the scalability, flexibility, and redundancy of cloud computing. A VPS is often a good choice for businesses whose computing power and feature requirements fluctuate over time.
WordPress: Physically, a managed WordPress server can be hosted by any of the three configurations previously mentioned. The difference is that a WordPress server is designed and optimized to host WordPress sites commonly used by bloggers, journalists, and other content creators.
Your company’s choice of web hosting service depends on your service requirements. Before considering a hosting web service, you should thoroughly evaluate your business needs related to your website. It would be best if you also thought about future requirements and whether the hosting web service you choose will be flexible and adaptable.
Final considerations: Impact of web hosting on website performance
A web hosting company lets you put your website online and ensures that it stays online most of the time without downtime.
You must choose the right web host to truly take advantage of web hosting and achieve optimal web hosting speeds. Instead of using a trial-and-error approach, you can opt for a trusted service like WpMaintenance Services.
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