Website Hosting

Security

The word security goes hand in hand with the word protection.

So, when it comes to hosting security who is it that you are protecting your precious website from? First, let us introduce you to the really bad guys, who are out to create as much business harm as possible. These are for example the identity thieves.

They are looking for every possible opportunity to cynically gather information for personal gain. They operate if you will, in a stealth capacity and will try to go unnoticed for as long as possible. This way they maximize the number of victims they can access.

Then, there are the bad buys, who are not trying to steal from you, but who get their inexplicable “look how clever a hacker I am” kicks from creating maximum site disruption. If these awful idiots hack your site, they will cripple it. This in turn causes prolonged down time and if your site is Ecommerce enabled, revenue loss.

Either way, you must ensure that who are hosting with, can properly protect your website from both the really bad guys and the bad guys.

Speed

How fast your page loads, is by far the most significant factor when it comes to whether visitors look at your page or not. Did you know Amazon revealed that a one-second delay could lead to $1.6 billion fewer sales per year? And the impact of site speed does not end there. Can you believe Google stats reveal that a less than one-second delay in site and page loading will result in eight million fewer searches per day?

Now you understand why site speed is so critically important online business performance wise. Bottom line is, if your page takes four seconds or more to load, you will have lost around 25% of your potential visitors, and for mobile sites, you will lose 53% of visitors if your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load. If your website wants to remain competitive, it must be as fast as possible while still meeting the demands your visitors. There are many reasons why a page might be fast or slow, but one factor that can make or break your website’s performance is the web hosting provider itself. Site load speed can slow dramatically when opting for shared hosting plans. Please do not rush your hosting decision

Support

Everything is hunky dory with your hosting company until something goes completely pear-shaped.

It is in that moment of abject panic, that you will really discover whether they were a good choice or not support wise.

Picture this scenario for a moment. You decide you want to check something on your site. You call it up and suddenly the message “Error 404” pops up. Your site is not loading. It is completely unavailable, not only to you but also many other interested customers.

You break out in a cold sweat. What has happened? This is not what you signed up for. Spare yourself pain. Our response times are good, and you are not dealing with a call centre agent, you are dealing directly with the owner, Does it get any better than that? Because the Web Hosting Specialist takes online business very seriously, you know that in the event of an emergency, we will be taking your hosting situation very seriously too.

Either way, you must ensure that who are hosting with, can properly protect your website from both the really bad guys and the bad guys.

Scalability

Web Hosting Specialist, offer easy scalability with our hosting packages.

The general rule of thumb hosting wise, is that “mom and pop shops”, your family business, sole proprietors and start-up entrepreneurial ventures do not require a massively complex hosting solution. However, as your business grows and your product range diversifies, there may very well be a need for a different hosting solution to the one you started out with.

Thing is, when starting out you have absolutely no idea where your site might go size wise. Take for example one of our clients who has created a prolific applied research-based blog which now consistently adds around 10,000+ words of original content each month. This has done wonders for their SEO and in just two years they have now blasted light years past their local and international competitors. What started off back then as a small “let’s get started, test-and-learn, and see” website, is now a very technical reference site of over 200 pages and growing rapidly.

Had they chosen to host their site with a company who could not rapidly upscale, they would have run into massive site performance issues. In a nutshell, what this client experience teaches you, is that it is incredibly important to host your site with a hosting company who at any stage, can rapidly upscale if need be. Depending on your needs, Web Hosting Specialist can rapidly scale up, and if need be, scale down.

Finally, a most neglected consideration when having to choose hosting company and package that will best suit your needs, is, what happens if there is sudden dramatic spike in traffic?

Will other hosting companies seamlessly flex, rapidly scaling and adapting to handle this fabulous unexpected volume, or will it rigidly and inflexibly enforce the “Terms of your Agreement” causing your site to fall over at the worst possible moment?