Every business today needs a website. Not only will consumers expect it, and potentially judge you very harshly if you don’t have one, a good website provides numerous other advantages for a business. A website gives you the opportunity to open up new revenue streams, either through selling your products and services through the website or by selling advertising space. It also provides a central hub through which you can communicate with your customers, and which individuals and businesses can find more information about who you are and what you do.
But designing and building a website is only one half the equation. Another key consideration for any business with regards to their website is the hosting package they go with. Website hosting is just as important as the website itself and will ultimately determine how accessible your website is, quite literally!
Loss of Credibility
A website which is regularly inaccessible reflects poorly on the business it represents. If customers find your website is regularly inaccessible, they are likely to view this as being indicative of a business that is generally unreliable. If a customer tries to access your website and finds that they can’t, then they try one of your competitors and get online straight away, this is obviously not going to benefit you in the long run.
It is also worth noting that, even if your website is only unavailable for very brief periods of time, this can quickly add up to something significant.
Your SEO Will Suffer
A recent article on the Tweak Your Biz website took a look at the different ways in which SEO could be negatively affected. One of these ways was in relation to website downtime and slow loading pages. If your website is slow to load, requiring more than two seconds for a URL to be fetched, Google will penalize you. Google prefers websites that are fast and responsive. The user experience is one of the most important considerations for Google when determining SEO scores. Naturally, you want your SEO score to remain as high as possible, and you want your website to be trusted by Google. Allowing your website’s performance to suffer will ultimately translate into less traffic and a slow descent down search results listings.
A Hit to Your Profits
Of course, there is no motivator more powerful or more essential to a business than money. If nothing else can convince you to invest adequately in your website and its hosting package, the threat of losing money in the short and long-term should do the trick. For any business, website downtime translates into decreased profits and a decrease in your standing amongst consumers; these effects can be short or long term depending on your response.
Businesses should be constantly monitoring the performance of their websites. For businesses who aren’t dependent upon their websites as a revenue stream, it is all too easy to overlook the other indirect ways in which website downtime translates into lost revenue. Any hosting provider worth their salt will guarantee more than 99% uptime for websites they host. Anything less than this is unacceptable.
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Contributed content
Founder Dinis Guarda
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