Whether you plan to use it for e-commerce, advertising or just provide information about you business, picking a good website host can be like picking out a good location for your business. It can determine how fast or slow your site loads, how many visitors you can get before getting costly charges, and how multimedia rich your site will be.
There are a plethora of website hosting services out there, but how do you know which one is right for your business?
We build a lot of websites for clients as part of our online marketing package. Here are the eight features we look for in a good site host.
- 1. How much will it cost?
How much you pay, affects how many features your hosts provides. To get the most value for your money, or Return on Investment (ROI) look at the website hosts service level agreements and packages. Service Level agreements tell you how many minutes, hours of uptime each tier of customers are guaranteed. Pick a server that can guarantee your website will be up and running 99.9% of the time. There are always a few hiccups here and there but enough problems and your visitors are bound to stop visiting your website.
Don?t underpay, free web hosting might seem like a good idea initially, but most free web hosts place ads on your website and can have high costs added to trading up or switching. Don?t overpay either; there are some decent providers for less than $10 a month.
2. Are they there when you need them?
Getting live help especially when you are having technical issues is HUGE.
As you go into developing the site getting help when you need it either calling in or via live chat is an important asset and should come standard with your web hosting package. Find out if, support is available 24/7, and what their guaranteed response time is technical problems and even legal problems related to your website can occur at any time.
3. How easy is it to manage their control panel?
Request a demo or videos of the control panel to see how easy it is to get in and make changes or create pages. Look for extra features like being able to incorporate WordPress, you may not use all the features available right away but leave room for growth and flexibility.
?4.?What are others saying about them?
Look for online reviews not just on the host?s website, but on forums like CNET, and even the Better Business Bureau. Learning what people are saying is as easy as typing the business name on Google, Bing or Yahoo. If you are able call up some of the reviews on the website to find out if they still feel the same way they did before.
All your effort will be wasted if your website server will experience frequent downtimes or problems loading.
?5.?Back-up data
Preparing for unforeseen circumstances is a part of business and a part of life. So what features if any does your host provide to back up your site files and database? This might not be a standard feature so knowing off the bat can help you investigate other options to save your material.
?6.?How much space will your website get on the site host?s server?
A simple web page might be about 40 kilobytes (KB) in size, thumbnail images might be about 2KB or 3KB, good quality full size images can range between 150 to 200KB, and a one minute video clip could be about 8 megabytes (MB).
Plan ahead and figure out relatively how much disk pace your website will need. For an average site, in industries like manufacturing or construction, with a fair amount of graphics, videos and thumbnails looking for something in the ballpark of 4 gigabytes (GB) will guarantee you plenty of space.
Watch out for unlimited space claims. There should be a number attached to how much pace you get and how much it will cost to get more space. Best bet is to pick a host that sets clear limits.
?7.?How much bandwidth are you getting?
Bandwidth is the amount of data your web host will allow you and your visitors to upload or download in a window of time like a month. For example if your e-commerce website is 100 megabytes a month, at the beginning of the month you upload the entire site and use 1 MB of bandwidth. If a visitor visits every page of your site they will have downloaded 1MB of data, leaving you with about 99MB of data that can be downloaded. After you exceed your limit your site host can charge you for extra MB for site visitors. So pay attention to this especially if you host a lot of multimedia like video or images on the site.
How much bandwidth would a business website need on average? Most small businesses would use about 1GB-2GB transfer volume a month.
?8.?Here?s what you shouldn?t have to pay for
Be wary of companies that tack on fees for blogs, polls, and survey application that you can add through online services like WordPress, SurveyMonkey or Google forms. Most business oriented website hosting packages also provide you with a number of e-mail accounts for your domain and some Google AdWords credit usually about $50.
Read the fine print when it comes to your domain name. Some hosts might add in the fine print clauses preventing you from moving the domain to another host. Register the domain under the company or business owner?s name. An easy way to make sure you own the rights to your own site name is to do a quick WhoIs domain lookup, which can tell you who is registered under your name.
?
Choosing a Website host can be like picking out a location for your business. There are plenty of options, and paying attention to the details can provide the right support for your site to thrive. Some of the websites our web developers recommend include BlueHost, HostGator, JustHost, and Hostmonster.
To take the hassle out of planning and figuring what your website needs, contact us to book an evaluation of your business needs and goals we specialize in online strategies to boost business.
Daisy
Daisy Quaker is a Content Strategist at PureDriven. She loves helping small businesses grow through marketing and by telling their unique stories online. She writes about various Internet marketing tactics and strategies on her blog. Connect with her on Twitter (@daisyquaker) or LinkedIn.
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
Source: http://www.puredriven.com/the-non-techy-guide-to-picking-a-good-website-host/
maurice sendak state of the union sotu boehner demi moore hospitalized james farentino somali pirates
You are absolutely right about website design. Excellent ecommerce website australia is essential to the success of any contemporary organization. Thanks for sharing
উত্তরমুছুন