Deciding on which web hosting provider to go with as a beginner can be overwhelming considering there hundreds of them on the internet.

Switching from one provider to another might require some technical know-how, which I didn’t have either when I was just starting out.

Regardless of the tight budget I had, the web hosting pricing was not among my main agendas. I had to try and make informed decisions, not by a quick search on the top-ranking provider on Google but to understand how my hosting provider would affect my website’s traffic, its engagement, and definitely revenue from conversions.

In this article, we will deep dive into the eight key ways the web hosting provider you choose would ensure your website’s optimization was always in check for the best ROI.

DNS

The Domain Name System, which is the Internet’s equivalent to the phone book we all have in our phones.

It acts as the directory that interprets the domain names we acquire and use into IP addresses. Most beginners overlook this because it can be provided by the hosting provider. However, they all tend to be a bit more expensive than third-providers.

The list of DNS providers is lengthy, so it’s best to go with an all-in-one web hosting provider like Hostinger, which makes management easier and saves you the time needed to learn technical skills for integrating different parts of the website to have it complete, up and running.

You can check a full review for Hostinger to have a general picture of its benefits.

If your DNS is down for any other reasons apart from having a reliable provider, your website won’t work and I bet you, you will lose prospective customers who might never return to your site again. The first impression is essential after all.

web hosting provider

Site Speed

Over 50% of website visitors expect websites to load with a one-second delay. If your site loads slowly you may:

Almost 40% will leave the site if it takes more than three seconds. As a beginner you can’t overlook this kind of metric, especially for e-commerce sites. Amazon has reported a one second delay on loading that cost the website $1.6 billion in sales each year.

Before you click that live button for your website, you need to ensure its page speed is insanely fast or else it might cost huge traffic loss and low conversions.

You can use a tool like PageSpeed Insights to test your website’s speed, see where you can improve it, and find out if your current hosting provider isn’t pulling its weight when ensuring high speed.

SEO

Search engine optimization isn’t just researching the Google Algorithm updates and content optimization.

However, you will need to understand how Google rankings affect your website search results and how your website hosting has a role in it.

Page speed is an essential ranking factor for all websites. So, on how fast your web pages load, will determine how high your SERP rankings will be on Google.

Again, here you need to make sure that your web hosting provider isn’t bottlenecking your website where it matters, negatively impacting your SEO efforts.

CDN

The Content Delivery Network is a distributed server system that delivers content and website pages to users based on their geographical location, the location of the server hand-wares for the content, and web pages.

In short, the proximity of both the user and the servers amounts to faster load speed. With the rise of cloud computing, most of the web hosting providers offering cloud hosting, the proximity challenges are becoming irrelevant.

However, if you’re opting for shared hosting or VPS hosting, you’ll definitely want to integrate a content delivery network. This won’t just speed up your site’s loading speed, but also ease the load on your web hosting account, sharing part of the weight.

To ease the process, check if your web hosting provider supports CDNs or has integrated setup to make your website’s setup as easy as possible.

Also CDN comes in handy when offloading the bandwidth, as a result reducing the risk of downtime which affects traffic volumes during disruptions.

Uptime

Uptime is an incredibly significant metric. Any minute you website is offline, your revenue flow is drastically impacted. You’ll be losing out on new traffic, repeat visitors, and sales, not to mention reputation.

And with so much competition for traffic and eventually sales during conversion, your website will need to be 99% online if you are to be profitable. 

According to Public Cloud Report of 2019 and Beyond, 72% of respondents in the survey pointed out that uptime being one of their main challenges. Downtimes are also serious to consider when choosing your hosting provider.

Some of the main reasons downtimes occur include;

  • Distributed-denial-of-services (DDoS) attacks
  • Lack of constant supervision by system administrators
  • Power shortages
  • Failing of the Network Devices
  • Wrong or poorly implemented configuration changes

In reality its almost impossible for any web hosting provider to offer 100% uptime, most of them are constantly trying to offer close to perfection. Choosing a web hosting provider you trust will try hard to guarantee that is very important. Make sure you settle for no less than 99.9%.

Scalability

Operating an online store or a service consulting website, site growth in terms of relevant traffic, scalability is certainly the way to go. We all want to grow from start-up to a thriving company someday.

Almost all great providers offer multiple payment plans to allow scalability for your start-up. As a newbie starting on the basic plan, the best web hosting providers make sure you have the necessary resources to help you operate your e-commerce store without any hurdles.

Again they will let you know when it’s time to upgrade to premium plans, which has more tools personalized for your scalability.

With this kind of packages, you can grow your online business steadily and scale on the go without worrying about shifting a providers with scaling capabilities. Ideally, there should be little to no downtime between your changing plans.

Security

Hacking and cyber-crime are on the rise now more than ever. The cyber-criminals will often use the web host to gain access to your website.

In case this takes place, your revenue will drastically drop in a matter of hours. Also you might also let your customers’ data be stolen and misused as a result breaching their data privacy.

That’s why it’s essential to take steps to ensure your web hosting provider has the best tools and capabilities to protect your online store. Your hosting provider should have vulnerability scanners and reliable malware protection in place to detect and ward off any suspicious code that cyber-criminals might slide into the original source codes.

Again, the effects could be catastrophic for online your e-commerce store, even to the point of losing the trust of your customers. Therefore, it’s important to understand from your web hosting provider every nitty-gritty detail concerning their data backups and how secure they are.

Support

Ever had an experience where you are trying to load a website then it gives the Error 404? I have and I can assure you it was never pleasant, which made me jump to another site to look for answers elsewhere. Imagine you’re a fresh webmaster and need a little help managing your site. 

A reliable support team will be essential in making sure your website is up and running. Be sure to research reviews that indicate the quality of your chosen web host’s support team. 

Look for live chat or live call support that works 24/7/365. You never know when downtime might occur, that’s why you have to be ready for it at all times. Bonus points if the company offers support in your native language. 

Conclusion

Your web hosting provider represents the foundation for your site. A reliable web hosting provider can enable your site to reach its full potential simply by providing stability and a helping hand when you need it

When you will be looking for a host for an online store hosting or the first of many, remember to keep an eye out for the criteria I mentioned earlier.

After having this very important decision made, don’t worry about getting the website up and running. All the providers have free tutorials that will enable you to get started in a matter of minutes. In case of difficulty, you can always reach out to their support team and am certain they will respond in minutes.