The importance of choosing the right web hosting company for small businesses

It is crucial to understand exactly what you want your website to do for potential visitors, and what information needs to be conveyed.

Understanding how you want your website to serve your demographic will help you choose the right web hosting company.

Consider the following aspects of running a website to ascertain the best possible route to go down when choosing a web host.

Cost effectiveness

Web hosting can come in at a varied price range, because so many companies add services and customisation options that your website might not need.

Before choosing which company to go with, you should take into consideration all of the packages they offer, and compare them to the needs of your business.

High amounts of storage is always helpful, and plenty of web hosting companies can provide it, but if your business doesn’t need it then you’re wasting money.

Good web hosting provides a plethora of package choices to suit your business’s needs, even if they’re very small. Analyse what is included in each package before committing – highest price doesn’t always mean highest quality.

Loss of revenue

Unlike shop-fronts, websites are open to the public 24/7. A website acts as a means of promoting your business and selling products through ecommerce, so it is important in maintaining a steady flow of revenue, as well as giving your business heightened exposure.

Quality web hosting makes sure of this by keeping you site fully functioning and online at all hours of the day.

The money you make through your site could drop dramatically if your domain goes down even for a few hours.

Check your web hosts past successes and testimonials to ensure that crashes or complete website shut-downs are something they can address quickly so you aren’t losing business.

Helpful support

Problems do occur with websites; even huge websites like Google and Facebook suffer from maintenance issues now and again.

These might not be huge crashes either – the problem could simply be a malfunctioning macro or a particular page going missing.

The problems you may encounter could be beyond your understanding, depending on how experienced you are with working online, so you need to look out for web hosts that offer 24/7 support lines, such as PAC Web Hosting.

This not only assists you in optimizing your website, but also helps you learn how to deal with these problems yourself in the future.

Good exposure

The higher your website ranks, the more exposure you’re going to get. This can be obtained via a number of ways such as using Google AdWords and metadata to your advantage.

A reliable web host that keeps your website visible whenever a search engine is trying to visit will ensure you SEO rank stays high, and you can work towards steadily building it up.

However, it can be very harmful to your SEO rank if your website keeps going down. A low SEO rank will drastically reduce your potential clientele, and even the relatively small amount you pay for web hosting could end up seeming like a waste.

Malware attacks or hacking

Information theft is rife on the internet – many major companies in the past such as TalkTalk have been attacked maliciously, where the culprit who gained access could change what was on the site in very damning ways.

This could affect the way products are priced and the general appearance of the site, as well as aid the spread of misinformation.

A good web host backs up your information to a remote server for easy retrieval in case one of these cyber-attacks was to befall you.

This ensures that any unwanted alterations to your site or deleted assets can quickly be amended and replaced with what was once there – preventing any loss of business.

Great communication

With competent web hosting you stand to benefit from a heightened sense of internal business communication.

Good web hosts provide you with numerous business email addresses that you can assign to employees or business partners for a reliable work-focused means of exchanging ideas, arranging meetings and sending out bulletins.

The amount of email addresses available can be tailored to however many people you employ, and if staff numbers grow then it is really helpful to have work dedicated emails to keep your online operations organised.

Anticipating growth

Your small business could grow exponentially as a result of a great online presence. This could mean a higher volume of traffic going to your site, which is a problem – a good problem, but a problem nonetheless.

You will want the ability to expand your site or add more bandwidth and memory to deal with increase in traffic.

Research your choices in web hosting company to see what they offer in terms of upgrading your site.

There is a limit to everything your website utilises despite what some web hosts say, from bandwidth limits, even down to the amount of company email addresses you need, so if things are going as they should you should be able to easily upgrade your package with no hassle.

Choosing the right web hosting company isn’t important just because it’s beneficial to your business, it’s important because your online presence can make or break your business.

Without thorough research of what you need and which web hosting business fits your needs best, you could stand to haemorrhage money, lose valuable data and slow your business’s progression to a crawl.

Taking the negative aspects of incompetent web hosting into account, competent web hosting could be the biggest contributor to your business’s success.

Good web hosts accommodate rapid growth, and provides support and valuable knowledge on website maintenance.

It’s also one of the biggest ways of getting your business’s name seen worldwide by maintaining a reliable up-time of 99% or more.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is what makes your website visible on the internet.

All the files, images, code and pages are stored in a server (which is continuously running and always connected to the internet). When someone types in your website or clicks on a link, their browser sends a request to the server, which then delivers the files to display the pages.

It is possible to host a website yourself, but you’ll need expert technical knowledge, all the hardware and software for infrastructure, and ongoing maintenance, which can be quite expensive.

A web hosting company handles all the technical aspects for you so you can focus on running your business and driving more traffic to your website. It is also a more cost-effective option for small businesses.

Our recommended web host: One.com

With unlimited traffic, unlimited email accounts, 24/7 support and free SSL certificates to show your site is secure, One.com provide fast web hosting that’s easily scalable.  

Plans start from just £2.99 per month and include a free domain for the first year.

Get started with One.com