Everything You Need to Know About Web Hosting Before Choosing A Web Hosting Provider

Having a business is not only about having a store and selling some stuff. There are more than just meets the eye. In order for your business to succeed, you have to grow your business both offline and online. When it comes to growing a business online, you need to have a website as well. And when you have a website, you have to consider hiring not only web designer and web developer, but also web hosting services. Why? Web hosting is the place where all the files of your website live. Think of it as the home of your website where it actually lives. Now that you understand the importance of web hosting, now you should understand some facts about web hosting before you decide to choose a web hosting provider. Keep reading this article to find out!

There are different types of web hosting

If you’ve spent any amount of time on a web host’s website, you’ve probably seen terms like shared, VPS, dedicated, cloud, WordPress, and reseller. They represent the different web hosting types, but not every web host offers them all. Plus, the hosting types differ from one another in significant ways. Dedicated servers offer close to metal implementation with little overhead, and they’ve been traditionally the go-to-solution for high performance demanding tasks. On the other hand, VPS allows clients to get a share of a physical server for a number of hardware resources they’ve paid for, and multiple clients often share one physical host machine. Cloud servers are often confused with the VPS, as both are based on virtualization and come with many of the same advantages. Much of the definition, however, depends on the particular host provider.

They say “Unlimited” but it’s not quite unlimited

Web hosts will encourage you to sign up for their web hosting plans by convincing you with the promise of unlimited storage or monthly data transfers. It’s generally not a completely honest deal. Now, I am not saying that that these web hosts are straight up lying, but the “unlimited” storage or data transfers boasts nearly always have limitations that vary by company. So, it is what it is.

Your website can be vulnerable to cyber attacks

Hacks, malwares, and virus are common cyber attacks that can damage your business website. Sadly, many people who are just starting out with their own website may not be aware of all the associated quirks that come with maintaining a successful online presence. But once you get into the details of it all, you’ll realize that understanding the essence of secure web hosting will be hugely beneficial to your website.

As you might suspect, there are plenty of other factors to consider regarding web hosting security, and the security policies of your website in general. However, we’ve tried to outline the most important ones here, so that you have a general idea of where you should start while shoring up your online safety. For that reason, you should be careful with choosing the right web hosting provider for your business website.

Security Threatened: Signs You Are Hiring A Bad Web Hosting Provider

When it comes to building a business, almost many business owners nowadays know the importance of having a website for their business. However, not many know that having a website means having to protect it from unwanted attacks, such as virus, hacks and even malwares. Yes, having a website comes with many risks that can be bad for a business. For that reason, some business owners who are doing their homework on website knowledge hire web hosting services to protect their website. If you are one of them, good for you, but are you one of the business owners who hire a bad web hosting provider? If yes, please get out of there and rescue your business. If you are unsure, this article will tell you how to spot the signs. Keep reading to find out!

Too much downtime

One of the most important aspects of running a website is that you make sure the website has a good uptime. The uptime for your site can directly affect sales and conversions. If your website is down frequently, it should reflect in your traffic statistics as well as in your conversions. Nobody wants a website that is down more than 10% of the time. Every second that your website is down you are losing money. Most web hosting companies offer you a promise that the website will be up for a certain uptime percentage. However, you need to make sure they are telling the truth and proving their quality by looking at the reviews.

Poor customer services

One of the reasons why having a website is the best value for your business is that your website will be your 24-hour marketing strategy and 24-hour customer services. However, that also comes with a web hosting that is available for 24 hours a day. Whether you just have a question about the billing cycle or you are experiencing adware, viruses or other malfunctions on your site, the customer service department should be able to guide you in getting your website back up and running or answer any questions about billing to your account. If you cannot get in touch with the customer service department of your web hosting provider, then you’ve got a problem there.

Slow loading times

The first thing you have to have in your website in order to get the best first impression of your business is that you make sure your website visitors are not going to wait for your website to load the content they need to see. The amount of time that it takes for your website to load can be a strong factor to determine whether or not customers convert into sales. There is nothing more annoying than waiting for a website to load when with the simple click of a back button you can have other websites within a couple of seconds. Chances are if it’s taking your site too long to load, there is not enough bandwidth across the host server. Cheaper web hosting companies will sell shared hosting packages to multiple websites and bog down the processors and amount of bandwidth across the server making the websites slow. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you need to change your web hosting provider.

That’s the most important parts in noticing whether or not you are hiring a bad web hosting provider. If you have got similar problems like the ones I have mentioned above, then I suggest that you change your web hosting provider. I know it is not as easy as it sounds, but when you look at it deeper, you will find what you are looking for. Don’t forget to check the reviews as well.

A Path Led to Success: Undeniable Reasons Why Your Website is Not Generating Leads

As a part of Melbourne web development team, I get asked a lot about why a website is not generating leads or that a website doesn’t work the way we want it to. I am not a web developer but I am a part of their team, so I asked one of my friends from the team about this. He gave me a very detailed explanation but I have summed it up into several parts in this article. His explanation may be detailed, but it is actually very simple to understand. Need to understand why your website is not generating leads? Keep reading this article to find out!

So you’ve built a cool website with all the bells and whistles, you work hard to build traffic and get people to look at your offers but all they do is bounce off and buy from your competitor? Don’t worry; you will know the reasons and factors once you finish reading this article.

You have probably created confusing call-to-actions

When we investigate pages with low conversion rates, our first port of call is analyzing calls to action (CTA). One common thing we have found when analyzing those pages is that there are too many CTAs on a single landing page. The general rule for making great website with high conversion rate is that there is only one CTA necessary per page. If you want a visitor to make a purchase, your CTA is “buy now.” Therefore, stick to the single CTA rule and you’ll see that the landing page starts generating leads.

Your CTAs are too weak or vague

One of the popular reasons your website is not generating leads is that you use weak or vague CTAs. How many times have you seen an important B2B landing page where the lead capture form has an uninspiring grey action button reading “Submit”? Not only does this word has a subconsciously negative connotation, it is also very passive and unexciting. Like, submit what? What can your visitors gain from submitting something that is not clear? It should be simple but clear like this; the button should be active and tell the visitor exactly what he needs to do. If it’s a purchase, it should read “buy now”. If it’s an ebook, it should read “download your free copy” and so on.

Your website has poor design and content

Content and web design have a big role in generating more leads. Why? Put yourself in your visitors’ shoes; if you are visiting a website that has confusing content that is not even answering your questions as to why you should buy their products (Well, that’s the main reason why we are visiting a business website; to find the information about their products and their business), would you even consider buying their products? No, right? On the other hand, if you are visiting a website and you can’t even read the content because of poor or difficult designs, would you even continue trying so hard to read what is inside the website? Would you even continue browsing the page if you cannot click on the right button because of unclear navigation? No, right? That’s why the website fails and you don’t want that to happen to your website as well.

Also, one of the most important parts to remember when building a website is to focus on and prioritize responsiveness on mobile devices. In this day and age, people use mobile devices more often to browse a website than their personal computer because it is easier that way and it can be done on the go. The competition in most niches are so strong; and a visitor who hasn’t been happy with his user experience on a mobile device will not make the effort of revisiting the site on a desktop device. Instead, they will check a competitor’s website. Therefore, keep in mind that in order for your website to generate more leads, you need to pay attention to every details of your website including its functionality and responsiveness when accessed through mobile devices. When you have this mindset, your business is on the right path.