Picking the right host to host your Growing Ecommerce Store
Your hosting provider is the most crucial site partners. It could be the difference between success and failure particularly for big-scale retailers that feature many products and do a lot of online business.
When choosing your host It should come down to a lot more than a simple cost comparison. If your online shop is at the core of your business it is essential to get the highest level of assistance you can receive.
What size is large?
Most online stores begin in a small scale, and use basic, restricted hosting plans on shared servers. What is the best time to start thinking about a move to more advanced hosting that can support a massive enterprise?
Consider upgrading your hosting if you're seeing:
- A high volume of daily traffic. A good guideline for an online store that is large in size is 100,000 or more per month, however less traffic may result in problems. If your site is experiencing slow loading pages, occasional site outages, or issues with transactions not being delayed, you should consider upgrading your website.
- Many products and/or customers. Most inexpensive hosting has limitations on storage space and if you have many thousands of variants or products and images, you might find yourself facing extra storage charges by your hosting provider. The storage of information for huge volumes of customer accounts can cause similar problems.
- Website outages when there is a spike in traffic. The increase in traffic is one of the main motives to think about a upgrading your hosting. If you are confident, you will be able to promote a huge sales during the busiest times of the year and have your hosting company quietly handle it with no impact on the front-end of your website.
Hosting features that you must have
If it's time to look for a more advanced level of hosting, make this list of characteristics in mind while comparing different firms. If you're searching for an eCommerce hosting professional who is aware of the value of each of these features and includes the features in their plans.
and WordPress with a specialization
As a bonus, look for web hosts who actively take part in and support the WordPress open source environment. Businesses that dedicate personnel time and resources the creation of WordPress the core features and to testing the features they offer are more likely to have an understanding of the area and know about any potential issues when they develop.
Backups are included
In the case of online stores the importance of data is paramount. The numbers of your inventory, orders, customer accounts, and total sales numbers are crucial. No matter how reliable your hosting service is, downtimes occur, so you can feel more secure knowing that your site is receiving periodic backups that are automatic and regular.
Unlimited bandwidth as well as storage space
The last thing you want your visitors to experience is a negative gateway error when trying to load your site. This "white screen of death" typically result from overloading servers which aren't able to handle the traffic on your site, causing the requests to fail.
At the same time it is important to ensure you've got the space needed to keep the information about your products, orders data, as well as customer profiles.
Choose a package with unlimited bandwidth and storage space. You should consider cloud hosting or dedicated, which means that you don't have to compete for resources with other sites that are hosted on the same server, and will scale easily as required.
Expert security configuration
A good hosting company is open about their security measures for websites, and will make sure their servers are properly configured with the latest software available for optimal security. They should be able to answer any questions you have concerning security. They should also enjoy a great reputation in ensuring up-time, and deterring hackers.
As a at a minimum, your web hosting provider should make use of PCI (Payment Card Industry) compatible servers that ensure the data of your customers completely safe and includes an SSL certificate that ensures the security of all communications on the internet and secure.
Traffic spike protection
Imagine that you've put in a lot of effort to create buzz about an upcoming product launch or an event that is a sale, such as Black Friday. But, when it comes time for the event to be celebrated your website goes down because of the surge of incoming traffic which results in a disgruntled customer base and a significant decrease in revenue and sales.
If you need to support this kind of spike in sales, it's crucial to choose a hosting provider with the capacity to handle the load. Think about cloud hosting as a option, as it easily grows to handle the load on your shop.
An international perspective on International shops
If your business operates internationally, you'll need a hosting service that supports a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The most advanced hosting plans will include an CDN that transfers your website to servers around the world and serves a cached version of webpages to visitors from around the world. This results in faster access to your website around the globe, as well as better support and performance for your clients.
Free premium plugins
As a bonus, some high-level hosting packages will contain premium plugins, such as Jetpack Complete with additional security, backup protection with one click along with advanced speed capabilities. If you're looking at various hosting options to run a big-scale business and you have access to premium-quality plugins may be the factor that tip the scales.
An integrated staging area
If you operate a shop that's operating round all hours of the day, it's impossible to always take it offline for software updates, let alone completely revamps. You don't want to expose your earnings by running updates on a live system.
A reliable host should have access to staging environments. Make a duplicate of your site in one click, then run the updates, or make any necessary design adjustments and then try, test, and test. When you're ready, pushing the changes to your live site should be a simple process.
Professional support, 24 hours a day
Find a business with excellent customer reviews as well as easy access to a real person by phone, email, or via chat at all times. It is important to know that the hosting company has the support of a person at all times your online store is open. When you're dealing with online shopping, it's all the time, every day.
There's no question that quality hosting costs more. But the price of discount hosting could be the loss of profits, disorganized website interruptions, and security issues, all of which stores simply can't afford. Hosting experts with you to handle a variety of items or sales as well as traffic spikes with ease is worth it to safeguard your biggest assets and online image.