No one likes a slow website. In fact, recent studies show that if a website takes any longer than 4 to 5 seconds to load, the average Internet user will be clicking the back button and looking elsewhere for their answer.
If you are running a business this will generally mean that a prospective customer will be leaving your site and running straight into the arms of one of your rivals, which, naturally, is far from ideal!
Worse still, this kind of reputation sticks. Burn a customer once and it is unlikely that they will return. Multiply this time after time and it quickly becomes a problem that is difficult to fix, so what do you need to do?
It’s all about hosting
Selecting the right hosting package for the size and type of business website that you are operating will go a long way to improving your site speed. Sure, there are plenty of on-page fixes you can do too, such as image optimization and minifying your CSS, but the core of your site’s speed will be down to the type of hosting package that you have.
Smaller sites, such as personal blogs, can get away with a shared hosting package where their site is stored on a web server with a whole host of other similar websites. These hosting packages are ideal for those who want to run a website for fun as they are extremely cost-effective, but many business owners make the mistake of seeing these low prices as being good for their bottom line.
The truth is, however, that making a decision such as this could actually be affecting it. Slow sites put customers off, but shared hosting can also result in downtime too, meaning that even if a customer was willing to persevere they would not be able to access the site anyway. No site equals no sales.
What’s the answer?
Choosing a hosting package that better suit your business will allow you to keep your website up and running at all times, and dramatically increase page load times too. Larger corporations that have the budget and the technical staff in place can opt for their own dedicated server, which will give them a very powerful and flexible way to serve their site to the public.
Smaller companies would be better suited to another option, somewhat of a hybrid between shared and dedicated hosting, commonly referred to as VPS, or virtual private servers to give it its full name. These virtualized servers allow SMEs the opportunity to have the benefits of a dedicated server without the cost or the technical headaches associated with them.
Host1Plus cheap Linux VPS hosting lets these smaller businesses hire part of a server that is theirs to do with as they please. They can run their own operating system if they so wish and maintenance and updates are made easier as they can restart their server whenever they wish, giving them a degree of flexibility too.
Choosing the right hosting package and provider will go a long way to improving your site’s load times. This is good news for your customers, and even better news for you. You will likely see both improved sales figures and better ranking positions in SERPs too, as page speed is a known ranking factor. So, be sure to double-check your hosting package today, it could be the key to success you were looking for.
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