Is Your Website Holding You Back? - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Is Your Website Holding You Back?

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The presentation includes five signs to check whether your website is holding you back. – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Is Your Website Holding You Back?


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(No Transcript)
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Introduction
  • It might seem like that from the way many hosting
    packages are advertised, theres much more to
    consider than choosing a certain amount of disk
    space, RAM or bandwidth. For example, you should
    ask about the hardware being used and the way a
    server configured. You also need to think about
    the providers in-house expertise, the quality of
    its technical support and the amount of uptime
    they guarantee.
  • Whilst on the surface it might look like the only
    difference between hosting packages is the price,
    it can be a mistake to put the cost of hosting as
    your main priority. All hosting is relatively
    affordable these days, so saving a few pounds a
    month could be a false economy that can causes
    problems further down the line.

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Your site has slow loading times
  • The loading time is the speed at which your
    website takes to load on a visitors browser.
    Its important because Google uses it as a
    ranking factor and because visitors abandon slow
    loading websites. It is estimated that a
    one-second delay in loading time can reduce sales
    conversions by 7.
  • You can measure the speed of your site by typing
    your URL into Googles PageSpeed Insights tool.
    This will give you the results for your sites
    performance on both desktop and mobile. Its
    important that the site loads quickly on both
    types of devices, especially now that 66 of all
    UK browsing is done on smartphones and tablets.
  • While there are many things that can affect your
    loading times, such as your choice of theme and
    the number of plugins your website uses, one of
    the primary factors is the type of web hosting
    you choose. Well configured, high-performance
    servers can dramatically improve speed, as can
    upgrading from shared to VPS hosting.

4
 Other users drain your resources
  • If you use shared hosting, every website hosted
    on a server shares the resources that the server
    provides. Most of the time, this isnt a problem
    theres usually enough processing capacity and
    memory for everyone. However, there can be
    issues. Greedy hosts can put too many users on
    one server in the belief that most of them will
    underuse the resources available. All it takes is
    for a couple of websites to start using resource
    heavy applications, perhaps sending out several
    thousand marketing emails or importing thousands
    of product descriptions and images, and this can
    negatively affect the performance of every other
    site on the server.
  • A good host will employ tools that limit the
    resources any one customer can use ensuring that
    its activities do not impinge on others. This is
    a little like the fair use policy that some
    broadband companies impose. If you opt for shared
    hosting, make sure this happens. Alternatively,
    use a different form of hosting.

5
You have poor performance during peaks
  • Unfortunately, the website draining all the
    shared resources could be yours. If your site has
    grown and you have lots of visitors carrying out
    resource-heavy actions, such as using the
    shopping cart, it could be your site hitting the
    resource limits set by the host especially at
    peak times or during busy seasonal periods.
  • If this happens, the slow performance of your
    site can cause customers to abandon their
    shopping carts and spend their money elsewhere.
    Your Google Analytics data will tell you if this
    is the case.
  • The issue here is not really the fault of your
    web host. As mentioned above, it is trying to
    give everyone a fair share of the servers
    resources. Actually, its a sign of success its
    time to move on to a hosting package that
    provides the increased resources your site now
    needs. Your host may have bigger shared hosting
    packages or, for a few extra pounds per month,
    you could opt for the significantly better VPS
    hosting, where youll have a virtual server all
    to yourself.

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How much storage space do you need?
  • Youll also need to have an idea of how much
    space youll need to store all your websites
    software, files and images. Most websites dont
    actually need that much space. Compared to
    software run on your computer, the programs
    needed for running websites are quite small and
    the size of the web pages are usually very small
    too. Often the biggest files youll need are
    images and videos.
  • If you want to run multiple websites or eCommerce
    sites with thousands of images, then you might
    need more storage space.
  • For small websites, 2GB of storage will be more
    than ample for your needs. However, packages
    offering up to 20GB are available, and these can
    easily cater for many websites and vast
    quantities of data.
  • Do be aware of companies that put restrictions on
    the number of files you can store. This can be a
    hidden way of limiting the space you use.

7
Your server has a bad IP reputation
  • The server you use will have its own IP address.
    If one of the other tenants on that server is
    carrying out inappropriate actions, such as
    sending spam or hosting malware, then that IP
    address can get blacklisted. This is bad news for
    every other website hosted on that server as it
    can affect search engine ranking and lead to
    emails being blocked.
  • What makes this particularly problematic is that
    the owner of that site might not even be aware of
    what is happening. They might have been hacked or
    infected without their knowledge. This is likely
    a result of them having poor security measures in
    place, such as not updating their software or
    having easy to crack passwords.
  • A good host will provide a range of security
    features to prevent an IP address getting
    blacklisted. These include firewalls, intrusion
    monitoring, email monitoring, server monitoring
    and dedicated IP addresses. Make sure your host
    provides these.

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You cannot use the software you want
  • Shared hosting is where one server is shared by
    lots of users. As its a single server, everyone
    uses the same operating system and this is
    configured in a way that enables the majority of
    websites to run optimally.
  • One of the issues with this is that you cannot
    use programs that are incompatible with that
    operating system or ask to have the server
    configured differently just to accommodate a
    specific requirement.
  • If you have a critical need to run incompatible
    software, the only alternative is to have a
    server of your own. The most affordable way to do
    this is to opt for a VPS. By doing this, you have
    the freedom to use an operating system that is
    compatible, such as a legacy version of Linux or
    Windows OS.

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Conclusion
  • Web hosting plays a crucial part in the way your
    website performs. Choosing the right package and
    understanding when it is time to change hosts or
    move to a different type of hosting is vital if
    for the long-term health of your site and
    business. Hopefully, from reading this post,
    youll now have a better understanding of the
    signs to look out for.
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