“When you have a real problem will they be there?”

The problem though is that you don’t want to have to wait until that crucial time to put them to the test because that time could end up costing you lots of money. Can you afford for your ecommerce site to be down while your web hosting service provider works out why they have never seen this problem before? This is when good hosting support really makes a difference.

So how exactly do you tell beforehand, well it’s not easy but there are always clues available about any service before you go too far down the line. One big sign I always look out for is poor hosting documentation on the site for average users, because often users can fix/answer their own questions if they have the right information.  So for a start they should definitely have a searchable database of common questions and issues for people to use, if they don’t have this I would start to worry if I were you.

Another really important sign to look out for is how quickly they respond to your support tickets, it’s not just a question of the time wasted but also the shows that they don’t care (if it takes forever for them to respond). Ideally you want a response (and not just the automated reply) to any ticket that you submit within around 6 hours. I really see no reason why any ticket should takes 24 hours to get a response, now I’m not saying they have to fix it within that time as it could be a serious problem and require some work, but they should at least tell you that they are working on it and give you an estimate of how long it’s going to take. Like I said before, the time it takes for people to respond to you is a legit way to work out just how seriously they take your custom, so keep a timer handy!

I also like to look at the content of those support answers in detail as there can be real clues there too about how good your hosting service is. I mean if they give you really general answers to your questions or even if it just looks like something that’s been pasted from Wikipedia then this too is of course a very bad sign. Answers should always have enough detail so that you can take that information and do something with it, at the same time don’t let them baffle you with technical jargon either, they only do this when they don’t know what they’re talking about!

“To be locked in or not, that is the question”

As you can see there are advantages and disadvantages to both situations and I suppose the whole thing hinges on one fact, do you trust your web host or not? It’s a tough question because the answer will determine exactly how much you are willing to invest in the company.

Another issue to look as is if you are required to take out a minimum contract or a certain type of plan. For example most plans for dedicated severs require you to pay for 3 months upfront (I have seen some that require 6 months). When you consider that even a cheap dedicated server is going to run you around £300+ a month that’s quite and investment for the 3 months.

You also have to look at things from the host’s point of view if you want to work out why they offer the discounts for longer term contracts that they do. The key for them is knowing that they have a customer for that period of time which is guaranteed revenue, this allows them to invest that cash in more servers/space/bandwidth etc. With the pay monthly guys it’s really up in the air how long they are going to be around.

So as I said it all comes back to “trust” and just how confidant you are that the host is going to deliver what they say. For me I’m never going to invest in a yearly contract with a company that I’m not familiar with or who doesn’t have a good history behind them. But if I’ve been with a service for a while and everything has been going “well” then yes Id usually be more than happy to go for a 6 month or even 12 month contract because of the money saved.

I hope this article helps if you’re looking for a hosting provider in the near future. Remember you really need to check out any company’s history before you commit to any kind of deal (even a 1 month contract). Don’t forget that if your website is your primary source of income then it’s not something you can’t leave to chance, so research and invest in a quality host. It really is worth it in the long run to know your site is up and running, there are too many horror stories of businesses down for days to risk it.

The type of site makes all the difference because if this is just a hobby site and not something that makes you money then by all means feel free to skimp. But if this is a business/ecommerce site or something that you in any way rely on then you really don’t want to take the fact that it’s always going to be working for granted.

Now I don’t want to give people the impression that just because you’re paying more that your guaranteed better service, as we know from live in general this isn’t always the case. But when you look as hosting packages from reputable providers then you’ll often see that the more expensive options feature:

• Better uptime guarantees
• More space for files and databases
• More bandwidth so if you do get more traffic you don’t get cut off
• Better support (maybe a separate 24 hour line or guaranteed turnaround time)

Those are the main points to look out for and in general if you want to cover the above points like guaranteed uptime and better support then you’re going to have to pay for it. To be honest if you see a deal that’s too good to be true on the above points then it generally is.

I suppose it all comes back to how important the site is to you and how much if any money are you going to lose by it being down. Also consider the extra you may have to pay for a quality web host as opposed to a “cheap” one as the difference could only be around £30 more a month which to me isn’t huge.

Hopefully this post clears a few things up about how much you may want to spend on a service. Maybe in my next post ill compare some different hosting providers to let you really see the difference in prices, until next time.

If you think about googles reasons for introducing this change it does kind of make sense. Google has always been about the overall experience of the user and what annoys users more than a website that is slow to load? However i must mention at this point that there can be two main factors why a site may be slow to load:

1. The web hosting service is just plain slow. This is obviously the easiest one to fix as i just means you have to get a new web-host. However finding a new host can also be alot of hassle too and will sometimes mean you have to pay more £££! Moving your site can also be a pain too, depending on the type of site you have. For instance if it is a ecommerce site there could be a bit of initial setup involved and you may have to get the person who initially created the site to complete the installation for you.
2. The second option is an often overlooked factor and it is that your website is too large as far as file size is concerned. So while the web host is able to send your site out the visitors at high speed the visitor can only receive the site as fast as their connection will allow. Dont forget that many people are still in slow dialup connections (especially in developing countries) and may not be able to view your site within a reasonable time. The solution for this is to re-design your site with speed in mind. Lose any very large pictures or flash movies and concentrate in breaking the content up into bite-size chunks.

So as you can see the two factors above require a reasonable amount of work no-matter which is related to your site. So why go to all this hassle in the first place? Is is just for Google? Well no, this shouldn’t just be something you are doing to keep google happy but because you want to increase the overall profitability of your business on the web. This is especially true of ecommerce sites as it has been proved more than a few times to me that potential customers do not hang around long if there are service problems on with your online shop. How confidant can they be of getting what they paid for if you can’t even get your website to work?

I once read that even amazon.com has a cart conversion rate of only 40% which is the number of people who add things to the online cart and then go on to buy. You may think this number is very low considering that amazon has so much trust with customers but it is a pretty standard number across the industry. However also realise that you as a start-up business are going to have an even smaller conversion rate as customers have never heard of you before and may be nervous about purchasing. The point i am trying to make is that if there are problems with the booking process or website in general such as pages being slow to load then your conversion rate is going to go through the floor!

As you can see a slow web hosting service isn’t going to just affect your position in google but the revenue of your site as a whole and so it has to be one of your main priorities for your internet business. Still one of the hardest things is working out who the fast hosting providers are, as they all they they have high speed connections don’t they! Well the main thing i would look for is the right account with plenty of bandwidth for the month as a whole. Also checking for guaranteed uptime is also a good thing to look for. So hopefully ive given you a few reasons to look for speed in your next hosting provider and maybe youll be zooming your way to the top of google in no time.