Picking The Right Web Hosting For eCommerce

If you’re hoping to open an online store of your own, you’re going to need to find good web hosting to support it – including all the various features that set websites like this apart from most. This article hopes to deconstruct some of those features, to help you understand them better.

It’s Vital That You Find The Right Host

You need your online store to be running at full capacity for as much of the time as possible to ensure that you don’t lose money as a result of downtime and server outages. The most important statistic for defining this is server uptime – and you need to be looking for servers that are able to offer at least 99.5% uptime, although 100% is impossible and should be regarded as a false claim. You’re also going to need to be sure that you’ll have enough bandwidth (‘unlimited bandwidth’ is also an impossibility; look for exact figures and don’t let yourself get swindled by false promises) and plenty of server space on which to store all your images, data and files.

You Need Your Site To Move As Quickly A Possible

A website that runs slowly isn’t going to keep your customers coming back. You need to make sure that the server you’re hosting on has plenty of RAM, and that you’re not using a shared or virtual server that will require you to share that RAM with too many other users. Nobody likes to have to wait when they’re trying to buy something online – and there’s not a lot you can do to mitigate that effect if you’re hosting your ecommerce site on a server that’s simply not quick enough to handle it.

While making this decision, it’s important to take into account the fact that you’re hoping to grow your business. You’ll need to be sure to buy more speed than you need right now – it’s important to be prepared for future growth, after all.

Exemplary Customer Service Is Paramount

While of course you need to make sure that you’re offering good customer service to your own customers, that isn’t what this point is about – you also need to be careful to choose a website host who can offer excellent customer service to you.

It’s foolish not to expect that something will go wrong. At some point, there will be a question or a problem – it’s not a matter of simply trying to avoid them, but also of ensuring that you can trust your host to help you out when it arises. If you’re not sure how helpful the customer service team at your chosen host will be, you might want to consider coming up with a slightly spurious question to test it out before you commit to a particular package.

You’ll Want Simple Application Installation Processes

Most ecommerce sites depend very heavily on the applications they use to do the things they need to do, and you’re going to want to be able to install, configure and upgrade those applications as straightforwardly as possible. Some of the apps you’re probably going to want to be able to use include:

  • Something that allows people to make accounts on your site, preferably with Open ID authentication and definitely with excellent security to protect their personal details
  • A shopping cart system that allows you to monitor stock levels and lets your customers check out easily and pay all in one simple transaction, without extra fuss and hassle.
  • Live customer support for the people who visit your site, to better allow you to answer their questions and queries in a way that is as straightforward as possible for both you and them.

You’ll find that the web hosting package you choose has a huge impact on the general running of your site, and ultimately on the success of your business – so it’s important that you consider this decision carefully, with a mind to the projected future expansion of your business and of your online sales.