Hosting: The engine of your shop

Hosting Considerations to Keep in Mind

This time we are going to focus on hosting. We talk about many things related to ecommerce on this blog, we also talk about marketing, SEO, design and trends, and, on days like today, we focus on technical aspects of running our online store. It is true that each online store represents a world in itself, that sometimes not even the sector determines the inner workings of a specific ecommerce, because each company can run the business in its own way and that will determine much more its technology than, really, what it sells or fails to sell. In short, it is possible that a fashion ecommerce shares the same needs as a car parts ecommerce, because it is possible that its logistics and way of working have more in common than, for example, another fashion business that works in showromming.

Generally, hosting is not given the importance it has, as most people tend to take any one, to start with, without realizing that this will determine, to a large extent, the long-term future of their online store. It is true that it is advisable to start with a basic package, until you know how to size the scope and size of your business (most likely you will have to change the plan several times throughout the development of your activity), and that is something as easy as hiring a new plan and pay for it, in just a few clicks, and we will have it changed. But, the problem arises when our hosting provider is not the right one, nothing of what they offer us is useful and we need to move. That’s when the complications arise.

Moving hosting is a delicate process, if you find the right people who can carry it out better than if you start “pajarear” on your own. You are doing a heart transplant to your online store, and that always carries some risks. It is quite easy that many things fail in the import, or that you have problems with your old server when migrating (they don’t usually like to lose customers, although they are obliged to make your life easier), so it is important that you pay attention when doing it.

That’s why it’s better to identify a good hosting from the beginning, one that adapts to the particularities of the ecommerce, and work from there with a basic package, you can always increase it as your business demands (although sometimes, due to the needs of each business, you may need to start with a package a little more extensive than the most basic). We will try to give you some basic guidelines to determine if a hosting meets the needs we require for an online store or if it is more intended for corporate websites, where the content is little and small.

We also want to make one thing clear right from the start: While it’s true that the maxim “everything expensive is better” is a bit of a cliché, better service (especially when it comes to technical support) generally requires you to pay more for a hosting server. Our recommendation is that you shouldn’t skimp here, just as you wouldn’t skimp when it comes to fixing your car’s engine or fixing the plumbing in your house. Remember this In Hostings, cheap is expensive

How to know if a hosting is good or bad?

Support

Don’t be sold a lie. The most important thing about any hosting is its customer service and technical support. Your shop will have ups, downs, crashes, problems… and you need someone to help you at any time. Check carefully, or even ask the provider directly, what kind of customer support they offer. The worst thing that can happen is that your website is down and you can’t get a response from technical support. Therefore, take into account those companies that offer free 24/7 support, support in your language, as well as different forms of contact. It won’t do you any good to have the best hosting on the net if you are not able to communicate properly with the technical team.

Backups

Many times things happen, even things that you cause without realizing it, that destroy our store and it is necessary to recover a recent version that is safe. That’s why it’s very important that your hosting offers backups for your ecommerce files. Ask for all the info about what plans they offer with respect to file recovery, how often backups are made, etc. This is crucial to keep an ecommerce up and running no matter what.

Accessibility

There is nothing worse than a “capped” hosting where you can’t do anything and you depend on technical support for everything. This is very inefficient for the day to day running of any online store. It is important to make sure that the hosting you choose allows you to access the server so you can easily create new email accounts, make changes to the server configuration, import files…etc.

Uptime

The worst thing that can happen to your online store is that your users can’t access it because of downtime problems (too many requests to the server that the hosting provider, due to low capacity, is not able to process at the same time, and makes your page fall). That’s why it’s key that you choose a provider that offers you an operability as close to 99% or 100%. This may not always be the case, but ideally it should be within these values. Remember that the loading time is CRUCIAL in any website, we are in a time where more than 3 seconds to load means losing 70% of your users. These are dizzying figures, especially if you translate them into possible lost sales.

Domain included

Almost all hosting providers also offer domain service, so it is important to have it in the same place. It is not convenient to have the hosting on one side and the domain on the other, especially because having it in the same provider, most likely offers you the possibility of having multiple domains similar to the one you already have, and it is much more practical to have them all controlled from the same control panel. Playing with different domains also allows you to get more traffic, that typical of the absent-minded person who doesn’t remember the name of your website and gets confused in the “.es” or “.com”. But be careful, it also generates duplicate content (different links pointing to the same content), and that will have a negative impact on your SEO. Don’t start making crazy domains because it can be very counterproductive.

Of course, we can help you. We have a hosting service specially dedicated to ecommerce and to work exclusively with Prestashop and WordPress. Optimized by professionals with the best cache configurations to achieve optimal performance of your online store. With SSD hard drives in raid and with internal or external Anycast CDN media servers to help better performance. With easy to use hosting panels like DirectAdmin and VestaCP.

In short, a great hosting nugget specially designed to operate in ecommerce. What are you waiting for to get some more info?

And you know, any doubt, comment, grief, glory, or gossip, here we are.

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