The internet has completely rebooted the modern business world, with pretty much every industry reaping the benefits of getting online. Whether you use a website for eCommerce purposes, or as a way to further establish yourself as a brand, your site needs to demonstrate to your audience that it’s a company worth doing business with.
Website hosting will give you the means to take your site to the next level and create something truly beneficial to your business. With the help of Websitequest, we listed some of the key advantages for your brand that come with web hosting.
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A Quality Website for a Quality Business
For your audience to spend some of their hard-earned cash, you need to provide a sense of quality — not just in the service or product you sell, but in all aspects of your business. As it’s such a crucial aspect of your company, your website should be a clear representation of just how awesome your business is.
Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. If you’re greeted by a landing page that looks like it was put together in a matter of minutes, with minimal effort and creativity in its design, would you bother to check out the other pages? Unlikely.
Now imagine you’re a customer who has stumbled upon a website with a style that oozes creativity, has a user-friendly design for easy navigation through menus and a quick, fluid experience throughout. You’re instantly impressed by the quality of the site and immediately assume that this same quality is replicated in the service they provide. That’s what you want web users thinking about your business, so optimise your brand’s perception with an accessible, professional-standard website. The quality shown through a site’s performance and creative brilliance is achievable with the attributes of a professionally hosted site.
Free Web Hosting Has Its Limits
For many companies, including small businesses and startups, sticking to a tight budget is vital for longevity, especially in the early days. It’s for this reason that some business owners may opt for free web hosting, but while it may save some coin, this option includes some unhelpful limitations.
Free hosting does have its benefits early on, especially if you’re a blogger looking for a platform to get your site off the ground. But for businesses, the use of free web hosting doesn’t exactly scream professionalism.
You’ll soon find that there will be minimal creative options for the design of your site and the ways in which you’re able to present content. Everything from themes, fonts and content variation will be limited, which will make it a near-impossible task to create something unique and completely different from the competition.
A lack of creativity with your website will leave visitors uninspired and looking for somewhere else to take their business. Paying for web hosting will give you access to ‘premium’ features of website design, providing you with endless creative possibilities.
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Push Your Brand
Take a quick look around the room. From the computer you’re reading this on, to the phone you probably spend a bit too much time on, or even the mug you drink your coffee from, branding is everywhere. Aside from their primary function, all of your everyday items will represent a brand.
Quality web hosting not only gives you the creative freedom to produce a website that actually represents the ideology of your business; it also allows you to solidify yourself as a brand, through a trademark style of design and content.
Another essential part of web hosting and branding is domain registration. This means that instead of having a domain that’s affiliated with a hosting site like WordPress, you’ll now have your own custom domain. This will further establish your brand and create a more professional business image.
Performance
The performance of your website is crucial. No matter how great it looks or how interesting the content is, if your site takes too long to load up or generally a clunky experience, your bounce rate is going to keep increasing until you sort it out.
If your website is for eCommerce purposes, poor performance is a major issue. You can do as much promotion as you like, but if your slow website is making it a chore for your audience to complete a sale, your competition will snap up your disgruntled customers with ease.
Investing in web hosting will give you access to more advanced hardware, more bandwidth to play with and a larger amount of disk space. All of this means you’ll be able to handle more traffic and maintain a successful business website, without the fear of it going down — which would be dreadful for business and a dream come true for your competitors.
Your website is just one cog in the complicated machine that is running a business. In the digital era, though, it’s one of the most important components of all, so look after it. Website hosting allows you to create a site that you’re happy with and an authentic representation of your company. An impressive website will directly affect the success of your business, so it’s safe to say business will be booming if your site engages your target audience effectively. Investing in quality web hosting is perhaps the best way to ensure that engagement.
