Importance of a Website and the Best Web Hosting for Small Businesses

Everything starts small and then grows big, even businesses. By definition, a small business is a business that is owned independently and is limited in terms of size and revenue generated. For instance, a cake shop or a web design agency with an employee size of 10-12 can be said to be a small business. Furthermore, the upper limit to the employee count is 500. Thus, if your business falls under the bracket of 1 – 500 employees you are a small business.

Moving on, irrespective of your business size in today’s competitive online trending world having a social presence is a must. Be it a Facebook business page, Twitter or Instagram to engage more users and reach a wider audience base, however, a business website is also a must and shouldn’t be overlooked.

In this article, we’ll be covering the importance of a business website and the best hosting for small business websites. So let us begin!

Importance of a website

If we were to say, having a business website adds to a business’s credibility, wouldn’t you agree? You most likely would! In fact, it is easier to browse through a website listed on Google as it is more detailed along with your YouTube, Facebook Marketplace or Instagram.

In fact, according to a report, 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, whereas, another finding says, only 64% of small businesses have their own website. If we are to go by the results of these two findings, we can conclude the importance of having a business website. Chances are 64% of businesses will perform better than you in gaining an audience and broadening their outreach. Retaining the customer, however, is a secondary thing.

Let us see the top 4 reasons why having a business website is important:

1. Your website shows up in the local internet search results, resulting in more people to know about your existence.
2. You can leverage your digital marketing strategy by running dedicated campaigns on social media and linking back to your website for more in-depth information.
3. You can collect customer information by asking them to subscribe and keep in touch with them on a timely basis with the right email marketing.
4. Content is king, and you can use it to sell products to your customers by attracting them with the right words and information. Your website is like a one-stop-shop for customers looking for a dedicated product, albeit, a virtual one. Thriftbooks, an online bookstore is one example of a website that is a virtual bookstore and has steadily grown over the years.

Now, that we’ve seen the importance of a website for your small business. Let us move on to tackle the next big thing, the backend of your website. You may wonder, why the backend? However, you must know the technicalities while running your website.

Things to look out in web hosting

Imagine you finally decide to set up your website and are launching it at 11 AM local time. The invites have been mailed, the social media poster launched and bang as the clock strikes 11, your current and potential future customers click on the much-awaited link! However, to their surprise and your utter horror, the website is down because the server you hosted on crashed due to or your website loads slowly because of so much traffic. And if this is a recurring issue, instead of your website helping you gain more customers it will end up making you lose more customers. Tragic, isn’t it? Calm down, it isn’t tragic, the right web hosting can help you avoid this problem, however, what is the right web hosting?

When it comes to web hosting solutions for a small business there is always a doubt which is the best hosting for small businesses? Before tackling that question, let us first understand what are the things that you need to look out for in web hosting.

1. Managed Servers 
   Being a small business you will have a limited number of employees to manage your business and marketing activities. Along with that if you were told that you even need to manage the technical aspect of running your website, it might complicate matters. Web hosting that provides managed services is simple and helps take care of your business website by maintaining it, upgrading the software, managing the security, backup and much more so that you can concentrate on running your business without worrying about the website. Our Advantage: We offer managed hosting services that are simple and secure along with an easy intuitive dashboard, cPanel, for free to help you navigate through your orders easily. This means you can take care of running your business while we take care of the website management.
2. Website loading speed 
   Website loading speed is an important factor when it comes to how your customers feel about your website. According to a survey, 40% of users abandon a site if it takes 3 mins to load. To make sure your website visitors don’t get the same experience which, in turn, can hamper your performance make sure to choose a web hosting service that offers good load speed. Our Advantage: Our web hosting services, especially Cloud Hosting comes with varnish cache and ZFS storage. Varnish cache helps in boosting your website speed by 1000x that means, blazing fast website load speed, while, ZFS ensures there is no single point of failure!
3. Support 
   System admin support is very important in case you are stuck with something and don’t know how to proceed further. A good web hosting service provider will always offer 24/7 website support. Our Advantage: We offer round-the-clock expert website support to resolve any of your technical queries to provide uninterrupted services.
4. Resource upgradation 
   Today you are a small business, tomorrow your performance may multiple and you will outgrow your hosting resources. At this time, it is important that your hosting provider offers resources upgradation like RAM, CPU, etc.to accommodate your growing traffic. Our Advantages: Our hosting plans are easily scalable. We offer easy single click upgradation of hosting resources like RAM, OS and CPU with our Cloud Hosting.

Best web hosting for small business

Having seen what are the things that your chosen web hosting should have it is time to figure out which web hosting is best for small businesses?

There are several web hosting options available, however, one that we would recommend to small businesses is Cloud Hosting. In Cloud hosting your website data is stored across multiple devices, which improves redundancy and website load time. Moreover, it offers all the above features, along with, data mirroring, several 1-click application installations like WordPress, Joomla, etc. an intuitive panel to monitor your resources and much more. Above all reliability is of utmost importance and Cloud Hosting promises that and we believe it is the best hosting for small business.

We hope this article helped you in understanding the importance of having your own business website, as well as, choosing the web hosting solutions for your small business. If you have any queries or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.