Today, the effectiveness of digital marketing is all about conversion rate optimization (CRO) — a strategic process for converting web traffic into sales. In today’s digital marketing environment of in-the-moment decisions, the patience levels and attention spans of website visitors are shorter than ever. As a result, any impediment a visitor encounters can literally be the split-second where you lose that prospect’s attention. Often for good.
The fact is, any moderate savings offered by cheap web hosting services are far outweighed by a number of hidden costs. Many of these can be fatal to your website’s core functionality, search rankings and your overall brand image. Here are some reasons why the web hosting infrastructure you choose is crucial to digital marketing success:
The unprecedented need for fast loading sites
Current best practices dictate a web page should load in less than 3 seconds. Fast website loading speeds are essential in order to both retain visitors and boost search engine quality scores. Superior web hosting providers achieve these requisite speeds through the use of components such as solid state server drives, advanced caching technologies, cloud delivery networks and leading-edge system software.
The ability to handle escalating traffic volumes
A successful digital marketing campaign will generate a massive and sudden escalation of visitor traffic for your site, potentially causing a slowdown of resources being served to visitors. Top-flight hosting services provide the scalable web infrastructure needed to handle the related spikes in traffic — along with the ability to accommodate substantial numbers of concurrent visitors.
Real-time monitoring of security and performance issues
Along with regular updates to servers and systems, high-quality webhosts perform many proactive functions to ensure 100% uptime and a seamless user experience. These include identification and repair for pages that aren’t loading properly; protection from hackers, security breaches and malware; rapid replacement of failed hardware components; and offsite backups to safeguard against file corruption and data disasters.
Optimized server configuration with ample speed and headroom.
Many low-end hosting services keep prices low by packing multiple sites on a single server at one or a limited number of physical locations. Upper-level webhosts offer features such as dedicated hosting (a single site on a dedicated server) and global cloud networks. These networks store multiple instances of your site at localized datacenters. By establishing multiple “localities” for your site, global cloud networks reduce the physical distance your data needs to travel – reducing page load times — and in turn optimizing your site for search and CRO.
Many marketers today assume most web hosting providers offer pretty much the same levels of service and technology. But it’s more important than ever to choose the right web hosting provider for your enterprise. Fast-loading, finely tuned web infrastructure is essential in order to address performance needs for conversion rate optimization (CRO) — to ensure the uptime, security and integrity needed for customer confidence — and to achieve the ranking levels needed to generate robust organic traffic and lead generation.