3 Reasons That Hosting Can Help Your Website's Performance
Published 8 July, 2021
People won’t put up with slow website speeds any longer, and rightly so. Now that much of the world has access to high-speed internet connections at home and on the move, there’s no reason to wait around for a web page to load. If a site takes longer than necessary, you will bounce to another one – and you should expect the same of your customers.
Essentially, the user experience is tied to the speed of your platform, which means consumers will gladly bounce to a competitor’s website if you fail to deliver. Thankfully, web hosts can ensure your site never under-performs. Here’s why.
Experienced Hosts Know Shortcuts
The problem with modern sites and pages and sites is that they often need to transfer or fetch hundreds of files before they appear on the screen. Given that nearly 50% of people believe a page should load in under three seconds, you haven’t got much time to spare. With an experienced and skilled web host, you can use their understanding of the industry to your advantage. For instance, a quality host will leverage browser caching to improve loading times. By doing this, your customers store some of your information on their computers. As a result, their devices don’t need to download as many files the next time they attempt to load up the platform, significantly reducing loading times.
Design Integration Reduces Redirects
In the past, mobile devices were often afterthoughts. If people shopped online, they did it via a laptop or desktop computer, not a smartphone or tablet. Today, over two-thirds of internet shoppers use mobiles to proceed to checkouts. Therefore, it’s essential to provide a mobile-friendly experience, such as a mobile website, to prevent navigation issues. Through hosts, it’s possible to eliminate multiple versions of your company’s digital platform, instead opting for a single website that uses integration tactics to adjust to the needs of consumers. This reduces the number of redirects and permissions required to load a web page, making the website much quicker when people click through.
Performance Scaling Is Straightforward
Of course, it’s sometimes difficult to deal with the sheer number of people requesting access to your site. When this happens, experiencing downtime is almost inevitable because the traffic will force the platform to crash. What you need is extra power to deal with the increased demand, something that web hosts offer via scalable performance techniques. By changing your RAM and PHP memory limits, for instance, you can react to spikes in traffic without the need to go offline and appear ill-equipped to deal with demand. Providers such as IONOS can give you level 5 performance by boosting RAM up to 19GB with a 768MB PHP memory limit. That means your site can handle up to 500 visitors per minute, in theory.
Should You Improve Your Site’s Performance?
The simple answer is yes. Although rapid internet speeds mean that most platforms load quickly, the reality is that you probably haven’t analyzed whether your site is fast in comparison with your rivals. This is essential, since reports show businesses may lose 7% of their conversions for every second over the threshold that customers must wait. That figure, by the way, is three seconds.
You’ve done the hard work and created an effective site that generates leads and makes sales. You shouldn’t let that go to waste by ignoring the benefits of web hosting.