Part of the Website Ownership Tips video series.
Greetings! For today’s tip, I want you to think about the #1 most important part of your website’s performance: your hosting server. This is the foundation, the infrastructure, of your website. If you care about how fast your website loads, this trumps any other performance trick I can offer you.
So here’s my exercise for you: pull up your website and count how many seconds it takes to load your homepage. Then come back.
Why load time matters
How many seconds would you consider a “fast” website? According to Google, under 3 seconds is fast. But what if you’re a small business watching expenses and don’t need the fastest website? In that case, let’s try to get it under 5. If your website takes more than 5 seconds to load, I can almost guarantee you’re losing business.
Studies show that every extra second of load time potentially causes people to drop off and abandon your website. If that’s someone who isn’t already your customer, but might have been if your site loaded quicker, ask yourself: what’s the dollar value of that lost business?
Improve load time with a cloud server upgrade
Now take that number and compare it with the cost of a hosting upgrade. The high-performance cloud servers I use are exponentially faster and more secure than a cheap starter hosting plan.
If you want to improve your website’s foundation, ask me for a quote. I’d love to consider adding you to my portfolio of lightning-fast cloud servers and help you deliver the fastest website experience possible to your customers.
And if you own a web design or marketing business, please use this pitch to educate your clients as we work together to speed up small business websites!
If you have questions about hosting servers (how important they are, how to choose one, which hosting company to select), please contact me. I’d love to guide you through this important decision.
About the author
Leighton Smith is Pioneer Media’s website designer, web developer and webmaster, based in East Tennessee. As a solopreneur, he is each client’s one point of contact and has built hundreds of websites since learning to code in 2006.
