Posts Tagged ‘Bandwidth’
Growing too big for your web host
Technology and adaptability is problem akin with many new startup business that experience great success and rapid growth.
Generally most startup businesses are one or two man (or women) businesses that are for obvious reasons, run on a very tight budget.
Over time, some of these startup businesses are fortunate enough to experience rapid growth and see their businesses go to great heights, but whilst this is occurring, there often remains a problem with the original technology solution they started with that may be hindering performance in the long term.
In terms of e-commerce and web hosting, these problems may be poorly designed web pages, or database structure which can sometimes be costly to fix if left unattended, and often should be addressed as soon as possible, when time and budget allow.
Other problems, and fortunately easily curable issues, but those that have an obvious and immediate impact on the business is the choice of web hosting company, or in some case web hosting solution that has been selected to host a fast growing website.
It is all too easy to order a very cheap web hosting account, which is sufficient in the short term whilst you develop your business, but when your business grows legs and takes off, can your web host handle it?
The most obvious problem you will encounter with increased growth in your e-business is traffic. This is usually the bad issue that you really want to have. Traffic is the page requests to your site or browsing, so in simple terms, traffic = customers, but there are bandwidth considerations.
Bandwidth is basically the amount of data, and the speed at which the data travels from the server to your computer.
Bandwidth issues are obvious in a few ways:
- Speed is affected. Your hosting server might not be able to keep up with the requirements of the vast number of visitors your site attracts.
- If you exceed the amount of bandwidth allocated to you, you may incur high excess usage charges.
- If your web hosting company only allows you to send or receive a small amount of data, then they may lock your account, which is embarrassing and unprofessional if your site says “suspended, contact accounts” as most companies will display with default hosting control panel software.
Last month we published an article on dead clicks, which explains how having your website down costs you money if you are running a pay per click campaign. This is a similar problem encountered when you exceed your bandwidth.
Other issues might related to the actual server that you’re hosting with. Shared hosting is great for small businesses as it is cost effective, but if your site is running intensive applications, then you might be too big for your own boots, and it’s times like these when you need to consider finding a hosting supplier that can handle your demands, or look at hosting your own dedicated server.
The cost considerations associated with these upgrade paths can sometimes be hard to swallow, but in most cases, these perceived problems are good problems that you want.
A busy website is a successful website, one which gives you opportunity to promote and sell your product.
When choosing a web provider, whether you are running a start up or blue chip supplier, you should look for a few factors:
- Cost, location, specification of hardware, software and network
- Account limitations - does it come with a lock-out limit, or will you incur high fees for excess usage?
- Upgrade path - can your host meet your current and future demands? Can they easily add more resources at the press of a button, or will you outgrow them and need to go through the trouble of relocating your website to a new host?
Search King is an expert in Web Hosting and Search Engine marketing, and we can’t stress enough that “traffic is king”, so whilst hosting your site with a quality hosting company may be an expensive exercise, if you have the volumes of traffic and potential customers, then you really don’t have a problem, and it’s now a matter of you turning that traffic into converted sales.
