Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of businesses have begun to adopt a digital-first strategy, and e-commerce is one of the biggest adopters in the retail sector. The closures and public health concerns for retail employees as well as consumers have led to a mass transition to online sales. All these limitations in physical interaction have strangled years of digital sales to just a few months. In response, retail businesses have scrambled, updated and adjusted their usual brick-and-mortar operations and implemented an online e-commerce strategy to keep up with the pace.
Despite the spike in e-commerce, not all online sellers and product categories benefit from the rise of digitization. Most e-commerce websites find it extremely difficult to keep up with market fluctuations and customer needs, while other businesses fail due to terrible loading speeds, guaranteed Poor security and improperly managed web server.
It’s a common misconception among business owners that just having a website will help them thrive in the digital world, thus most of them overlook the importance of the fundamentals. e-commerce website versions, such as responsive design, user-friendliness, multiple payment options, and web hosting.
That’s right, an ecommerce web hosting service is absolutely necessary as it is the foundation on which the website is built and thus helps the website to provide high quality services to the public.
Therefore, if you don’t want your ecommerce site to end up like many failed pages, make sure that you take hosting as well as website design and development.
So, are you ready to learn more about ecommerce hosting? Then let’s start from the very basics!
What is Ecommerce Hosting?
Not just an e-commerce site, but every website on the internet needs one basic thing to get online: a web host. Web hosting services provide an online business website with a server that the website will reside on. This gives the website the ability to connect to the internet and allows potential customers to access it. So, by hosting your website online, you are buying the right to have server space and also get different services from the host like security and web optimization.
It can be quite confusing for a business to choose a host for the first time as hosting comes in many different forms and specializations. Some hosting types are individually named according to the hardware they are based on, while others have custom packages with different features required for an e-commerce website. It will include many features required for successful operation of an e-commerce website, such as SSL encryption, payment gateways, security features, or auto-scaling to accommodate high bandwidth, controllability, and more. This is actually quite essential for websites that offer sales and offers.
Things to keep in mind when choosing an ecommerce hosting provider
There are several features that every ecommerce hosting provider should have. Therefore, if you are looking for the best website host for your online store, keep these key features in mind.
1. High performance
Unlike normal online websites, an e-commerce website will have lots of daily visitors browsing through different pages and searching for suitable products. Having more visitors to your website is great, but the downside is that it will make your site slower and can also lead to problems. Therefore, when choosing a web hosting company, make sure that you prioritize the speed and reliability of your website.
If your website or the product pages within it don’t load fast enough, it can lead to consumers leaving your site and visiting a competitor’s site. Almost every web hosting company advertises itself as the fastest and most secure service provider, so it is essential that you look at the reviews, customer testimonials, and even use Try the demo before choosing one.
2. Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN is essential for an e-commerce website and it is often included in hosting services. Most brick-and-mortar retail stores are turning to e-commerce to serve more customers in different geographical locations and if you want to do the same with your e-commerce store then you will need a CDN. A content delivery network is a system of servers spread over a wide geographical area, which means they are distributed globally.
Therefore, when a potential customer from a completely different country visits your website, they will be directed to a nearby CDN server, making loading times much faster. Additionally, you should choose an e-commerce host that offers features like performance and uptime monitoring. Such capabilities are essential for e-commerce websites that serve an international audience because they can quickly warn if the server is having problems or if the website is taking a long time to load.
3. Bandwidth and file storage
E-commerce websites often contain large amounts of high-resolution product images, customer reviews, PHP, CSS or JavaScript files, etc that can take up a lot of space. Especially as we mentioned earlier, there will be a lot of clients accessing the pages, so all images or details have to be loaded appropriately for each client without any caching. any. Therefore, disk space, also known as memory or web space is something that should be carefully analyzed while choosing your web hosting plan.
Disk space is the amount of server storage available to store the content (text, images, code, databases, etc.) So, as you might have guessed, it is important for online websites, especially e-commerce sites to have a large amount of disk space safely and quickly, which in the end can provide a huge boost to your online success.
4. Expandable Storage
Most websites on the internet don’t have to be updated often and will only have to be updated every 6 months to make it SEO-friendly. But that is absolutely not the case with e-commerce websites. In online e-commerce sites, there may be new products added or removed at least every week.
In addition, website traffic will always change, especially during sales and offers, there may be a spike in customers, while traffic may not be the same when compared. compared to other days. All of this indicates that the site must be scalable; it must be flexible to meet customer needs and changing market conditions.
Your e-commerce site may need a lot of CPU, RAM, and other resources in some seasons and may not need them in seasons when it doesn’t. Therefore, the host you choose should be able to seamlessly integrate all these additional requirements whenever you need them. Today, cloud hosting is the most reliable solution for such flexible requirements as it allows you to easily upgrade your plan or request additional features whenever you want and get integrated. match immediately.
5. Advanced Security
Customers are clearly making a purchase on an e-commerce site at one point or another. They can choose to receive cash on delivery or pay online for which they will have to provide personal information and sensitive data such as debit or credit card numbers, PIN numbers, addresses, etc. This client is more beneficial to hackers than just names or email addresses, that’s why there are more hacked e-commerce websites than normal websites.
As a business owner, your priority should be to provide your online visitors with a secure website experience starting from their first browsing through to their final purchase. Especially, if you are new to the online world, you may not fully know how to keep your website secure. There are ecommerce hosting providers that provide full details on keeping your website secure. Therefore, while choosing a hosting, choose one that offers excellent all-round website protection, including the formidable Web Application Firewall (WAF) and can also mitigate attacks. distributed denial of service (DDoS).
Conclusion
Always keep in mind that choosing an ecommerce hosting plan is a long-term investment and it’s not just about saving a few dollars. A good hosting is sure to generate a positive ROI in the long run as it has the ability to enhance the website experience for the users, which in turn can bring more visitors to your site. In addition, it also takes care of the security of your website, enhances website performance, and makes it much easier for administrators to manage the site. Furthermore, remember to choose a hosting plan that will not only meet your e-commerce needs now, but will continue to do so as your online business expands over time.
All of this can be a challenge for a retail business new to the online world. Everything from choosing a web hosting provider to choosing the right platform like Magento, WooCommerce or Shopify can seem daunting and complicated. This is why most business owners depend on digital marketing agencies for website development in Toronto . With their expertise in developing similar websites, these marketing agencies will be well aware of the best hosting services and platforms a business requires to succeed in the online world.