Having a presence on the worldwide web is likely the most important thing you can do to improve your business in the Internet Age. Consider, over 2 billion people use the internet everyday to shop, study, and work, according to Internet World Stats. Of course, just having a website isn’t enough. You need to optimize it and ensure that people can find it easily. As The Houston Chronicle points out, blogging on your website, for example, can increase your traffic by 55%, giving you more chances to make a sale.
One of the best ways to get a great website started is by using WordPress. It’s free and it’s easy to use the WordPress developer to make a great looking site. Subsequently, according to WordPress, there are more than 72 million WordPress sites out there. The thing is that no matter how great web application designs or eCommerce websites built through WordPress are, they won’t mean a thing if they are hosted through low quality services specializing in hosting WordPress sites. If you want your site to be successful, you have to find a high quality solution for hosting WordPress sites you own.
What to Look for when Hosting WordPress Sites with a Service
- Look for a Host with Great Up-time
- How Much Bandwidth Do You Use?
- Keep an Eye Out for “Unlimited Storage” Promises
- Easy Design and Content Creation Functionality
As About.com’s Online Business points out, the most crucial factor when choosing a company for hosting WordPress sites is their up-time. Up-time measures how much of the year is spent with your host being functional and your website accessible to incoming consumers. If your host is up 99.999% of the time, for example, that means they are only down for approximately 5 minutes out of the year, maximizing your potential exposure.
The New York Times suggests that everyone looking for a company specializing in hosting WordPress sites thinks about how much bandwidth they truly need. Bandwidth is the amount of data transferred over a specified amount of time. For instance, many hosts will offer 5gb per month of bandwidth. If you have especially high traffic, host a lot of videos or pictures, and produce a lot of new blog content, then you’ll likely need to consider higher bandwidth limits, or risk having your site shut down.
Many WordPress hosting services will advertise an “unlimited storage” promise. However, as HongKiat points out, these same services will find ways around that promise, using their Terms of Service agreement that all clients have to agree to. Make sure you read the fine print to find out how much data your plan really allots you.
Whatever service you choose for hosting WordPress sites, make sure it allows you to easily update your design, implement popular WordPress widgets, and give access to a professional web development team, should you decide to go that route. As LifeHacker writes, this will be the difference between a constantly evolving site and one that is difficult to improve going forward.
Building, designing, and maintaining a website is hugely important if you want to market your company on the worldwide web. However, you have to be sure to consider where you’re hosting WordPress sites as well. Doing so, you can ensure an accessible, easy to change page that will be only a boon to your brand going forward. More research here.