Did You Get The Best Website Host Provider?

In order to get the most production out of your employees, you need to give them the best tools to work with.

If you run a hotel, having the best accommodations, location, amenities etc. makes the jobs of your workers easier. For those who run an insurance business, offering the latest products and best savings gives your employees a step up on the competition. So, do you see a common thread in all of this?

The bottom line is that the more up to speed you are on what customers want, the better chance you stand in accruing more of them.

Is Your Website Truly Functional?

One area that certainly should not be overlooked in today’s Internet-driven age is your company’s website provider.

Face it, having a reliable website in 2014 is a no-brainer. Without one, you could find your revenue hurting among other negative results.

Without a properly functioning website in place, your company can miss out on:

• Online sales – A larger percentage of companies have invested the time and effort in doing online sales in recent years. Just to give you an example of this skyrocketing area of business, comScore reported that U.S. desktop retail e-commerce spending for the first 29 days of the November-December 2013 holiday period accounted for some $20.6 billion in sales, a 3-percent uptick from the same period in 2012. Imagine if you had just a small piece of that pie?
• Top flight customer service – One of the staples of your business should be providing your customers (both current and potential ones that reach out to your business) with top-notch service. If your website host is marginal at best, you can run into myriad of problems. Not being able to access customer information when necessary is among the biggest issues you can run into. Look at it in another window…. What if your office phone system was quite simply a mess? How would your employees get work done (see more below) and how would consumers reach you? Just as having the right phone system, perhaps one like a hosted IP PBX is important to your company’s ability to communicate daily in and out of the office, so too is the right website provider.
• Employee frustration – Nothing spells trouble for a business owner like employee frustration. If your company site is oftentimes slowed and/or breaking down, it can lead to frustration on the part of your workers. When that happens, what should be a daily flow of productive work is suddenly stymied, sometimes leading to work not getting done, employees left to twiddle their thumbs, and revenue dollars being missed. You pay your workers for a reason; having a reliable company website for them to work off of is where it all begins.

Given these three issues and the others that can crop up without the right website host provider, is it time for you to review your website hosting options in 2014?

If the answer is yes, keep the following in mind:

• Research matters – Don’t pick the first website host provider you come across. Be sure to they are thoroughly checked out by you and/or your staff for reliability, availability when problems arise (see below), and fair pricing (see below).
• Price does matter – Although there is a good chance that you are a savvy business owner who is looking to save money, don’t automatically go with the cheapest host provider. Remember, there is probably a good reason they are the least expensive. Although there are some quality host providers out there with very affordable rates, make sure you get what you want when you pay for it.
• Response time matters – Lastly, everyone knows that tech problems can occur at all times of the day. With that in mind, your host provider should offer 24/7 tech support. If you operate a business that runs 24/7 (call centers for example), you can’t afford a tech problem and no service available at 5 a.m. Remember, the longer period of time your site is offline, the increased chances of losing sales and customers.

With the right website host provider, the sky can be the limit as far as your company’s online options.