Does your web host suck?
How Web Hosting Providers Differ
Your website hosting provider offers the technology to have your website go as quickly as possible. Think of the code on your website as Michael Schumacher, a former racing driver. He knows exactly what he’s doing, but if he’s chucked in a Getz, he’s not going to be going that fast. He’s going to be going at the speed that he could go. If he’s chucked in a Ford Model T, he’s still going to be the best Ford Model T driver out there, but he’s going to be better off driving a Formula One car, isn’t he?
Find a Decent Web Hosting Provider
If your web hosting provider isn’t giving you great hardware to sit on, your website is going to be loading slowly. That’s something that is within your control. By changing your web host, you should be making sure that you’ve gone with someone who’s offering decent speed.
Make sure the server is local to where your audience is. If you’re operating an Australian business in the Australian border and you need to have that business servicing only Australian customers, have the server in Australia.
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Host in the Same Country Your Business Is In
If you’re paying for Adwords and your website’s loading slowly, you’re going to have more expensive Adwords and a bigger bounce rate, so the customers that come to your site are going to bounce off quicker because the website is loading slowly.
If your website is on a server that’s hosted overseas, your Google position, when people search for you, will be further down for the people that are within Australia. So, your audience will be catered with a preference to wherever your server is.
If your server is in India and your customers are in Australia, people in India can search for your business more easily than the people in Australia.
Ask Questions
Make sure that you’re asking questions when you’re getting a web hosting plan. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If they’re giving you unlimited data, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, unlimited everything, then there’s going to be a limit that they’re not talking about, and that might be a limit in the speed that your site’s loading. It could also mean a limit in the amount of requests that your site might be able to have before they cap your speeds.
There’s always a balance for hosting sites to continue to make money. People who charge $20 to $30 a month for website hosting and people who charge a dollar a month for hosting will both be making money. Those who are charging $30 a month are not making 30 times the amount of money. They’re using better equipment or corporate-grade stuff that allows for your website to load faster.
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How to Test Website Loading Speed
Now, it can be hard to test hosting speed, especially as a business owner. There are a few different tools out there that you can use. One of them is yougetsignal.com. They’ve got a tool here called Reverse IP Lookup, which lets you see what the IP address is, where your server is, and that lets you see how many people are on that same server so that can get you an idea of how your resources are being divided on that server.
That can obviously give you some insights into how fast your site can load. One of the other ones is loadimpact.com. You go to loadimpact.com and you put your website there. It’ll show you how fast your site is going to load when there are more and more people accessing it at the same time, and you need to make sure you have an optimised, fast site when you do this.
Otherwise, it’s just going to compound the problem of a slow site loading slower, but it’ll still be an impact that will give you insight into how your site is loading and performing on that machine.
The Final Word
Hope this has been helpful, and if there are any other questions that people have, feel free to email through to [email protected], and we can go through those and find out how we can help you out.
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