Some businesses will spend whatever they need to for good, quality brochures and sales presentations but go for the cheapest hosting package they can when it comes to their website.
Actually, a website has become more important that a brochure or business card in today’s online-driven world. It’s often the first place people go when they’re looking for a product or service. Even if you have a lovely local shop, your potential customers are judging you by how you look online via your website.
Your business website shouldn’t take a backseat when it comes to your sales and marketing plan. It’s where many companies now get most of their leads and sales and is also makes it easy for clients to contact them for support.
At Panic Button Tech, quality web hosting is just one of the many business-building IT services we offer organizations. We’ve had many businesses in the Temecula Valley area and beyond come to us for help when an inadequate hosting plan was costing them business.
70% to 80% of people research a company online before making a purchase or visiting them in person.
According to online marketing experts, Blue Corona, up to 80% of people will look for your website before they even walk in the door. And if it’s slow loading or not up 100% of the time, they’ll move on to a competitor.
This fact actually helps small businesses compete with larger organizations, because with the right website, you can outshine companies that may be three times your size.
Online marketing that brings people to your website can also be much less expensive than a blanket mailing and bring you customers outside your immediate area.
Top Three Marketing Tools Used by Small Businesses
The internet is a great equalizer when it comes to marketing your business. That’s why you’ll hear many success stories of a company hitting it big even if they don’t have a brick and mortar location.
It’s no surprise that the top three marketing tools small companies use to grow their sales are all reaching customers online:
- Email (54%)
- Website (51%)
- Social Media (48%)
5 Important Reasons You Want to Avoid Cheap Website Hosting
With so much of your success riding on your business website, you definitely don’t want to get a hosting plan that’s not going to give you the support or room to grow that you need.
Our Panic Button Tech Business Solutions Team put together our five most important reasons you should have quality website hosting.
- Slow Website Speed
When you’re on a free or cheap hosting plan, you’re typically sharing a part of a server with hundreds (or thousands) of other websites. Your speed can be negatively impacted by all the traffic in the “neighborhood.”
40% of visitors will typically leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load (Website Magazine). So, a slow site could be costing you quite a few potential customers.
- Excess Bandwidth & Other Extra Charges
If you don’t read the fine print before you click on cheap web hosting, you could end up paying much more than you thought. We’ve known customers that were charged hundreds of dollars for monthly bandwidth overages when they received more traffic than their plan allowed for.
Things like securing your site with “Https”, which Google ranks higher than non-secure sites, can also cost you extra, so by the time you add up any needed add-ons, you’re not getting such a great deal after all.
- Lack of Control Over Your Software
If your hosting provider decides to change one of the backbone technologies on the server, like MySQL, you could end up having a broken contact form or a whole website that goes down, with you left wondering what went wrong.
You have much less control over the server environment used to host your website when you get a free or cheap hosting plan. This can also severely limit your ability to build the site you want if the server doesn’t support the minimum requirements you need.
- Email Blocking Problems
Websites aren’t the only thing hosted on a web server, your domain-based emails are there too. Spammers often use the cheapest servers they can for sending out spam, until ultimately the server gets its IP blacklisted by certain ISPs (like AT&T for example). This means that if you go cheap on your web hosting, you could end up with a blacklisted IP address and rejected or spam marked company emails through no fault of your own.
- Lack of Customer Support
When your website goes down in the middle of a busy Wednesday is when the value of customer support really becomes apparent. Many cheap providers don’t even provide phone support, you have to email or leave them a support ticket.
Getting immediate and expert tech support for your website is something that can be priceless when a critical issue happens. It’s something you definitely don’t want to overlook.
Looking for Quality, Affordable Website Hosting?
You can get quality website hosting that comes with 24/7 uptime monitoring for a very reasonable price. Our hosting plans start at just $15 per month. We can even help you with content creation too!
Check out our excellent hosting plans here or our call us today at 951-501-8008 to learn more.