Jan 13, 2015 : 3 Essentials for e-Commerce Web Hosting

📅 January 13, 2015 - Just as customers out in a physical marketplace would want a store to be open, easy to navigate and safe to buy from, potential customers have something close to the same expectations in browsing the web for shopping. E-commerce requires managed web hosting, and that requires an understanding of what makes a functioning site that customers would want to return to. This infographic covers the three essentials to e-commerce and some important figures on each:


Performance

Browsing a slow web site is always a pain, but factor in the site's purpose and we should all know the pain is not always equal. Waiting for your favorite blog or image gallery to load, longer than it usually would? That may be annoying, but nothing close to the frustration of trying to shop online and taking forever to checkout.

If you're in the business of selling goods online, sluggish site performance is going to impact your potential customer's willingness to stay on your site, especially if your competitor's sites are running just fine. Surveys not only verify, but stress how critical performance is to web hosting for e-commerce: over half of online shoppers give up on buying goods if it takes too long to order them, and 4 out of 5 will not ever return to your site if it does.

Reliability

A slow site may be frowned upon by online shoppers, but at least in that case your site is up-and-running. If your website isn't even available for potential customers to browse, you can't expect many to just ‘wait it out.' Downtime means your competitors are raking in profits for purchases that could have been made on your site, and even if you're site sells goods that are unique to your brand, that downtime will permanently affect how legitimate you look compared to your competitors.

Having a site that lacks the reliability to be online 24/7 is costly to your business in a very real way. On average, an hour of downtime means a loss of $138,000. It's a heavy price to pay, and the #1 reason behind site downtime makes it even more unpleasant: 60% of businesses attribute “human error” as the cause. Some mistakes are easy to avoid; don't let unreliable managed web hosting be the mistake that damages your brand's reputation.

Security

Now and again there will be some story about hackers taking advantage of a security flaw in a large company's network and accessing their information. Every time the fallout is disastrous, leaving tens of thousands unsafe after having their private and valuable information taken for misuse. With the increasing popularity of cloud computing and social media, bigger investments in web hosting leads to bigger opportunities for hackers and other criminal organizations. In reality, every transaction implies a responsibility to your customers for safekeeping their information.

The threat is very real for every online store, and the facts about web site security are troubling: it was reported that 86% of web sites have at least one vulnerability and 89% of breaches are preventable. There's no wonder why 3 out of 4 consumers feel that the Internet is unsafe for buying goods. When you add it all up, security becomes even more important as an edge against competitors web sites in gaining trust from customers.

Your overall state of your site's performance, reliability and security combined can make or break your e-commerce web site. With the awareness and right kind of strategy in employing a host, you can never fail in the online marketplace.