E-commerce is a competitive biz, so when you find small things you can do to make a big difference, you have nothing to lose by doing them. Like making sure your online store has all the top web hosting features every e-commerce feature needs, to make life easier for your visitors and get those sales ticking over.
E-Commerce Hosting: What Is It?
E-commerce hosting is web hosting services specifically tailored for businesses selling products or services on the internet. These kinds of web hosts offer handy features for selling, like website/storefront builders, shopping cart software, payment gateways, and on-the-ball customer support who are knowledgeable about online stores.
Why Hosting Matters for E-Commerce Success
Your web hosting affects everything from your website’s security to user experience. With a good web host on your side, you can look forward to faster page loading times, which lowers customer frustration and minimizes cart abandonment.
Then there’s the extra security, which builds trust and protects your customer’s info. A good web host will also be able to handle spikes in website traffic, keeping your store up and running even if there’s a bit of a surge.
Key Features to Look for in E-Commerce Web Hosting
Find a web host that ticks all the boxes. Here are the top web hosting features every e-commerce store needs. Make sure your host has them all!
1. High Uptime Guarantee
You can’t make sales if your store is down. If you’re serious about your business, find a web host that has an uptime guarantee of 99.99% or higher. This means your store will almost always be online, with no risk of someone trying to shop while your site is down. Plus, research shows that if someone tries to access your site while it’s down, their trust in you goes down.
2. Scalability
As your business grows, your hosting needs will probably change. From the start, choose a hosting provider that offers scalable solutions. This allows you to upgrade your resources easily and seamlessly without having a negative effect on your site’s performance.
Scalability is super important in handling traffic spikes during peak shopping times, especially during holidays or sales events. A scalable hosting solution is like opening your doors wider—it can allow a larger number of visitors and transactions without crashing.
3. Speed and Performance
Once your visitors have arrived on your site, keep them there with fast page loading times. Your web host should make it their mission to be fast and perform seamlessly. Look for features like SSD storage, using content delivery services (CDNs), and regular updates.
Don’t neglect this! A faster site boosts the user’s experience, reducing bounce rate and increasing conversions. Plus, it helps you climb those elusive SEO rankings, so it’s double important!
4. Security Features
Protecting your customers’ data is one of the most important things you can do. Make sure your hosting provider offers excellent security features, such as SSL certificates, regular malware scans, firewalls, and DDoS protection.
This doesn’t just protect your customers’ data. It also keeps you safe from cyber threats and builds trust in your customer community.
5. E-Commerce Integration
If you’re selling, you need e-commerce features. Your host should make it easy for you to link up to popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and others.
These features usually help you to do things like process orders more efficiently, keep track of your stock, and provide decent customer service.
6. Backup and Restore Options
If your store crashes, will it be a quick process to get it back up and running? Your hosting provider needs to offer automatic backups and restorations, or they’re not worth your money!
Accidents happen, and trust us—even fast restoring options can feel like they take forever. And every minute your website isn’t available is a minute you’re losing out on sales.
Don’t leave room for potential problems—just choose a web host that’s meticulous about backing up your data and offers easy-restore features.
7. Easy-to-Use Control Panel
Managing your hosting shouldn’t be difficult. A user-friendly control panel, like cPanel or Plesk, makes it easier to handle things like setting up email accounts, managing domains, and setting up your server settings.
Even if you’ve got the tech know-how, a simple, easy control panel makes life easier. You can focus more on just running your business and less on the server admin side of things!
8. SEO Tools and Features
Surprisingly, good web hosting can improve your site’s search engine rankings on Google. Better SEO = better rankings, so choose a host with things like site analytics and SEO plugins to take advantage of this.
Better SEO leads to more organic traffic, more potential customers, and at the end of the day, more sales. Built-in SEO tools mean you don’t need to clutter up your dashboard with plugins.
9. Analytics and Reporting
Don’t think keeping track of your site’s performance is silly. Find a host that gives you data on visitor behavior, where your traffic comes from, and sales figures. Study it. Use it to make better business decisions.
10. Customer Support
You never know when you might need extra support. Traveling to a different time zone? Struggling to sleep? Choose a host with 24/7 customer support so you can always reach out when you need to.
Conclusion
Putting together an effective, popular, and successful e-commerce store isn’t hard, especially if you know what features are important. Does your business have all these top web hosting features every e-commerce store needs? Now’s the time to make changes to start ticking these boxes… Your sales (and business success) depend on you!
Featured Image by storyset on Freepik
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