It’s certainly a good thing to learn from your mistakes, but in business it’s much better to learn from the mistakes of others. Far too often, you hear about businesses that have made some kind of poor decision with their web hosting, and end up suffering the numerous and expensive consequences. When you’re first setting up your web host and solution provider, you need to do everything you can to ensure you’re getting a reliable and cost-effective deal. Here, we’ll look at some of the most common mistakes business owners make when setting up their first servers.

Expecting a Cheap or Free Web Host Solution

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Nothing that’s worth having comes free in this world, except a few free WordPress themes! This rule certainly applies to your hosting service, and if someone comes to you offering a hosting deal that’s exceedingly cheap or even free, then you’re almost certain to run into various problems. The host may end up placing third-party ads on your site without your knowledge, you’re likely to have a poor loading speed, and there’s a good chance that the provider will give an extremely poor standard of technical support, or none at all! A free or cheap hosting provider can also have a detrimental impact on your SERP rankings. Google’s crawlers certainly won’t give your site equal importance when you’re running on a poor-quality server. I understand that your capital and other resources may be stretched, but this is one area where you really have to spend money to make money.

Thinking That Shared and Dedicated Hosting are the Same

When presented with the choice between shared and dedicated hosting, a lot of business owners will rush through the decision, believing that the two options are more or less the same. This is wrong. Choose a shared server on the lower end of the spectrum in terms of monthly cost, and you’ll be opening yourself up to all kinds of risks. This is mainly due to the fact that you’ll be sharing the retail space with thousands of other sites. If one of these happens to use maximum resources, or even worse, encounters a virus or some malicious coding, you’re going to feel the sting of it, even though you had nothing to do with the root of the issue! Furthermore, you’re almost guaranteeing that your loading times will be restricted, and occasionally the web host may have to shut the server down during your business hours. These issues, when they come up again and again, can cause your business to hemorrhage money. To avoid this, I strongly recommend going for a dedicated server, or finding a cheaper middle ground like a VPS Server for your hosting solution.

Skimming the Terms and Conditions

It’s 2017 now, and everyone’s more used than ever to scrolling swiftly to the bottom of a window of text and blindly clicking “I agree”. This may not be a big deal when it comes to the latest iTunes update, but when you’re setting up your first web host, skimming through the T’s and C’s can be a recipe for disaster. A lot of hosting firms will only really highlight the points of the agreement they want you to read, not what you should read to make sure you avoid any future issues. Make sure you go through refund policy, the terms of service agreement, the cancellation policy, and similar things. If you need any clarification on what certain terms or sections mean, be sure to contact your provider and ask them. It’s your duty to verify the service description, the deliverables and any related conditions before you put a single penny down.

Failing to be Clear on Bandwidth and Disk Space

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When checking out different hosting services, you’ll find that you have a lot of options in terms of the disk space and bandwidth. If you’re not a techy type, then all the different choices and prices can be a little confusing. However, if you want to make sure your hosting service really works for you, it’s essential to spend some time educating yourself on how these things will affect your hosting experience. For most start-ups, a subscription giving you 50MB of disk space and around 10GB of bandwidth will be more than enough. If you shoot much lower, you’ll encounter all kinds of problems like having to work within transfer limits and recurring downtime.

Forgetting the Basics

I know, entering into a subscription for a hosting service isn’t quite as simple as finding a desk fan on Amazon. However, there are still certain universal protocols which you need to follow every time you’re buying something online. You need to have reliable and regularly accessible contact information, so you can get in touch with the vendor if you encounter any issues. You should make a point to seek out customer testimonials and similar third-party reviews too. It’s also important to look for things like a money back guarantee, and to find out about the level of technical support the provider will offer you.

Ignoring the SEO Implications

Earlier, I touched on how the hosting service you choose can impact where your site appears on its SERPs. A lot of would-be successes choose their hosting service thinking that as long as it has a pretty good uptime guarantee, they’ll have nothing else to worry about. Again, believing this is a massive mistake! Hosting problems such as database connection errors, slow site speeds, and shared hosting with dubious spam sites can all bring down a site’s credibility, both in the eyes of Google’s crawlers and human users. If you have runtime errors that get dragged out, an exceeded bandwidth limit, and internal server errors, you can even end up knocking your site off of Google’s index! You may have the greatest SEO team to ever be assembled at a start-up. However, if you don’t choose a high-quality host, your digital marketing is invariably going to suffer. Don’t let the promise of big savings chase away your prospective leads!

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While cloud services can be very convenient for a small business’s storage and networking needs, they’ll only get you so far. More and more small businesses are deciding to set up their own in-house server rooms in order to get around various security and practical concerns. If you’re taking your first steps into the large and often complex world of dedicated server rooms, here’s a little advice for hitting it on the head.

With Server Racks, have a Plan and Stick to It

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Compared to a jumbled stack of It hardware in the corner of an office, a rack setup has a lot of advantages when setting up a server. However, if you set a server rack up improperly, or without taking the time to plan it out, then it’s going to be little more than a large and expensive shelving unit! To start with, you need to have a complete list of all the equipment you’re going to be mounting on the rack. This needs to include the servers themselves, network switches, an uninterruptable power supply, and any additional storage or security components. Setting up a server rack during the work day will only cause disruptions, so plan who’s going to be taking part in this after-hours work well in advance so you don’t screw up workflow too much.

Don’t Cheap-Out on Power

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Keeping power flowing to your servers is extremely important, and if this isn’t considered thoroughly you’ll only run yourself into all kinds of problems. Though it may be expensive, some offices can benefit from connecting their server room to a separate circuit breaker. This will save you from the kitchen microwave tripping up the servers, or any kind of routine changes or upgrades resulting in expensive downtime. Even if your office has brilliant power supplies, you’re going to need an uninterruptable power supply, as localised power failures can happen at a moment’s notice. This is the one sure place where you can’t scrimp, so limit your search to reputable vendors and brands like Riello UPS. While shopping around, make sure you’re referring back to the list you started with, and checking that the UPS you settle on has enough places to plug-in all the appliances on the server rack.

Lock Up

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A lot of business owners will switch over to a server room solution having had some kind of security breach through cloud solutions in the past. Having made the switch, they figure that they’re completely safe from any kind of security threats. This is totally false, and you need to make sure your server is protected from any damaging breaches. As soon as it’s operational, the server room should be strictly out of bounds to people outside of the IT department. Make sure that the door is closed and locked at all times, and put a password on the KVM console if at all possible. You can also make your servers a little more secure by installing IP cameras, which can be used to keep an eye on any equipment in the room.

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Whether you’re using it to advertise your business or you’re running it as an ecommerce platform, the website is one of the most important tools to doing business online. But a lot of people are content to consider their job done once the site is up. That’s simply not true. Your website should be an ongoing project, constantly pushing for better results. Here, we’ll look at some of the advanced tools you should be using to get the most out of it.

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Getting the most visitors

Getting traffic to your website is important, but how do you ensure that the traffic is relevant? The best place to start is in the search engine. The better and more relevant your site is to people using the search engine, the more likely it is to be recommended to them. The better the user experience, the higher it will appear. The more dead-end links and the worse the site performance, the further down the list. Adding keywords to your pages can be helpful, too, but you should be careful in how you use them. Keyword stuffing isn’t a viable search engine optimisation technique. If you’re adding in every term you can think of, it will only harm your chances of being spotted by more people.

Getting the most conversions

So, you have them on your site. But are you turning them into customers? Not everyone can be converted. But there could be plenty of visitors you’re missing simply by failing to capitalise on their presence. A call-to-action, a better presentation of your content, even a reshuffle of the page can all have a big impact. It’s about finding what works for your conversion rate. To that end, testing is one of the most reliable methods you can use. Strategists like an AB test agency use multiple versions of your pages with variations. They take the individual versions and look at the visitor data to see how those variations change visitor behaviour. This way, you can pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your site and improve on them.

Getting the most returns

Regardless of whether they become a customer or not, if you can get people returning to your site, you’re benefiting. Not only are return visitors more likely to eventually become repeat customers, but they’re also more likely to share. The way you get them to return is by providing more value for those repeat returns. For instance, if you include a blog with content that is informative or educational, they may keep coming back to see what new advice you have to offer. Give recognition to your most dedicated of customers and fans on the site. This will contribute to a sense of community people are a lot more likely to get involved in.

There’s always a little more work that can be done to improve your business site. There’s another chance for more visibility or another way to convert new customers. Never stop striving or updating. Treat your website not as a simple tool but as an integral part of your business.

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