It’s no secret that page load speed is important – when Google decided to class it as a ranking factor on search results it made it imperative that websites functioned at its optimum. But how does hosting affect page load speed and why is it so important?
Why Do I Need A Fast Load Speed?
Online consumers want stuff quick and fast and the longer they have to wait the more akin they are to just give up and go elsewhere. It’s the curse of immediate gratification. Alas, the faster your website loads the bigger and better performance there will be across your whole site – from customer conversion to user experience – leading to more prominence on Google search results and therefore even more conversions.
What Effect Does My Host Have?
There are many different factors as to why your site speed can be affected by your choice of hosting company. When you’re initially choosing your hosting package, you need to ensure it is suited for the purpose of your needs – you need a dedicated server or virtual private server for starters as these offer unparalleled parameters for eCommerce websites which receive a lot of visitors and complex websites which use a lot of resources as a result.
If you’re running a website in this sector and have cut corners by using a shared server it can result in an inadequate user experience for your customers and be the difference between your business being a success and a failure. Shared servers work well for most sites but if you’re dealing with a lot of traffic or high-maintenance web design there are better options.
Hosting Isn’t Everything
A slow loading speed might not be totally the fault of your host though. The fault could lie with any number of issues with one of the main culprits including the configuration and coding of your site build leading to slow page loading. If you optimise this and your site still isn’t loading properly, you should contact your hosting provider to move you to another server – it’s worth remembering that the more sites there are on a server, and the more resources those sites are using up, the slower your website will load.
Moving your site to a VPS or dedicated server will ensure page load speed will be instantly improved.
