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Domains, hosting and related services are becoming increasingly affordable. This has made it possible for virtually any business to establish an online presence by acquiring an appropriate domain and hostingit over a reliable and secureplatform. If you are beginning a small business or a new entrepreneurial venture, this is great news for you. However, like all good things, the bandwagon of inexpensive hosting comes with its limitations.
While hosting providers would promote themselves as reliable, there are real-world threats to the health of your website, resulting in potential slowdowns or security attacks. Thus, it is best to also consider complimentary tools and services that can give your website the much-needed performance edge over the competition.
Why Speed is King
Such tools are critical in the speed-obsessed digital marketplace, where every single page-loading second counts. Studies have found, for instance, that 51% of online shoppers in U.S. would give up on an online purchase midway if the site speed was too slow. Similarly, 46% of users state that the speed at which the checkout page is processed determines whether or not they will return to a given commerce site.
The question of speed is all the more pertinent today, since the bulk of online traffic is rapidly shifting from desktop to mobile devices. By July 2015, the amount of time spent by U.S. users on mobile digital media, including websites, was far greater than the time spent by users on desktop machines. This is in sync with the overwhelming trend of a rapid rise in mobile traffic and a decline in desktop traffic.
An even more important consideration is that mobile users value one thing above all: the speed at which a page loads. It is precisely for this reason that speed has become the paramount metric of website performance. So while getting a reputable hosting service is a great decision, you will need all that you can lay your hands on to speed up your website.
Reliability Counts, Too
Along with speed, reliability is the other major concern for the users. To be able to rely on a website and be sure that it would be accessible at all times – this is one of major user preferences and is critical for establishing a successful user base in the long-term.
Following are platforms necessary in ensuring the performance and reliability of your host:
Content Delivery Network (CDN):CDNs essentially cache the bulk of a website’s non-dynamic content on a server located close to a given user’s geographical location.This includes images, stylesheets and videos, among other content.
When a user accesses the website, this cached content is pulled from servers closer to his or her physical location, tremendously reducing page load speeds. In addition, bandwidth consumption is also reduced greatly. This means a faster website with reduced running costs, offering a win/win solution to a business. CDNs like Incapsulacan increase speeds up to 50%, alongwith a massive 70% reduction in bandwidth consumption.
New web protocols SPDY and HTTP/2:SPDY is an improvement over the current HTTP 1.1 protocol. The SPDY initiative was headed by Google and became the blueprint for the upcomingHTTP/2 protocol, which will soon be the standard transfer protocol over the web.
The most prominent feature of these protocols is that they speed up data transmission between the user and the host, enabling quicker page loads. Application and web developers that deploy SPDY and HTTP/2 can gain a crucial speed advantage through compression and packet multiplexing.
In terms of pure page load advantage, HTTP/2 emerges as the hands-down winner. However, for text-based data transmission, SPDY seems to be able to create the minimum response message for a website, thereby saving in bandwidth consumption. You should first determine what your primary preference is: better page load speeds or bandwidth frugality. Based on this, you can choose between SPDY and HTTP/2.
Google Insights:Asthe leading search provider, Google likewisehelpswebsites in optimizing their content for better page load speeds. Earlier this year, Google rolled out a specific algorithm for mobile searches. To put it in a nutshell, websitesthatload faster on mobile browsers will be ranked higher in mobile search rankings. Tool such as Google Insights allow you to take a detailed stock of your website’s code and determine how quicklyit loads in terms of Google’s metrics. This is a very competitive way of analyzing and modifying your website’s code. Since it is free, why not give it a go?
Hosted Libraries: Google’s hosted libraries are an excellent way of enhancing the performance of your website. These are open-source, absolutely free and globally available. These libraries essentially host website components on Google servers and even offer caching. As a result, when users accesses your website, their browsers retrieve libraries from Google’s servers. In terms of user experience, this means quick page load speeds and again, a lot less bandwidth consumption.
Conclusion
Finding a good hosting service for your website is essential in ensuring topnotch performance at a reasonable price. However, you will need to gothe extra mile to ensure your website has a crucial advantage over others. This can be done by implementing tools and platforms that reduce bandwidth usage, speed up traffic nd improve the user experience.
