Quality and Reliability of Web Hosting

The loading time of a webpage is often underestimated by web developers. It’s true that network speeds are getting faster, while bandwidth capacities grow exponentially as well. But it is also true that users find it very frustrating to have to wait just because the webpage was not sufficiently optimized. This waiting time affects users’ trust in your website and in the brand that it represents. Equally, a long loading time is a negative point in the eyes of main search engines.

Recent studies show that most users tolerate a waiting time between 2 to 4 seconds (for small commercial websites or travel resellers) before they abandon a webpage.

Developers often recur to increases of bandwidth when confronted with a slow website, while in reality the key to improving the situation is to optimize the website itself.

Here we are going to offer some advice about how to achieve an optimized website and thereby reduce loading time.

Every day millions of people run millions of queries on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and many others, hoping to find information on a certain subject, or a specific product, making the search engines the main entry point to the internet.

Say you want to buy an SUV. Run a browser (we prefer Firefox, but it can be Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, etc..) Type the URL http://www.google.com. Then introduce the term "suv+ car + dealers". The number of results can be astonishing.

Getting on top of search results on major engines is a task that can consume a lot of time and effort, and we don’t even know if we’ll be able to accomplish that goal: your site can simply get buried among millions of others available today. But one thing is sure: better search engine rankings mean more visits to your website; which is why anything you invest in the positioning, will never be in vain.

Now, what is necessary to achieve good search engine rankings? Three basic things: knowledge, discipline in content publishing, and dedication.

The domain names have a life cycle; it is very important to realize that for many reasons. First, we need to protect the domain name to prevent it from expiring. Also, detect the moment when a domain name, that belongs to somebody else, is near expiry; inquire about any additional fees that a Registrar may impose once your domain name expires.

Selection of a domain name is an important step in the website development. It greatly affects such vital aspects as the easiness to be found, Google Pagerank, and brand positioning. Once a website is operational, brand positioning requires quite an investment; it is important, at that point, to avoid any legal conflicts. Selecting a domain name can determine whether your website will be easily remembered by your users - and thus also define your chances of being revisited.

The basic principles when choosing a domain name should be short, simple, well directed, memorable, related to the web content and more...

The selection of a good hosting provider is not an easy task at all: a bad choice can lead your entire project to a total fiasco, even when it’s an excellent idea on itself. Imagine the catastrophic implications of your site being offline at the moment when the search engines are trying to index it. Or imagine how disappointed you will be  when you discover that your hosting company takes ages to respond to your inquiries, especially the urgent ones!

When we are about to contract a hosting provider, we have to decide what bandwidth we will need, and that requires a prior calculation. If we end up buying an inadequate bandwidth, we will either pay more than we should (bandwidth excess is usually quite expensive), or we will pay for something that we will never use.

Is a 100% reliability possible? The truth is that a 100% reliability is simply impossible: there are factors that prevent hosting providers from ever achieving such reliability. Network failures, electricity shortages, human errors... many hosting providers don’t even include maintenance time in the calculations of their advertised average uptime.