Most people pick their web host by searching for “web hosting” and then choosing the cheapest option. They pick the “super deal” for $5/month and never think twice about it.
But what if I told you that your web hosting was costing you sales every month? What if you were losing customers simply because the hosting you are on was not optimized to give your customers the best service possible. If you don’t know whether your hosting is causing you to lose customers, then it probably is… especially if you’re not tracking how quickly the site loads and optimizing sales conversions.
Stop leaving money on the table.
Your customers do not want to wait. They do not want to jump through hoops to purchase your products and services. They want to be able to make a purchase quickly and easily. Their attention spans are short and if they have to wait one second too long, they may get distracted or frustrated and leave your site. Then you miss out on the sale, and chances are they won’t ever be back.
Make it simple, build trust.
The key here is speed. The faster your site loads and presents the info to your customer, the more likely they are to take the next step in your sales process. According to Google, over 60% of today’s traffic comes from mobile browsers. This means the majority of your customers are on-the-go, using data plans and probably juggling a million other things. They are looking for you to make their life easier. That requires trust and the quickest way to build that is to provide them with a good user experience. That user experience starts the nanosecond they hit your website. So how fast does your page load?
Case study: Girls Can’t WHAT?
Here is a case study from one of my personal sites. I built Girls Can’t WHAT? in 2005 from scratch. I used cheap hosting to keep the costs down. Over time my site grew as I added new products, blog posts and other features to my site. Eventually, it started to slow down. Page load times were taking over 10 seconds, which can seem like an eternity when you’re on a smartphone.
The problem was that my site was on shared hosting. That means that for my $5/month, my site sat on the same server as about 1,000 other sites which slowed things down tremendously. A general web host doesn’t care how your site is built. It doesn’t care if it’s WordPress or Joomla or any other platform. It treats every site the same. There’s NO optimization to fit your platform. It’s like one giant apartment building. Yeah, you have your own space, but the options to make it better are pretty limited.
To remedy my slow site, I tried all of the basic stuff first. I installed different caching plugins, tweaked image sizes and updated the theme. Nothing really worked. I made my site load a whole half-second faster.
Then I got smart.
I realized that no matter how I tweaked my code, my site was not going to get any faster on cheap hosting. What I really needed was hosting that specialized in the platform I was using. Being that I built Girls Can’t WHAT? on WordPress, I moved my site to a company that specialized in WordPress. This made a HUGE difference in the load time of my site.
My page load time went from 10+ seconds to under 2 seconds. And within just a couple of days, my sales went up. People were spending more time browsing the site (which I could see by the metrics in Google Analytics), which lead to more sales. I made it easy for them to purchase my products by removing the sluggish page loads. That was in 2012 and I have not looked back.
Yeah, but how much does it cost?
We’ve noticed a trend among our clients. Those who invest in optimized hosting tend to have better results than those who stick with the cheaper option. The keyword here is investment.
Here’s how to get a return on your investment.
Let’s say you spend $5/month for hosting and the average sale on your website nets you $25 (I’m using numbers from one of our clients, but you can insert your own math here). Because the site is not optimized and loads slowly, let’s be ultra conservative and estimate that you lose about 10 customers/month who land on the sales page, but then leave before the page has time to fully load. Those 10 lost customers per month would bring $250 in sales, right?
So wouldn’t investing $100 in your business in order to pick up $250 in sales every month be worth it? Of course it would! It would be crazy to not invest money when you can get a measurable, positive return.
Oh and the bonus?
Not only would you regain those 10 lost sales, but Google will also likely give you a boost in search results since speed is an important factor in their ranking process. So now you would be getting even MORE traffic and MORE sales for that $100 investment.
And what else? If you choose to let us help you with optimized hosting, you’ll also be getting daily backups, security checks and a staging area where changes to your site can be tested before making them live. Worried about downtime? With our systems, you’ll probably never have any. Optimized hosting doesn’t seem so “expensive” now, does it?
So how fast does your site load?
Go to GTMetrix.com, enter your site’s url and grade yourself. You’ll find out instantly just how quickly your page loads. If it’s anything more than 2 seconds, you’re leaving money on the table.
When you’re ready to invest in your business, contact us to discuss optimized hosting options. We can help you find the right fit to grow your business.
