Web Hosting Q&A

Here are some tips for you.

1) Perform A/B Testing Frequently.
2) Reduce the Number of Website Pages.
3) Include Attractive CTAs.
4) Pay Attention to Website Security.
5) Beware of 404 Errors.
6) Use Adequate Images and Videos, but Provide Ample Whitespace.
7) Focus on the Flow.
8) Colors Matter.
9) Make It Responsive and Easy to Navigate
10) Faster Loading Times Are a Must
11) Conduct Site and Usability Audits

Example website Dynamics Square

For dot com domains, I find NameCheap and Porkbun easier and affordable. You can pay via Paypal or credit cards. Quite possibly the lowest price for first year and also a myriad of domains....including .xyz which is popular among Gen X, Y and Z users.

We use GoDaddy or VentraIP for our domains with the .au extensions. We find they have the best interface to work with and so far haven't had any real issues.

webhosting is cheap. as Meng said, depends on the number of visitors you believe you will have.

Most webhosting packages will give you unlimited email addresses, disk space and pretty much everything unlimited. You need to read the fine print though as "Unlimited" doesn't mean unlimited. There are limits however they are pretty high. You will not need anymore than 20gb in most cases unless you want a really big database loaded on your hosting and plan on having a lot of emails and images/video's hosted on your account also.

So as long as you are getting 20gb of hosting space you will be fine. Generally the hosting account would cost you about $10 or less per month for "unlimited"

That should come with Cpanel (not cpanel lite or anything cheap like that) and also a tone of free programs.

When looking at a website as the answer, the first thing to do is understand the question.

1. How will customers find me?

2. How will customers engage with me?

3. How will customers purchase my product or service?

If the answers to all three of these questions is your website, and you have a solid business plan in place I would recommend investing in an expertly built website.

There are services out there, as Aditya has advised, like Wix and Weebly that allow you to build your own website, and certainly many of these have ecommerce plugins. Alternatively a platform like Shopify was built primarily for e-commerce use.

I have used these platforms myself and I have found them to be serviceable. For small businesses, for 'brochure' sites they can do the job. The advantage however in going to an external provider is their expertise in understanding the online customer experience and building a framework and design that meets and exceeds your customers' expectations.

Just like all beers aren't equal, nor are all website designers and programmers. It is important that you look at their online portfolio - what else have they delivered? Is the website built around a custom Content Management System (CMS) or open source or licenced?

The web team should take the time to map out the customer journeys and the personas of the people using the website and then build the architecture and sitemap to support that. HOW the website works should come before WHAT it looks like. If it looks pretty but no one can use it and no one purchases from it, it is a failure.

Lastly I would recommend you work with a team of designers and developers, not someone solo - the design brain and the developer brain need to operate differently, and often in conflict and you will find the best people do one or the other, and work with someone/s who do the stuff they aren't great at.

Hi,I personally think the decision would be very subjective. I am hoping my pointers below will help,1. Creating a new site is a hardwork from SEO perspective, it does help by having the site is a sister site.On the other hand, a 'sister' site with reference to the other successful website shows the business is growing and as we all know, people like to be involve with successful business.From SEO site, tho it is hardwork, it will be paid off, where having more than 1 strong websites is very advantages as they can support each other.2. Pointing a new domain to a existing cart, I'd say a faster to boost the new 'domain' and getting the new products off the ground since they will be in your existing successful website.From SEO perspective, I think you won't gain as much as another new site.From customer perspective, they may see another product in the shop instead of new business.Hope that helps,AdityaWeb Design Melbourne

Hi Phil, I've thought hard about this one as I manage a web hosting co.s Partner Program :)

This is what I have discovered by talking to our existing and prospective partners, in no particular order.

Peace of mind. They want their client websites to be looked after, issues resolved quickly and good communication
Security and performance. Taken care of at server level so there is less to do with the platform (eg. hosting).
Expert, local support. This is a key one: to be able to jump on a call and speak to someone local who can address their issue, looking at their specific problem, and not just given them a canned response.
Based in Australia. For performance, compliance and better support.

Quite a few of our partners are looking to earn via referrals or reselling our services, as well as getting leads off us.

Hope this helps.

Lawrence
 

If your website is to be a simple one, small business or personal, Wordpress is a great tool to use to build a website.

I am in the USA so my perspective needs to be taken with a grain of salt. All of what Terry mentioned above is important.

I've used Godaddy for about 8 years and had very few issues. I pay roughly $100 - $120 a year for the hosting. I have a bundle of 5 SSL certificates which is another $150 a year. However, for me their hosting is convenient because I can host many domains in the same hosting account (currently I have about 15 domains, 8 of which have actual content).

However, Godaddy and most "Traditional" hosting companies are PHP optimized (on the Linux operating system (OS)). They may offer Windows (OS) hosting that supports ".net", "Java" and ".asp" but usually that is a bit more expensive.

Why does this matter? If you are set on using a framework or software built in another language such as Python, Ruby or Node JS - you may need to look at distributed or Cloud hosting providers, such as Amazon AWS, Heroku, Google or others. Typically these services support the other languages but also can handle more capacity (users at a time) because they can scale easily. Keep in mind the cost structures of these services are usually a bit more complicated.

The important thing is you know what is important to you (bandwidth, storage space, scale-ability, cost, etc.) before you make your decision. If you aren't sure, try getting some guidance from vendors by explaining the goals of your hosting needs.

In simple terms, Wix is a lot easier to setup and use compared to Wordpress.

Wordpress is a lot more powerful with a lot of different options.

I would stick with Wordpress if you have used it before and you didn't have too much trouble with it.