As online sales continue to grow, the demand for powerful e-commerce hosting increases. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are also beginning to realize the potential of online sales. The right hosting provider can help small business owners and established retail chains migrate all or part of their business to a successful online solution.
What is ecommerce hosting?
A well-managed e-commerce site can serve multiple visitors from anywhere in the world and support daily sales. To increase revenue, e-commerce sites need to stand out among a growing number of competitors and offer unique solutions. Web hosting solutions must also provide reliable performance and security to build customer trust and increase sales.
When it comes to e-commerce solutions, uptime is extremely important. Downtime can reduce potential sales, so a host that guarantees 99.9% uptime is essential. A reputable hosting company should also offer technical support to quickly resolve any issues that may arise. Having access to all software and features, such as online shopping carts, customer rewards programs, and third-party payment processors, is essential.
Therefore, e-commerce websites require a dedicated server to provide a smoother and better shopping experience to their customers.
Why you should use a dedicated server
As a business owner, you’re well aware of the fact that busy seasons lead to increased sales. This also applies to websites. Whether you run an e-commerce store or a marketing website for your brand, you can experience traffic spikes that far exceed your normal monthly traffic.
But it’s not enough to just wait for customers to flock to your site. Instead, you should take proactive steps to prepare for these traffic spikes. Failure to do so can strain your server infrastructure and bring down your website, leading to lost sales and dissatisfied customers.
To prevent this, consider switching to a dedicated server hosting setup. This will ensure your website stays up and running even during the busiest times, ensuring you get every last penny your e-commerce website deserves.
What are the benefits of a dedicated server?
Unlike other hosting solutions, dedicated servers are unique to you and not to other companies. It works exclusively for you, using all the resources to support traffic on your website (or web app). Additionally, dedicated servers can be customized and configured specifically for your business needs based on your technology stack, assets, and audience size.
Here are eight reasons why your e-commerce website needs a dedicated server.
1. Deal with increased traffic
Heavy traffic is both a blessing and a curse. On the other hand, increased traffic means increased sales. On the other hand, too much traffic can overload your servers and take your website offline, leaving you with dissatisfied customers and fewer sales.
With dedicated servers, you can build enough capacity to handle traffic spikes of any size. Unlike a shared server, the CPU and RAM installed on a dedicated server are reserved exclusively for you.
2. Enable faster transactions
Even if your website doesn’t go offline due to increased traffic, it may take longer to service all the requests to your server. Moreover, if the website is slow, visitors will not be able to spend much time on her website and more visitors may leave her website without purchasing anything.
With a dedicated server, you can always expect the best performance. If the server is properly configured, transactions will be processed efficiently.
3. Improved security
E-commerce websites handle a lot of sensitive information, from personal information to credit card numbers, so security is essential. Shared servers apply the same basic security settings to all tenants, with few details explained. Dedicated servers allow you to control every aspect of your hosting environment, from firewalls to backups to software installation.
4. Provide a better user experience
Visitors are more likely to return to a website with a better user experience, which increases the likelihood of a sale. A website with a dedicated server not only loads pages and processes requests quickly, it also guarantees virtually 100% uptime, making it a reliable resource for your audience.
5. Improving cost effectiveness
Some websites choose to handle traffic spikes using cloud-based pay-as-you-go solutions. Cloud-based infrastructure can scale very quickly as needed. However, that extra power often comes at a huge and unexpected cost.
Dedicated servers ensure predictability and make planning and budgeting easier because all costs are known upfront.
6. Boost your SEO
Faster websites are better for visitors, and Google and other search engines tend to incorporate load times into their algorithms to rank faster websites higher. Higher search rankings can do wonders for your business, especially during busy shopping seasons.
7. Achieve maximum privacy
Any company that handles sensitive data must ensure data safety and privacy. Dedicated servers do not share any components or resources with anyone, creating the perfect environment for ensuring your privacy.
Governments, institutions, and healthcare providers tend to rely on dedicated servers for their needs because maintaining privacy is important. Therefore, even with regulatory measures like HIPAA, a dedicated server is best.
8. Have enough storage
Running an e-commerce website means handling and storing many files, such as promotional videos, product images, how-tos, and more. It’s important to have enough space to store all these files, transfer them, and recall them when needed. More importantly, you can back everything up and trust those backups.
With a dedicated server, you can easily see how much space you’re using and how much free space you have left. You can also split your website, archives, and backup data between your hard drives so that your server uses only the data needed to operate your website.
Learn more about dedicated servers for e-commerce websites
Using a dedicated server for your e-commerce website strategy is paramount to ensure smooth transactions and secure customer data. This is important for large companies with increasing traffic, but it can also be advantageous for small and medium-sized businesses.
No matter how familiar you are with the world of e-commerce, you can rest assured that your customers will be well taken care of. With features such as increased traffic handling capacity, faster transactions, increased security, and a higher level of user experience, hosting your e-commerce platform on a dedicated server is something every business should consider.
You can also expect your costs to decrease over time as you further enhance your regular SEO efforts and ultimately achieve maximum privacy regarding customer data stored on your servers. If you want to take your e-commerce platform to the next level and serve your customers like never before, turn to a dedicated server. They may be the answer you were looking for.
Please contact Liquid Web’s sales staff. We’ll answer any questions you have about dedicated servers and recommend the best options based on your current setup and needs.