The best e-commerce strategy can quickly become derailed without a high quality domain name and web hosting service. Both of these factors play an important part in optimisation and the ability to get a website found on search engines. If you want to attract organic traffic and avoid paying high fees for cost per click and sponsored links, you should consider both of these matters very carefully.
The domain name is important because it helps to build trust and makes your site easier to find. When people search for your company they should be able to find you easily by searching for you. If your domain is dramatically different from your name or brand, you may struggle to appear prominently in search results. If you are choosing something different, you should make sure it is relevant and that people will be searching for it. This makes it important to include a keyword if you can.
The best domain names are short, easy to spell and memorable. When you look at the top 100,000 websites in the world, the average number of characters in the domain name is 9. Avoid hyphens and steer clear of misspellings.
Website hosting is one of the most crucial aspects of the optimisation and success of e-commerce websites. The best sites have a server uptime of 99.99% and are very rarely offline. Every second a site is offline and can’t be accessed is lost business and a potential loss of positions on search engines, so you need to invest in a host that will keep you online around the clock.
Alongside uptime you should also choose a host that will allow your site to load quickly. Slow page loading can quickly kill websites and send consumers elsewhere. According to research from Kissmetrics, a one second delay can reduce conversions by 7% and 2 seconds will see this rise to 40%. When it comes to e-commerce sites loading speed is even more important because people want to be able to search, see products, browse info and pictures, and make purchases without having to wait an eternity for loading.
Getting the right domain and a reliable host is crucial for optimisation and performance. If you are investing in e-commerce services make sure you don’t make your job harder and risk ruining all of the good work you do with the design and other elements by getting these two things wrong. Get in touch with us to find out how we can provide high quality, affordable web hosting for your e-commerce business.