Choosing the hosting provider that best suits your needs is key to the success of any online business. The Web Accommodation Service that Selections should help you optimize the website in terms of speed and performance, guarantee your safety and, of course, ensure the scalability of your project. So you can make the best decision, we talk to Rubén Tubío, head of projects in Dinahosting.
-Rubén, by setting up an online business, in addition to having a good idea, a good product and a good business plan, what is necessary to consider at the technological level?
-The time to set up an online business, we must be very clear that the technological part is the basis on which everything else is built. It is of no use to have the best idea and a great product if the website does not load fast, it is not safe or has important falls that can affect the user experience. If this occurs, there are no conversions and, therefore, there are no sales.
To work with guarantees from the beginning, these four pillars are very important: choose a good hosting, optimize the website in terms of speed and performance, guarantee their safety and, of course, ensure the scalability of the project, because if everything is going well as normal, it is normal for the ecommerce to grow over time.
As for hosting or web accommodation, the key is to have a reliable supplier, with fast servers and quality technical support that is available 24/7. In addition, you also have to make sure that the online store is well structured, the codes and the images are optimized and the navigation is intuitive.
Here I would also like to highlight the issue of cybersecurity, which is not optional. Having a SSL certificate and backups is essential to keep business and customer information safe.
-Why is hosting choice so important? What weight is in the success of an online store?
The hosting can compare it with the foundations of a house. If they are not solid, everything you build will be unstable, and the same goes for an online business.
A quality hosting helps at an optimal load rate and guarantees you stability, safety and good technical support in case of incidence. After all, users expect a website to load in less than two seconds, and if it is housed on a server with an old hardware or with a very limited network infrastructure, it is most likely that the connectivity of the web will remain and the possible clients leave the site.
Before I have commented, but it is important to reiterate it: a well -configured hosting, with an optimized infrastructure, is what will avoid falls and provide the maximum availability of the store at key moments, such as sales sales peaks, Black Friday or other campaigns with large offers. There is no other secret.
-What are the keys to choose a good hosting?
-We could speak long and lying about this, but to summarize, the most important aspects to be set are performance and speed, safety, scalability, the location of the server where our store will be housed, and the support service offered by the supplier.
This translates into a checklist of elements that you have to ask your hosting supplier yes or yes: NVME discs, which favor a rapid website charge; automatic and free backups; Attack protection (antispam and antivirus in real time) at server level; and SSL certificate included for free with the hosting, to encrypt data transactions between the store and its customers.
In addition, the hosting must be scalable so that the business can grow without problems as web traffic and conversions increase. Sometimes it is enough to move on to a superior hosting plan, and on other occasions you will need to go to your own server just for you.
If the business is going to be developed in Spain and customers are located in the same country, it is most recommended that the website be housed in a data center here, so that the load speed is guaranteed at all times.
Finally, you have to refer to technical support. A good service and customer service equipment makes a difference when solving any questions or incidence that a customer has.
In Dinahosting we bet on a real support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and we attend in Spanish, Galician, Catalan, English and Portuguese. This is a differential value that our customers value a lot.
-What types of hosting exist?
-It there are several types of hosting according to the needs of the project.
Shared hosting is the most basic and economical option, ideal for small websites or projects that are not very demanding in terms of consumption, since several users share the resources of the same server.
If more power, resources and customization are needed, a virtual server (VPS) offers greater independence and dedicated resources without reaching the level of a complete physical server, but allowing to configure the environment according to the needs of the business.
In a upper performance, safety and control step, dedicated servers follow. This is the best option, the most powerful, since we talk about a physical server that is all intended for a single client and allows this enjoyment of all resources exclusively.
Another flexible and scalable solution that allows us to promptly increase the resources of the web according to traffic and business demand automatically is cloud hosting. Here it is only paid for what is used, since it is designed to keep the operational website during very specific visits peaks.
-Are there specific web accommodation solutions for online stores? What advantages do they offer?
-Efectively, there are concrete and optimized solutions for eCommerce, such as our WordPress plans with Woocommerce or Prestashop plans. These applications include hundreds of templates available to save you time in store design, catalog management plugins, multiple easily integrable payment methods, automatic sales and inventory reports …
In the case of Woocommerce, it is one of the most used ecommerce softwares in the world. Our plans start from 50 GB of space and 20 email and chat accounts, if we talk about the most basic, up to 100 GB in the advanced plan and unlimited email accounts.
Its fundamental advantage is that you save steps in the installation and configuration of the store application, since you are already incorporated into the hosting.
-How does it influence the SEO positioning of an e-commerce?
-The hosting directly affects the SEO of an ecommerce in several aspects that search engines, such as Google, take into account when positioning a website.
Two of the most important are load speed and availability. If an online store is slow, users can leave it before completing a purchase, which increases the bouncing rate and negatively affects SEO. Google prioritizes pages that load faster in search results and penalize those that frequently suffer, causing them to lose positions to reduce their visibility.
Another fundamental aspect is the location of the server. If the target audience of the online store is in Spain, having servers located here can improve response times and favor the local SEO.
In addition, do not forget about security. A hosting that includes SSL certificates, protection against malware and automatic backups helps keep the website, which not only protects customer information, but is also positively valued by search engines.
-To time to choose a good technological partner for each project, what should be taken into account?
-This is one of the most important decisions when starting any online project.
A technological partner must provide confidence, quality support and solutions adapted to each business. Not only is it about hiring a service, but also having a supplier with a team committed to facilitating the process of development and management of the project in question, and enhancing its growth.
In Dinahosting we very strive to listen to the client, see what needs, and we even develop custom infrastructure if none of our solutions complies 100 % with what you are looking for. It is not about hiring us, it is about continuing to choose us year after year and forge a relationship that lasts.
-What other services should an ideal hosting provider for an online store provide?
In addition to what has been commented so far, the ideal is that the supplier where you have your store also has some services that are highly recommended for the development of any online project.
The most basic is domain management. Having a supplier that facilitates the registration and management of domains, with multiple available extensions, is key to the digital identity of the online store.
It is also essential to offer solutions that improve user speed and experience, such as a CDN (content distribution network). This service favors that the contents of your website are efficiently delivered to users, from the nearest server, regardless of whether they are entering your website from the other part of the world.
On the other hand, it is also very useful to have a standing environment. It is an exact replica of your website in production that you can use to test all the changes you want without affecting its usual operation. In short, it is a way to ensure the changes before your users see them in your store.
-What importance is the choice of domain in the success of an ecommerce?
-To good domain is key, because it is the address with which users will recognize your website. It is something like your online presentation letter.
For an ecommerce to succeed, in addition to choosing a good hosting, you have to choose a good domain name, easy to remember, write and pronounce, avoiding too long or difficult names that are difficult to type in the browser. You must also convey confidence and be aligned with the brand to reinforce your image on the Internet.
Although the most used extensions and that generate more confidence among users are .com (recognized globally) and .es (in Spain), there are many others for each type of business that can be interesting: .shop, .blog, .Tech …
-In addition to .com and .es, what other extensions could be recommended and why?
For online stores in general, .Shop, .Store or .online are a good choice, since they refer to an ecommerce in themselves and that can favor brand recognition.
If we focus on specific sectors, there are more specialized extensions such as .Tech (for technological businesses), .bio (for ecological products), .fitness (for brands related to fitness and well -being), etc.
On the other hand, if we refer more to the location of the business, it is possible to use geographical domains such as. This can be a useful strategy to transmit proximity and connect with the target audience of each area.
In our case, we always recommend registering a main extension and some more “just in case” to protect the brand and prevent third parties from using a similar name. In Dinahosting we have more than 400 extensions of available domains, so you will surely find the right one.
