The objective of building a website for a new business all comes down to conversions, yet many entrepreneurs aren’t familiar with this important term. The good news is that most business owners are able to explain the purpose of their site, and the two concepts of conversion and purpose are closely related. In short, conversions are the desired actions business owners want website users to take when visiting their site. Below are three examples of the most typical conversions and the business hosting requirements for each.
Making a Sale
Sales are the easiest conversion to explain, though they may be the most difficult to accomplish. Adding a sales component to a website allows visitors to make a purchase through a shopping cart. For example, a jeweler’s website may allow visitors to browse through designs and then enter payment and shipping information for a specific piece. Though some small business’s hosting plans include a payment feature, others may require a third-party application, such as Pay Pal, and customers may feel more secure making purchases directly. At any rate, businesses need to ensure that their servers can handle those requests. Since businesses who do sales online depend on 24/7 availability to stay in the black, it’s worth using a hosting service with anytime support.
Finding Information about Your Field or Business
Getting contact information from site visitors is extremely valuable to a business, and it requires very little coding or storage. A small field for a name and email address at the top of a blog page, for instance, can offer the option to subscribe to blog posts—an easy sell for individuals already reading the blog for information. For further incentives, many companies (particularly consultants) may choose to offer content, such as an eBook, that has to be unlocked by entering a limited amount of personal or demographic information before accessing it. The content itself should be compelling and useful to the target market, possibly generating interest in the company and leading to potential sales. In order to collect data and gain subscribers this way, businesses just starting out can use free or limited business web hosting to accomplish these goals and grow their customer base.
Downloading Content
Even businesses not looking to make a sale online (such as restaurants) may have downloads available for visitors. These often provide information to potential customers while simultaneously tracking the number of interested visitors. Downloads are the lowest level of commitment, under sales and offering information, yet they’re a good way to pull people into the site. It’s crucial that your web host have the capability to provide quick downloads to users.
Tailoring the Site to its Conversion Goals
Dozens of web hosting providers are competing for business out there. Some accommodate small businesses specifically, while others are optimal for beginners with easy-to-use templates and full customer service, and still others offer complex services to be used a la carte. Before looking at rate quotes, it’s important to understand the business’s key conversion, remembering that some sites aim to accomplish all of the examples above. A musician’s site may only require a service that provides dependable file storage so his songs can be downloaded, whereas a tutorial website on cooking or car repair may require embedded video links as well as e-commerce capabilities. Whether a website is meant for sales or informational purposes, effective web hosting will ensure it runs efficiently.