Choosing Your Website Domain And Web Hosting
Step Up Your Business's Online Presence
If you are planning to run a proper and well-established business in 2021, it would mean that you need to own a website to introduce Internet users to your organisation.
You might be asking why or you more or less might know the reason.
The reason is that a website is the best place to put all your successful past projects and works on an online company portfolio. It will be the place potential clients come to check out what services and products your business has to offer.
But before getting deeper into how to manage your online portfolio or what you should include in your website, you must first choose a website domain and host of your own.
These two steps are necessary for establishing your website. By getting to know more about what each of them means, you’ll be more certain that they are indeed vital to a working website.
Website domain and hosting are important elements of a running website.
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What Is A Domain?
A domain name is the name of a website, for example, visioasia.com,
it’s the name that comes after the “@” in an email address
or after “www.” in a web address.
First, let’s understand what a domain is on Internet terms. It’s a part of the Internet system that allows us to link to other locations such as websites and domain name is what we use to find a website.
A domain name is a website’s address that is registered within a national or international domain. To put it simply, a domain is like a mall that houses multiple different shops and the domain name is the signage for the shops that are in the mall. This helps shoppers to easily find the right place they want to shop in.
Well Then, What About Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a term used when you buy or rent space from an organisation that sells or leases memory space on its servers to house your website. The amount of space you buy or rent depends on the package you purchase from said organisation.
This is typically done in a data centre from a web host organisation which service is enabling you to publish your website on the Internet.
Before getting a hosting service, you should know that there are three types of web hosting services available. Dedicated web hosting, VPS, and shared hosting.
Let’s dive a bit deeper into these three services that web host organisations might offer to you should you choose to take their service.
Dedicated Web Hosting
The dedicated web hosting service means that you will have an entire server dedicated to your website alone. This allows for more secure web hosting as you won’t be sharing your server with any other websites that might have malicious activities going on. At the same time, your website won’t face problems such as a sudden surge in traffic that is caused by your neighbour’s website that causes your website to run slower or get interrupted (such as a website crash or other issues).
Shared Hosting
The perk of using shared hosting from a web host provider is that it’s economical – keeping your website development cost low. However, there is a caveat to this type of web hosting service as you will be sharing resources such as memory, data, and traffic; among many others, with other websites that are within the same server.
This also applies to security, your website will be sharing the same security that is provided by the web hosting company within the server. As mentioned in the dedicated hosting section above, your website will experience slower loading time and interruption if the traffic received is more than what the server can handle.
Another caution that you might want to be careful with is if a malicious website is running on the same server, it could affect your website too. With no intention of scaring, having your website hacked can happen due to shared hosting.
As always, be sure to be as thorough as you can when researching for the right web hosting company that provides shared hosting. To avoid your website from getting hacked, most established web hosting service providers will guide you with the steps you will need to follow to secure your website if you decide to opt for this service.
VPS Hosting
VPS stands for “Virtual Private Server”, which is considered as the middle-ground service that is provided by web hosting companies.
It’s lower in cost than dedicated hosting but provides more reliability and security than shared hosting. One of the many benefits that you get when opting for VPS hosting is complete root access. According to HostGator, ‘like a dedicated server hosting, this web hosting service provides you with root-level access to your server which enables you to control the entire server environment through a robust control and management panel.’
Know The Niche Of Your Business
Before you make the decision to choose a web hosting service for you, it’s important that you understand and confirm your business niche and needs first.
If your business niche and focus is online oriented (e.g.:e-commerce), it is recommended that you get a dedicated web hosting service. This service offers you top-tier security, huge space to work with, and have complete and full control over it.
This means that your designed-for-online website can handle huge amounts of traffic and have an optimised page loading time.
But, if your business niche is dependent on physical business transactions, then you can opt for shared hosting. As your website will function as an information provider about your business such as what you do, the services you provide, and how to contact you for enquiries.
Having a complete understanding of your business niche, needs, and main source of sales and transactions gives you a better insight into choosing the right web hosting service for you.
Traffic to your website won’t be as heavy as those for an e-commerce website. Though it will increase over time – especially as your business gets more successful, as it will lead more people to your website. When this happens, you can always upgrade to dedicated web hosting or VPS hosting, depending on your budget.
And if budget is your main concern and you’re looking for an option that is more affordable yet secure and reliable, VPS Hosting is the right choice for you. You get the price of shared hosting and the security and complete freedom to change the environment and install applications with this service.
How To Pick The Suitable Domain Name?
This can be quite tricky if you aren’t aware of the unwritten rule of picking a suitable domain name. You won’t only need to sometimes use the name of your company or business, but also one that will attract prompt attention. Oh, and there’s also the consideration for the domain name to be easy and relevant with what people type in the search engine.
Slapping on any name that you can think of as your domain name can have a bad effect on your website as a lot is riding on it. Searches on social media, click-through rates, searches, type-in links, referring links, offline advertising – these are just some of the important things you need for your website and it can be negatively impacted if your domain name doesn’t work.
As we said, it can get quite tricky.
And now it is your turn to check on the niche of your website and business. So, that you can choose the most suitable domain name and web hosting service. By doing so, you can fully benefit from what you have invested.
So when it comes to choosing a domain name, make sure that it is brandable. It has to be short, memorable, and unique when people search, type, or read it. Having a domain name that contains keywords that are exact or similar to the user’s search intent can help increase your website’s click-through rate. By letting users know that your website is providing them with the solution they are looking for, you attract user engagement – making this one of the steps to good website SEO.
Last but not least, checking your business and website niche can help you in choosing the most suitable domain name and web hosting service for you. By doing so, you can fully benefit from what you have invested in for your organisation’s web development needs.
