The universal truth of ecommerce industry is that a store is only as good as the hosting solution that powers it. The performance of the store is entirely dependent upon the hosting, ensuring its availability and uptime.
Recently, the cloud based hosting solutions are seeing prominence because of their benefit to ecommerce stores. Major ecommerce stores have now migrated to cloud hosting solutions simply because these fit the business strategy perfectly.
Here are five major ways in which cloud hosting adds value to ecommerce stores.
Trouble-free Managed Cloud Hosting
Managed cloud hosting is a way of automating the cloud hosting. It takes care of all the server related issues – from installation to deployment, allowing store owners to focus on their business challenges. The hosting provider offers a simplified interface that helps manage stores effortlessly.
A managed cloud hosting solution covers server setup and maintenance. Unlike other hosting solutions (particularly shared and dedicated hosting), the ecommerce store owners never have to deal with technical details of server management. For the majority of the store owners (with little technical skills), this is a great opportunity for sidestepping unnecessary technicalities and focus on what they do best – maintain and grow their store and business.
High Speed (Almost) Always
Page load speed of an ecommerce store has a direct impact on the sales. It is common knowledge that online shoppers have an attention span of just a few seconds. If the page doesn’t load within this deadline, the tab is closed (generally for a very long while).
Now, store owners have started to realize the part that hosting solution play in minimizing page load times. In this context, cloud hosting offers the best page load speed because of optimized server setup. In addition, many cloud hosting providers offer multiple data center locations that helps store owners to host their store as close to the target audience in order to reduce latency and increase page load speed.
Traffic Spikes are No Surprise
During the Holiday Season, ecommerce stores experience extraordinary levels of traffic. This puts extraordinary stress on the resources of the stores. In many cases, where the hosting solution is not able to handle the traffic surge, the online stores go down and become unavailable.
To mitigate this scenario, cloud hosting solutions offer scalable hosting. This innovation, specific to cloud hosting, allows the available resources to increase as the load on the store increases. Thus, instead of going offline, the store gets access to further resources that ensures continued sales. When the load decreases, the resource threshold returns to the previous position, either automatically (in the case of auto-scalable cloud hosts) or manually.
Ironclad Security
For all store owners, security of the store is a constant worry. The store databases contain sensitive information that attracts cyber criminals of all description. Thus, maintaining the security of the store is a continuous and urgent task for the store management.
The security related demands have increased to the extent where only a few store owners could afford time and the resources to ensure the desired level of security. This is particularly a challenge for shared and dedicated hosting solutions as the store owners have to take care of the security related tasks themselves.
In contrast, cloud hosting providers take care of security related hassles and ensure that the stores remain secured at all times. The processes include prompt patching of vulnerabilities and regular updates that fix previously discovered loopholes. In many cases, cloud hosting solutions come with SSL-certificates and automated backups at little or no cost to the users.
Expert Support
Given the complexity of modern ecommerce platforms, there is a high chance that something will go wrong. Now add to it the woes of server management and the probability of a problem rearing its head becomes almost a certainty.
In such cases, cloud hosting offers the best customer support. Simply because it is a crucial part of the business model of the hosting providers. All cloud hosting providers have server management experts on their team that often double as troubleshooters when the issues get bad enough. In almost all cases, store owners have access to an expert customer support team that resolves their issues in minimum time.
Ideal Managed Cloud Hosting Provider
Considering the aforementioned ways a cloud hosting platform impacts an ecommerce business, it is not hard to imagine what an ideal service provider would have to offer.
The platform you sign up with should be able to keep your data behind encrypted firewalls, saving you the humiliation of being a victim of a cyberattack. Moreover, it should offer impeccable performance and excellent technical support for the cloud hosting platform.
Just remember, there are numerous options to choose from. So, keep looking for the one that best suits your business needs.
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Sajjad Shahid, Ecommerce Community Manager at Cloudways
Author Bio: Sajjad is an Ecommerce Community Manager at Cloudways -A Managed Ecommerce Hosting Platform. He loves helping out Ecommerce store owners, merchants and marketers in establishing their businesses and startups.
Gravatar Email: sajjad.shahid@cloudways.com
Twitter URL: https://twitter.com/i_sajjadshahid