Web Hosting is the first pillar of Web Analytics.
No matter what kind of website you are running, web hosting is the first pillar of Website Analytics. In this day and age, it is crucial to rank high with Google and Bing if you expect to draw organic traffic to your site. Many people never make it past page one–no one makes it past page two. It doesn’t matter if your website is a blog, an online marketplace, or simply a static landing page detailing what your business is and how you can be reached. The end goal is to create warm leads of people interested in what you are selling. How do we do this? By measuring who comes to the site, what they read, and how long they stay. But, how do you know your metrics aren’t skewed by unreliable hosting? The answer lies in understanding the measurements. Here are a few things you should know:
First Pillar: Reliable Web Hosting
Uptime and Speed are the key words here. People simply get tired waiting for a site that is ‘temporarily down’ or loading slowly, so they will invariably hit the back button to return to the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), never to return. It is through the SERPs that you gain organic traffic, so if you don’t have reliable hosting and your site is often down or slow to load, you won’t gain anything from all that SEO you so painfully worked for (or paid for) to move you up to that coveted first page of Google. Look for hosting from providers such as Flywheel or Best Web Hosting that gives you tools to maximize your up-time as well as speed. Then, and only then, can rest assured you won’t lose traffic due to inaccessible or slow web pages.
Second Pillar: Metrics
Once you are assured that you have a web hosting company that will keep your site up and running at speeds that won’t frustrate visitors, it’s time to see start tracking who is coming to your websites. Externally, this can be done by harvesting Wi-fi log-ins (Gazella Wifi), or internally (Google Analytics). Ideally, you want to track who came, how long they stayed, whether or not moved about through internal pages, or simply didn’t like what they saw and left. It should also be stated, keeping people on your website by leading them to other content is a necessity to keep them on your website, but ultimately your goal is to get them to download something or sign up for something.
How does web hosting have an impact on this? Remember, you can’t get accurate results if you are losing visitors due to unreliable hosting! Your numbers will not paint an accurate picture so your analytics will be skewed.
Third Pillar: Predictive Analytics
Once you have a stable hosting company and are measuring metrics, you can begin to do things like predict which advertisements or offers get a person to buy/interact. This is done through predictive analytics. Contemporary Analysis (CAN) uses data collected from its web site train its machine learning model to offer its potential customers articles they might be interested in. This is similar to what Amazon does with products, Netflix does with movies, and you can do with the right data.
Hosting, Metrics, and Analytics are the three elements that must work together if any type of website is to survive, grow, and provide leads. Without reliable hosting, your drop metrics are skewed and your click-through rates are diminished. Your website metrics will be skewed due to bounce rates due, not to bad content, but to speed and hosting. If your site is being damaged by poor hosting, I highly recommend changing hosting companies. With reliable hosting, your metrics will be accurate and your data can be used to predict customer interactions.
Your company will thank you for it.
For additional web hosting information, check out this free guide at https://firstsiteguide.com/web-hosting/. It’s a great way to get familiar with web hosting before you get started.
