7 Essential Tech Aspects of Running a Website

As a business, having an online presence is not an option anymore. Regardless of the size of the organization, having an online presence allows businesses to engage with their existing customers while trying to reach prospects efficiently. While social media platforms have afforded an interactive means of communicating with customers, a website sits at the heart of the online presence of a brand. However, in this tech-driven world, managing and running a website requires a basic understanding of the technologies involved. While many of us are not technically skilled, it is important that we understand the important technologies used by a website.

A website allows you to be available to your customers 24x7, establishes the credibility of your business, offers a platform to market and sell your products/services, and engages customers in a cost-effective manner. However, merely having a website is not enough. It needs to be informative, professional, and offer the best experience in terms of security, speed, and performance to site visitors. In this article, we will talk about five essential tech aspects of running a website.

1. Hosting

For your website to be available to people on the internet, you need to store it on a web host. A web host is the home of your website and it can make a huge difference in your site’s performance, speed, and uptime. Therefore, it is important that you analyze your site’s requirements and choose a host which offers features in sync with them. The web hosting market offers many hosting options like Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server, Cloud-based Hosting, etc. With each hosting type, they offer multiple plans. Researching well and spending some time understanding each of these hosting types will help you to assess the suitable options. Advance hosting types such as Cloud Hosting is a popular choice among startups and legacy businesses alike. This is primarily due to high scalability and cost efficiency Cloud-based hosting has to offer.

Some features that you can look for include:

• Maximum Uptime assurance — 99.9%+
• High page load speeds
• Scalability of resources to manage sudden traffic spikes
• Regular and automatic backups
• 24x7 support
• Good reviews and reputation

2. Security

The security of a website is undeniably its most important aspect. Usually, your website is your first point of contact with customers. If it is not secure, then you can put the business relationship at risk by exposing it to threats like virus/malware attacks, etc. An unsecured website can lead to the loss or theft of critical data and more importantly, a loss of the customer’s trust. Think about it — if you visit a website and find some security issues with it, would you visit it again? Would you trust the site again? Probably not. Therefore, it is important to ensure the security of the website.

Depending on the platform used by you for developing your website, you should opt for the latest and most preferred security tools. Here are a few ways by which you can strengthen the security:

• Change your passwords regularly and keep them complex (alphanumeric with a special character and an upper-case character)
• Regularly scan your website for viruses and malware
• Use the latest security tools
• Opt for a hosting provider who prioritizes security of your website

3. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Ever since the evolution of social media platforms, predicting site traffic has become very difficult. After all, even if a single, seemingly unassuming post hits the sweet spot with your audience, your website can experience a sudden spike in traffic. A Content Delivery Network or CDN is a network of servers spread across the globe that carry a copy of your website. These servers work together and share this load, leading to a better site-experience. Usually, every server in a CDN is configured to serve visitors which are geographically close to it. Hence, apart from helping to manage traffic spikes, a CDN can help improve page load speeds and reduce the consumption of bandwidth.

You can install a third-party CDN or opt for a web host who offers integrated CDN and caching servers for an optimum site experience.

4. Speed

Gone are the days when we would patiently wait for a site to load. Nowadays, users expect websites to load within a couple of seconds. This is also evident from the fact that Google includes website speed as a factor in determining the page rank in search results. Hence, having a fast loading website is important for better visibility and overall site experience.

There are many ways to improve the speed of your website:

• Image optimization — wherein you compress and resize images optimally to ensure the best results in the smallest image size.
• Video Optimization
• Integrating a CDN
• Integrating Caching servers

5. Design and Development

Like the powerful engines in any sports car, the backend of the website is where the horsepower is generated. Hence, a strong backend with clean programming code is extremely important. Even if the website design is user-friendly, good programming is a must. The best “engine” for a website, especially an e-commerce website, is Magento or WordPress.

6. Online Marketing

Once you have developed and launched your website, it is time to make some noise and tell people about it. Most people do not type the URL of a website directly into their web browsers but go through search engines to find what they are looking for. Hence, you need a solid online marketing plan to ensure that you can put your website in front of the targeted audience and achieve a higher page rank in search engine results. Here are some tips:

• Identify and define your target market
• Set SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
• Create a marketing budget
• Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools to optimize your online presence
• Start blogging
• Get active on major social media platforms
• Start creating a mailing list of prospective customers and plan an email campaign
• Seek reviews from satisfied customers, etc.

7. Google Analytics

Google Analytics, a data analytics tool that provides information on user engagement & behaviour, on your website. Most important metrics provided by Google Analytics are: how many people have visited your website, time they spend on your website, the pages they visited on your website, if they added any product to the cart, how they ended up purchasing a product and much. Having this data can prove to be tremendously helpful in understanding a user’s journey, which can help craft the marketing strategy.

Summing Up

Running and managing a website can be an overwhelming process. We hope that these tips can help you identify the tech aspects of your website that need attention. Second chances are very rare in the online world. Therefore, taking care of these aspects and ensuring that you put your best foot forward is the only way ahead.

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