You might assume that web design and web hosting are far removed from each other, but they’re more closely linked than you might realize. Don’t fall into the trap of allocating a huge bit of your budget to getting a professionally designed website and then going for bottom-of-the-range web hosting—you’ll end up regretting that decision!
Let’s take a deeper dive into how hosting affects user experience in web design. Once you understand how the quality of your web host can make or break your website’s design, you’ll never go for sub-par hosting again!
Making a Great First Impression
It’s a digital world—your website is usually the first point of contact between your brand or business and potential customers. If their first meeting with your website shows them something old, clunky, or unprofessional, they’re going to assume that’s just how you do business… And probably hop off to one of your competitors.
Both web hosting and web design play a big role in how potential customer feels when they first land on your site. It’s in your best interest to make sure you’re working with a great web hosting company as well as a talented web designer!
Where Design, Speed, and Hosting Meet
Your website’s design and its performance go hand in hand. Poor web hosting can diminish the quality of your design, and poor web design can hamper your site’s performance.
UI and UX design flaws can make your website less appealing to visitors, and not many people are going to sift through a website that’s hard to navigate, much less engage in business with you!
On the other hand, your design can be spectacular, but if your web hosting can’t handle it well, your site speed will suffer. And considering more than half of visitors will close the page if it hasn’t loaded within 3 seconds, this is a huge factor.
Both web design and web hosting are vital for a pleasant user experience, but ultimately, it begins with your choice of a web host. You need a host before you can hire a designer, so you need to do your research right from the very beginning.
Ask yourself what kind of vision you have for your website. Will it be interactive, with videos, gifs, and animations? Will it be static but image-heavy? Or will it be mostly text-based? The answers to these questions will tell you what your web host needs to be able to handle.
Design and Speed: A Crucial Pair
Web design and website loading speed are closely connected. Each one has its own distinct purpose, but alone, they’re not very useful. Pair excellent design with brilliant loading speed, though, and you’ve got a dynamic, user-friendly website that’ll serve you and your potential customers well.
A well-designed, well-organized website is appealing to visitors, which immediately improves your conversion rates. The easier it is for customers to explore and engage with your products and services, the less of a push they need to move further down that sales funnel.
In the same vein, a fast website doesn’t hold the user back. They can pop from page to page and find the information they need fast, without waiting for the site to load. In today’s instant gratification world, this is invaluable.
Without eye-catching design, your website can be the fastest on the internet, but it’s not going to hold a visitor’s attention. Without excellent loading speed, your beautiful design won’t matter because visitors won’t stick around to see it.
Hosting: The Performance Backbone
A solid, reliable web host is the foundation on which everything is built. Things like server location, type of server, and what type of hosting you pick all factor into the quality of your web hosting and determine how well your site performs at the end of the day.
- Server Location: The further away the server is from your visitor’s browser, the slower it’ll load. Choose a web host that’s local to your main target market, or that uses a content delivery network.
- Server Type: SSD (solid-state drive) hosting is faster and more reliable than HDD (hard disk drive) hosting. Check this upfront, as it can make a significant difference.
- Hosting Type: Shared hosting is almost always a no-no for businesses, as your site speed can be affected by other websites’ traffic. Dedicated is the minimum you should choose, but if you can work out the budget for it, cloud hosting is the best by far.
Hosting Speed Impacts SEO Just as Web Design Does
Both your website loading speed and your web design have an impact on SEO. If users bounce off your site because it’s not user-friendly, Google sees it and knocks you down the rankings because it assumes your site isn’t useful.
This is also true for speed. If users are leaving the page because it’s taking too long to load, the same thing happens. Google also checks out your site speed when it crawls your site, and if it doesn’t look good, then you’ll drop down the rankings no matter how good your on-page SEO is.
Higher-ranking sites are generally perceived to be more professional and trustworthy, so being knocked down the page can have a big negative impact on your business. Get your web hosting and web design right, and all your other SEO efforts will fall into place.
Hosting Speed and User Happiness
Whatever business you have, your website is a key part of bridging the gap between you and your potential customers. And no matter your niche, one thing is always true—user happiness trumps most other things.
Happy users are far more likely to move through your sales funnel and actually buy. After that, if the process is easy, they’re likely to come back. And they’re also more likely to pass your details onto others.
Happy users are what every business should aim for. In this digital age, your website is the face of your brand or business! Taking the time to learn how hosting affects user experience in web design is the first step towards happier users, more sales, and a thriving business!
