When it comes to web hosting, there is no shortage of options out there – choosing one can be overwhelming. However, if you’re running an Australian business, a local hosting provider is the ideal choice. Why?
Generally speaking, local businesses attract local customers. So for an Australian business to have its website hosted by an overseas provider means that, even though the business and the potential customers visiting the website are in Australia, each request to navigate between the pages of the website needs to travel all the way to the other side of the world and back.
This means slower response times, bigger delays between each click of the button, and a less convenient experience for the user. This can cause potential customers to grow frustrated with your website, and go with one of your competitors instead.
By hosting your website in Australia, everything remains local and service speeds will be much faster. According to renowned Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, a webpage should ideally load in less than 2-3 seconds.
Think of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! as having little insects that crawl all over the internet, retrieving data from every website and bringing it back to the nest for cataloguing. This is how search engines know which websites belong in which internet searches, and in which order.
If your Australian website is exclusively visited by Australian users, but hosted overseas, these little insects are likely to get confused. When it comes to SEO, confusion is bad – search engines will favour Australian-hosted sites over yours, and you’ll appear further down the list. Needless to say, this is bad for business!
This one is a no-brainer. If you’re experiencing technical issues or require customer support for whatever reason, getting in touch with a local Australian web hosting provider is going to be much easier than one that’s based in the US or the UK, for example.
Even with chatbots, time difference can cause a simply-resolved issue to drag out for a few days with tedious back-and-forth communications.
In regards to scheduled maintenance and system upgrades, an overseas host is likely to conduct these during their off-peak times… if this happens to be right in the middle of the day in Australia, you’ll find your website offline during peak periods.
Of course, supporting local Australian businesses is always preferable to lining the pockets of large-scale international corporations. By keeping your web hosting subscriptions local, you’re also avoiding international payment fees and the unpredictability of conversion rates and foreign economies.
When considering the pros and cons of domestic vs. overseas web hosting providers, the benefits of hosting your website in Australia are clear.