16/09/2020
Part 3 of Winning Customers Strategically
Dependability. How reliable is the service?
You need to ask yourself if a commitment is a high priority for you today and if it’s not, what is going to change tomorrow for it to become a high priority?
Focus on timelines when looking at your commitments and check to see if you have taken on too much or have you taken on things that are well outside of your effective skillset so making delivery difficult? Taking on too much and not being able to manage that commitment right the way through to completion is going to set you on a path which will not end well.
This may mean you need to know when to say no at times, and the truth is, whilst people will be annoyed at that response as long as it has been explained to them as to why you can’t deliver at that time, they will accept it. It is better to say no than to say yes and commit yourself to unrealistic timescales which you then can’t deliver on. Saying ‘I can’t do this now but could get it delivered in 4 weeks’ is better than saying ‘Yes’ and then delivering it 2 weeks later.
Be truthful. Honesty in business can sometimes seem like a myth, but it’s a cornerstone to the process of doing real business with people who you know, like and TRUST.
Be true to your values. Your moral compass outlines who you are and what you stand for and it’s the basis of how others come to rely on you and what you do.
Regarding the technical side of providing a dependable website for your users is to make sure you use a host by checking the following:
Ensure the IP of your web host isn't blocked. All it takes is one bad apple (customer) on a shared server to give it a bad name in the world wide web. If they start spamming emails from that server and you are on it, it also puts you in the untrustworthy list, putting your emails to your clients straight into in their spam box. Thankfully there are a couple of sites to check if your server is blacklisted here:
https://www.senderscore.org/
https://www.spamhaus.org/lookup/
Customer support is crucial in an emergency situation when you need to get your site fixed quickly due to technical errors or DNS attacks. Another example could be to upscale up your site's server due to an increase in traffic, or you need help setting up your emails or help with installing a secure end to end encryption.
It's important to have more than one channel to access support at the time you need, such as chat, support tickets, email and phone. Therefore go with a host that is available 24/7 or at least in your local time zone or better yet - the time zone of your customers.
Speed matters when it comes to holding the attention of your audience.
To approach this; first, you have to find out what your needs are in a server. For example, a WordPress site will require a different setup to a Magento store. In any case, you will have to go over the following:
Again server location is important to consider because the closer a user is to your server, the less time it takes for data to transfer from your server to their browser and vice-versa.
Server software type: it's not that the software directly helps with speed its more the point of if you choose the wrong one your site won't work well, if at all.
The more Central Processing Units (CPUs) the more data can be processed simultaneously, and the faster your site loads.
What you choose should be dependent on how much data needs processing to load your website.
For example, the more images, scripts, plugins, and videos you plan to load, the more CPUs you should consider.
Random Access Memory (RAM) are physical chips on the server. They hold data of the web server software as well as anything else you’re running on the server. When this data is requested from the RAM, it can be accessed instantly. Similarly to CPU, there isn’t an ideal amount of RAM for WordPress. The amount of RAM you need is purely dependent on your specific needs. The more RAM you have, the more data can be held there and loaded quickly when it’s requested.
Storage is the amount of space available for you to store files such as the WordPress core, images, scripts, plugin files, and other similar content. The reason why it's relevant for site speed is that it has an indirect factor for page speed. The more you plan on loading onto a page from your storage space, the slower the page loads.
It’s measured in bytes like 100 GB, for example. In most cases, you want more space than this so you can store posts, images, plugins, and other content.
Many top tiers hosting plans offer unlimited storage, but this is impossible since there is only so much space on a server, similar to a computer. Once it has maxed out, you need to upgrade to a whole other server with more resources.
Bandwidth is the capacity for website data to be transferred at a certain rate to the end-user.
It’s not a measure of page load speed itself, but the more bandwidth that’s available means the more data that can be transferred, and the more times your site can be loaded for your visitors. As the data transfer rate increases, the more capacity there is to load your site faster.
Bandwidth is measured in bits per second (bps).
Similar to the storage, bandwidth can’t be unlimited, but many hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth.
Be sure to check their terms of service or fine print to see their definition of “unlimited"!
