Entrepreneurs are keen to have a hosting solution that best meets their eCommerce needs.

It may be a shared hosting plan, or a dedicated server or a powerful virtualized environment, but in the final say it must fulfill their basic need – that is to deliver best experience to customers.

Ecommerce hosting websites refer to online stores that allow products and services to be bought and sold.

Such websites need to be integrated with a reliable shopping cart application or a merchant account such as PayPal.

Importantly for best results, an eCommerce site must be search engine optimized.

Any hosting plan chosen for eCommerce must deliver a high level of performance, but with the hosting market flooded with myriad providers, the question on how to choose the best eCommerce platform for SEO is not easily answered.

Most of the hosting companies boast of delivering the best business grade web server hosting solutions, coupled with security, back and restore tools.

Yet, you must do your own committed research to make a prudent selection.

The final choice will depend on your budget, the type of business and the traffic you expect to your site.

But first, here is a brief why Search Engine Optimization matters for an eCommerce site.

Any business person desires that his or her site must appear high on search result pages. A high ranking website drives free organic traffic and helps in increasing conversion rates, which in turn boosts company bottom line.

This is the singular reason why SEO is a crucial part of online marketing efforts.

With this in mind it makes sense for you to assess which hosting solution can deliver the best website optimized results for you.

Here are a few tips that may help you make a considered selection.

Speed

To start with, focus on speed, because quick website loading is a very important factor for an eCommerce site’s success.  Speed not only delivers good customer experience, but enhances SEO appreciably.

Online shoppers have notoriously low attention spans, and a delay of even one second can significantly push down conversion rates.

A study has revealed that a fourth of users will ditch a site if it takes more than 4 seconds to load.

To ensure speed, preferably look for a provider that makes use of CDN, or Content Delivery Network.

Reliability

An online store that is open 24 X 7 and 365 days a year will deliver significantly better results than those having poor up-times. This means look for a provider who guarantees an up-time of at least 99.5%.

Apart from up-time, other factors that affect reliability are:

• Type of hosting – You may decide to operate your eCommerce site either in-house or outsource it to a third party. Both models have their advantages and drawbacks. Outsourcing to an inexperienced hosting provider can result in delays in fixing problems.
• Redundancy – The hosting solution must have multiple layers of redundancy or adequate backup to reinforce its reliability. If any hardware or a point in network experiences breakdown, adequate redundancy will preempt hosting disasters.
• Scalability – There could be a sudden swell in demand for your brand or services, with consequent surge in traffic to your site. The hosting solution you look for must be able to adjust a spike, by offering you scalability features.

In the final say, the best eCommerce platform is the one that will meet your unique business needs, not only today but in the near future as well. Make a researched choice from among shared and Dedicated Server hosting options, and between cloud and physical servers.

High performance hosting will greatly add value to your business.