Just about everyone needs a website these days. Whether you plan on blogging, own your own company, or want to sell your crafts online, a website is just one of those basic needs. While we are using social media more and more, websites are still much more flexible and, of course, more professional.
Setting up a website is relatively easy these days. However, you have particular considerations to take into account in 2024, as the web has changed a lot in the last few years.
Here are the 3 things you need to take into account.
Should I use cloud hosting?
Web hosting is one of those things that stagnated for quite a while. Plans tended to stay the same, in terms of what they offered and how they worked, and even in price. But the hosting game is changing, with cloud hosting becoming ever more popular.
Should you really use cloud hosting? There are certainly downsides to it. It is both more expensive and difficult to use, although you should be able to manage the added complexity. It is also slightly less secure.
However, if you are not keeping top-secret data, cloud hosting is more than secure enough. Furthermore, it is more adaptable and allows for easy scalability, which is important if you are not 100% sure of the growth direction your website will take.
Finding the right hosting provider is key.
Social media integration
While you should not fall for the misconception that social media presence is more important than a website, it is becoming increasingly important that the two are well-integrated. They should play off each other, rather than being two mutually exclusive strategies.
This means that when designing your website, you should include widgets that make it easy to incorporate tweets, Instagram posts, and Facebook discussions from on the site itself. Furthermore, when you do post on social media, it should be easy to click right through to posts or links on your site.
Speed is still key
If like me, you were around in the ‘90s, you can easily recall a time when today’s speeds were unthinkable. You would have to wait for ages for a few megabytes to download, and even text-based websites might take minutes to load. In that context, you would be forgiven for thinking that a little extra speed today does not matter. After all, visitors to your website will still only be waiting a couple of seconds.
The unfortunate truth is that as speeds increase, so too do our expectations. A little bit of lag is no longer acceptable, even if it doesn’t really make much of a difference to our lives. We are impatient and can give up on a website very quickly.
When building your website, you must still take speed into account. Do not make it too data-heavy by embedding high-quality media. Fewer pixels will not harm you as much as a few more seconds.
