Why should I host my websites in Australia?
If your website targets Australian audience, then you should host it on an Australian Server. There are many benefits from hosting your website on an Australian server, and some are listed below:
Speed / Latency
If your visitors are from Australia, your website will load faster for them if it is hosted in Australia. The latency to access an ANS server is approximately less than 10 ms, where as if your website is hosted on a US server, on average it is more than 200 ms. 200 ms doesn't sound too bad, does it? To give you an idea, An average web page will take 2 - 4 seconds to load if it is hosted in Australia, the same website may take up to 8 seconds to complete loading if it is hosted in the US. If your website consist of a lot of images, the load time will increase dramatically (20+ seconds)!
Why does it matter if my website doesn't load fast for my users? User experience! In the competitive world of the internet, users will not return to a website if they consider it to be slow. In a study by Akamai, 75% of people would not return to a website that took longer than 4 seconds to load. Another study released by Akamai gave the following conclusion:
- 47% expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
- 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load.
- 52% of online shoppers claim that quick page loads are important for their loyalty to a site.
- 14% will start shopping at a different site if page loads are slow, 23% will stop shopping or even walk away from their computer.
- 64% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with their site visit will go somewhere else to shop next time.
The Proof That Milliseconds Matter
The major internet companies have compiled some data to support the fact that milliseconds matter.
- Google discovered that a change from loading a 10-result page in 0.4 seconds to a 30-result page loading in 0.9 seconds decreased traffic and ad revenues by 20%.
- Google Search found that a 400 millisecond delay resulted in a -0.59% change in searches/user. What’s more, even after the delay was removed, these users still had -0.21% fewer searches, indicating that a slower user experience affects long term behavior.
- Another study by Google found that an extra 500ms in loading time resulted in 20% drop in traffic. That’s just half a second to lose 1/5th of your visitors!
- Yahoo also found that a 400ms slower page would see 5-9% more people leave before the page finished loading.
- For every 100ms increase in load time of Amazon.com decreased sales by 1% .
SEO
Another reason to have your website hosted in Australia is "Google"!
The following is from the Google Webmaster Central Blog:
“You may have heard that here at Google we’re obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed.” So if you want have good SEO ranking, you will need to consider the loading time of your website! Having your site hosted either in Australian or overseas is going to be detrimental to your carefully planned and fine-tuned SEO.
A study by LightSpeedNow showed that by making a website faster Google sent 15% more traffic, and Bing and Yahoo also sent more traffic.
Support
Everybody knows computers will break down, and webservers will go offline!
Hosting your website with ANS Communications will give you the peace of mind to know that when something does go wrong, you will receive the fastest response possible. Your business hours are our business hours! Some overseas company claim to provide 24/7 support. In reality, when you require support outside their business hour, it may take up to 2 hours to just get a response! Also, if hardware fails during business hours, we will be able to replace them in a timely manner, with the least distraction to the operation of your website! Imagine your website goes offline and you have to wait 2 - 8 hours for a response, then another 12 hours to have hardware replaced!
