It’s extremely satisfying when an agency’s hard work pays off, and customers see consistent online growth. It means that branding, advertising, and other marketing work have been effective. And as a customer’s web properties get bigger and see higher traffic levels, it’s common that the web hosting platform needs to adjust or scale in line with that growth.
As an example, consider an eCommerce site that grows from 100 transactions per month to 10,000 per month. The value of the website to the business has significantly increased. It’s likely the customer should be considering what impact site unavailability, slowdown due to capacity limits, or even a malware infection could have to the business. Agencies typically extensively monitor and track online growth but may not track impact to the hosting provision as closely. So how do they know when it’s time to review a hosting solution?
Good managed hosting services should be prepared for the sometimes rapid growth of the websites they host. Comprehensive monitoring of available system resources, site response times, changes in traffic behaviour along with performance and capacity testing during growth periods can help ensure agencies are kept informed when scaling is appropriate.
Sites should be able to scale from small, shared hosting plans, to cloud or dedicated servers, all the way to fully load balanced, high-availability solutions as required.
Customers with high-value websites may also need to consider more advanced, proactive security solutions as brand reputation and visitor traffic levels increase.
It’s clear that many digital agencies that build or develop web properties of any kind, need hosting support more than ever. Managed hosting is becoming more important and more connected to the work that agencies do.
A productive working relationship between agency and web host will only improve the end results for the end customer, with operational and commercial benefits for all.