In the past couple of years, eCommerce has become one of the fastest-growing sectors in the global economy. After 2020’s digital shift, eCommerce spending grew by 80%. And while that boost is bound to drop, “20% of that boost is here to stay”, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index.
As the sector grew, it became increasingly competitive, and user expectations shifted. Speed and personalization used to be nice to have, but now they’re absolute musts.
Your online store’s performance has never been so important. And the tools you use to build it can either facilitate optimization or make it an uphill battle.
In this post, we’ll dive into the following:
- Why Choose Managed WordPress Hosting For eCommerce?
- What is Managed WordPress?
- The Benefits of Using Managed WordPress for Your Online Store
- The Limitations of Managed WordPress
- When Managed WordPress Is Unnecessary
- How to Pick Your Managed WordPress Hosting Provider
Why Choose Managed WordPress Hosting For eCommerce?
WordPress is the web’s most used Content Management System (CMS). It started as a blogging platform, but thanks to its flexibility, open-source status, and vibrant community, it has become a reliable tool for building almost any type of website. Our WordPress Tutorial is the best place to start if you’re new to this CMS.
WooCommerce is the go-to plugin for building online stores on WordPress. Over 6 million online stores run on WooCommerce, and it’s used by 4,500 out of the 100,000 most popular sites in the world.
So, what makes WooCommerce such a competitive tool? And how does it work?
WooCommerce isn’t a platform; it’s a plugin that can be added to your WordPress installation to expand its functionalities. On top of that, you’ll find many supporting plugins that extend its functionality even further.
WooCommerce comes with many benefits. For starters, once you’ve installed WooCommerce, you’ll be able to access it from WordPress’ intuitive dashboard. There’s no need to figure out and learn new interfaces, so for simpler projects, a WooCommerce developer is probably unnecessary. You can simplify your site management workflow by running your online store and the rest of your site on the same platform.
WooCommerce supports PayPal out of the box. But it can also be integrated with many different payment gateways. This can be extremely useful if you plan to expand your store to other countries where different payment methods are preferred.
When choosing WooCommerce, you can enjoy WordPress’s flexibility and ease of use when managing your online store. You’ll be able to fully customize your website’s look and feel, creating an experience that suits your users’ preferences and your brand identity.
On the other hand, WooCommerce doesn’t charge sales commissions, and it’s free. So, when you move your site to WordPress and WooCommerce, you reduce the fixed costs of running your online store, and you’ll just have to pay for hosting and cover your payment processor’s transaction fees.
Now that we’ve looked at why you should run your online store on WordPress and WooCommerce, we’re ready to dive into the benefits of using Managed WordPress.
But first, what is Managed WordPress?
What is Managed WordPress?
It’s a type of WordPress hosting plan. On Managed WordPress, your website’s maintenance tasks, such as updates and backups, are fully automated.
Best-of-class Managed WordPress has some extra features, translating into a clear competitive advantage for your site. The best-managed WordPress hosting:
- Assign server resources to your site flexibly, so you can properly support traffic spikes.
- Comes with access to a global content delivery network CDN, making your site fast for users worldwide.
- Offers an SSL certificate, so your site is considered secure by browsers and financial services.
- Provides you with a staging website to experiment without affecting your users’ experience.
The following section will explore the benefits of using Managed WordPress for your online store.
The Benefits of Using Managed WordPress for Your Online Store
The core benefits of managed WordPress are pretty much the same for all websites. Speed, security, and high uptime are always good. But how do they impact online stores specifically?
A Fast Website = More Conversions
A slow buying experience frustrates users and lowers your conversion rate. It can cause users to leave your site and visit competitors. Additionally, site speed can hinder your SEO strategy. Slow websites are less likely to appear among the first search results, as website speed itself is one of Google’s strongest ranking factors.
But don’t worry; site speed isn’t set in stone. You can always optimize your site so it runs more efficiently. And the results are worth it.
According to Google, a 0.1-second improvement in mobile speed can raise your conversion rate by 8,4%.
The three most common factors behind slow WordPress websites are:
- A limited hosting plan
- Non-optimized plugins & themes
- Outdated plugins & themes
To learn all the other factors, you should read our other blog with solutions to implement when your WordPress site is slow.
Managed WordPress offers you more server resources than the average shared hosting plan, and it automatically keeps your site updated. By choosing Managed WordPress, you’re significantly reducing the chances of having a slow site.
Set the Stage to Personalize Your Website
Personalization is widely considered a key competitive advantage for online retailers. According to McKinsey:
“Personalization can even be called a ‘hygiene factor’: customers take it for granted, but if a retailer gets it wrong, customers may depart for a competitor.”
Personalizing the user experience may sound like something only large sites can afford. At first sight, it can seem time-consuming and technically complex. But it doesn’t have to be the case.
Small details go a long way. “Remembering” your user’s recently viewed items and displaying them on your site is a small, inexpensive, impactful way to personalize your customer experience. And you can get it done on WooCommerce.
Of course, there’s more to personalization than this type of component. The best personalization ideas are born from listening to your users. Heatmaps and A/B testing tools can help you understand the impact of your personalization efforts and adjust accordingly.
You shouldn’t add complex A/B testing plugins and tracking scripts to an outdated website that’s running on minimal server resources. Luckily, that’s not a problem you’ll have on Managed WordPress. Managed WordPress sets the stage for most optimization and personalization tools by keeping your site updated and fast.
Constant Optimization, Made Easy
Staging websites allows you to test changes without applying them to the live version of your site. You can experiment with your test site to improve your user experience risk-free on these platforms.
As if the speed and reliability of managed WordPress weren’t enough, the best managed hosting plans usually come with staging sites.
Build Trust With an SSL Certificate
Combined with high website speeds, a beautiful design, and tons of social proof, an SSL certificate helps you communicate to your users that your website is trustworthy.
SSL certificates have two key benefits:
- They prove that your platform is legitimate
- Help encrypt users’ connections, shielding them from malicious attacks.
The best managed WordPress hosting plans include a free SSL certificate.
The Server Resources You Need to Grow
Your store can be both small and international. Offering a great user experience to international visitors isn’t just important for industry-leading platforms. It could be the key to growing your company.
Managed WordPress prevents some growing pains common among online businesses by delivering your website’s heaviest assets through a global CDN and providing you with extra server resources whenever needed.
Less Time Managing Your Site, More Time Growing Your Business
As we’ve already discussed, the defining feature of managed WordPress is that it automates website backups and updates.
By automating your website’s maintenance, this type of web hosting plan saves money and time. You can now invest money and time in other aspects of your business.
The Limitations of Managed WordPress
Managed WordPress is probably the best option to host your WordPress site. But that doesn’t mean that it works for everyone.
Managed WordPress hosting plans only support WordPress sites. This can be a limiting factor if, for instance, you want to run your Help Center or web shop on a different platform.
Especially if you’ll be sending transactional and marketing emails, you can’t do without a custom email domain. But custom email domains are not included in your managed WordPress plan.
Another factor you should consider is that Managed WordPress plans are usually more expensive than shared hosting plans, mainly due to their superior performance and additional services and features.
However, the performance difference is worth it. Managed WordPress sites are faster, more secure, and more scalable than sites running on shared hosting. Overall, comparing Managed WordPress and shared hosting is not perfectly accurate.
Managed WordPress automates tasks that you’d otherwise have to delegate to a team of web experts. So it’d be fairer to compare the costs of Managed WordPress to the costs of hiring a team of experts to keep your site updated and healthy.
When Managed WordPress Is Unnecessary
Managed WordPress hosting can provide a hosting environment with some fantastic benefits for eCommerce, bloggers with high-traffic websites, or even your side hustle that has recently become successful.
But it may not be the right fit for everyone. Here are a few instances where Managed WordPress hosting may not be recommended:
- Budget-conscious websites: Managed WordPress hosting is pricier than shared hosting plans, making it less suitable for websites with smaller budgets. In this case, your WordPress website might not need an advanced hosting solution like this, so shared hosting plans are a better fit.
- Simple websites: If your website is straightforward and doesn’t require advanced customization or features, Managed WordPress hosting may be overkill. In this scenario, a basic shared hosting plan can suffice.
- Websites with low traffic: If your website has low traffic or minimal content, Managed WordPress hosting may not be necessary. Shared hosting plans can provide adequate performance for such websites. For those people, HostPapa offers four shared hosting plans with all the options one might need from a web hosting provider.
Websites with custom-built platforms: If you’re not using WordPress as your main platform, it may not be compatible with Managed WordPress hosting. A cloud or dedicated hosting plan may be better suited in such cases.
How to Pick Your Managed WordPress Hosting Provider
HostPapa is well known for its shared hosting plans that provide excellent performance and support to beginners, small businesses and even more prominent companies. As a Managed WordPress host, we’re going one step further by offering the absolute best in terms of speed and security.
It’s logical to toot our own horns, but Managed WordPress hosting aims to provide even more features to avid web administrators, growing small businesses, and eCommerce stores.
Especially for eCommerce, having a robust and stable web hosting service is mandatory for success and better SEO.
Next is the cost.
We run on cutting-edge infrastructure and offer the 24/7 support you need, and only for a minor increase in monthly fee over shared hosting, you get significantly better WordPress performance.
Security is greatly improved with our Managed WordPress hosting solutions. Apart from the automatic WordPress updates and the Automated Website Backup, we offer state-of-the-art malware scanning and patching, which is a must for eCommerce as it ensures that all your data (and your customer data) is safe.
Going Managed, coupled with excellent web design, is a safe bet that helps you scale up your business in the best way possible. For eCommerce, companies deal with sensitive customer information such as credit card details and personal data, so great security is essential – and it can start for as low as $19.95/month.
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