Have you ever wanted your website to have a cool 4K video playing in the background? How about a sleek popup window, or a captivating, high-resolution photo gallery that clicks with your visitors?

If you want the world for your website, it absolutely matters where you host. I often exist on the tail end of DIY website projects that fall short of a dynamic digital experience. Business owners have high expectations for their websites — their internet brick and mortar — yet know so little about what it takes to bring it to completion.

One task that gets overlooked is finding the right web host that can meet our demands. We want crystal clear pictures and high-resolution video, and all the bells and whistles of a smooth user experience. To do any of that requires a powerful foundation with the capacity to even make this happen.

So what is a host?

In laymen’s terms, this is a server where your website lives (not to be confused with a domain, which is your website’s address in name only). This is similar to buying a home that needs to have all of the following:

• Top notch security (SSL encryption, anti-SPAM software, etc…)
• Sufficient space (as in disk space)
• Great bandwidth

Like a house, your website host needs to have enough space (property) for you to build everything you want on it. It also needs to be secure and built on a foundation that isn’t going to collapse. A congested host that doesn’t have enough space or bandwidth will load sluggish video that takes us back to the dial-up days. 😑📞

That said, I always recommend a reputable and reliable host for my clients — one that has enough space to build a website that can do a bunch of fancy tricks.

For example, take a look at what I did for CoachSmooth.com. Dynamic video was a priority for this athletic coaching company. This meant that this web host required a large enough bandwidth to meet the demand. Thankfully, a great host is affordable and simple to set up. But the features must not be overlooked.

The only caveat is this — it’s best to go with a custom web developer to ensure that the “bells and whistles” are there. This is absolutely no shade against Squarespace or Wix websites as those are platforms that I also service. It’s just that I find that businesses don’t ever check “under the hood” to see if the website can even do “that thing” they like. 😏 This is especially true about hosting and why it’s totally okay to hire someone to hold your hand through the web development process.