When it comes to providing a seamless website experience for your customers, few things are more important than your site bandwidth. While this technical term may seem like something you don’t need to worry about, it is something every business owner should prioritize if they want their website to boost the brand experience.
What is Bandwidth?
Website bandwidth is a measurement of the maximum amount of data that your site can transfer at a time. The amount of data your website is transferring at any given moment depends on two factors: the size of your site and the number of people trying to access it.
Your site’s available bandwidth acts as a type of limit on how much data can be transferred at once. Some web hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth. Others limit the amount of available bandwidth. For websites with lower amounts of web traffic, this usually isn’t a problem. But at times of higher than normal traffic, low bandwidth could cause significant slowdowns for users. It could even cause your site to crash entirely.
To reduce costs, most businesses use shared hosting platforms, rather than dedicated hosting that is exclusive to their website. This means that high traffic on other websites that share your hosting platform could negatively affect your bandwidth if your hosting provider isn’t up to snuff.
How Much Bandwidth Do You Need?
To figure out how much bandwidth you need, you’ll need to do a bit of math! Start by using your WordPress analytics to identify how many monthly visitors your website receives, as well as how many pages the average visitor opens while on your site. Next, check the size of your website’s pages so you can determine your average page size.
Once you have all these numbers, multiply them. Multiply your number of visitors by the average number of page views and the average size of your web pages. This will give you a rough estimate for how much bandwidth you need each month.
Because most web hosting services offer monthly bandwidth rates, this total will tell you whether your current plan offers enough bandwidth support or not.
How to Avoid Bandwidth Problems
Even if your average bandwidth needs seem fine, periods such as Black Friday or other seasonal events could result in higher traffic that puts strain on your servers.
If you determine that you don’t have enough bandwidth, or that you need increased bandwidth during certain times of year, the easiest option is to upgrade to a hosting plan that offers more bandwidth. At Site Rockstar, we offer unlimited bandwidth so that you’ll never have to worry about delivering a poor online experience to your customers.
Of course, you can also edit your web pages to improve bandwidth and site speed. A page with videos and other interactive elements is going to take up a lot more space than a page with only text and images. Be mindful of which features are actually needed on a particular page, and get rid of any unnecessary elements that could be slowing down your website.
If you want dedicated hosting rather than shared hosting, your best option is to use a VPS (virtual private server).
Get the Support You Need From Site Rockstar
If you’re not sure if your website has adequate bandwidth, Site Rockstar can help. Our comprehensive website care plans ensure that you’ll have the bandwidth you need to keep your site running smoothly, no matter how many visitors you get. These plans also include uptime monitoring, providing alerts if your site goes down for any reason (including bandwidth issues). If this is the case, we can assess your hosting options.
With affordable monthly plans and an easy-to-use control panel, managing your website has never been easier.
