Have you ever abandoned a shopping cart online because the site froze right as you clicked “Proceed to Checkout”? A lot of people do. And it’s not just a minor inconvenience, but it’s actually eating away at your revenue.
For e-commerce businesses, the checkout process is the finish line and the last step in generating actual money. If your server can’t keep up, customers won’t either.
So, what does hosting have to do with it? Let’s find out.
Consequences of Slow Checkouts
A lot of online shopping carts are abandoned for reasons like:
- Pricing
- Indecision
- Clunky or slow checkout
- Error page
While it’s common for customers to keep items in their cart for making decisions later, it’s just as common for slow load times to be the reason they leave.
If your checkout page takes more than a couple of seconds to load, your customer will just decide to come back later – and that later might never come.
Sometimes, site owners over-optimize the user interface and forget that none of it matters if the server is lagging behind.
Why Hosting Matters
Think of your hosting setup as the foundation of a physical store. You can build huge racks, stack your products in a clean way, and hire the best cashier. But if the power keeps going out every few minutes or the card reader doesn’t work properly, your store will soon shut down.
That’s what bad hosting does to online stores. When the backend is struggling, it affects everything from speed to uptime.
Connection Between Hosting and User Experience
Let’s say your checkout flow includes:
- Adding items to the cart
- Applying a discount code
- Selecting shipping
- Entering payment information
- Final confirmation
Each of these steps needs to be seamless and fast. Even a one-second delay in page response can result in a decrease in conversions. And if you’re making good daily revenue, consider all that lost.
Plus, when checkouts lag, customers lose trust. People are already extra cautious about giving away their payment details.
Improving Your Checkout Experience
A smoother checkout depends on a lot of things, and hosting plays a foundational role. And if you’re still running your store on shared hosting, you’re basically asking for a crash.
A virtual private server (VPS) instead can give you isolated resources, which means that you get all the features to yourself. Managed VPS takes that a step further by including server maintenance, software updates, and performance monitoring handled by experts.
When switching hosting plans, look for:
- Security layers to prevent breaches without slowing down speed.
- SSL and HTTPS for secure transactions and customer trust.
- Scalability to handle traffic spikes during discounts or flash sales.
A partially or fully managed hosting plan, like those provided by Liquid Web, helps handle all of this so you can focus on selling.
With a properly configured hosting plan, expect an increase in:
- Server responsiveness
- Page load speed
- Smoother payment gateways
Conclusion
Better hosting doesn’t just give you more bandwidth and uptime. It actually helps in making sure that your customers are able to buy what you’re selling without delays or errors.
