Something not many people know when choosing a web host is the importance of choosing a host that will aid your marketing and your website’s niche. This can be very important if you are running an online store depending on the geographic region you are focusing on. So first let’s start with an explanation of why this all depends on who your site’s visitors will be.
Most internet connections are very fast but it still matters where the physical server is hosted in terms of speed. If I was starting an online store focusing on customers in Texas the site is going to server faster to people from Texas if it is in Texas. Similarly if you are building a site aimed at United Kingdom residents you don’t want the server to be in the United States or even Europe in some cases. By hosting in a location near your customer base you are speeding up their access time to the server. This might not seem like a big deal but in a number of studies the importance of a quick loading page can mean a big difference in the number of conversions. Or if you are hosting a game server ping time will obviously matter when you are shooting your next zombie.
In terms of marketing it is also important in the eyes of Google and other search engines. One of the many factors for knowing whether they should rank you in a country specific search engine is dependent on your IP’s location as well as your domain name ending. By using a host in the country your site is serving you is sending one more indication to Google of where you should be ranked.
We have had plenty of customers at UK2 who came to us from USA based hosting and after they started using our servers which are in the United Kingdom they found that conversions increased and they had lower shopping cart abandonment rates. Which when you are running an online store are two very key factors. This is also why we offer our customers dedicated server hosting in both the United Kingdom and USA, we want to be able to give them the best of both worlds.