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“Clap along if you feel that happiness is the truth.”

Ok, maybe we’ve all heard enough of the Pharrell hit. But your clients will never get enough of a good managed hosting experience. Stellar support, comprehensive security and nonstop management – those are the ingredients that lead to fast page load times and more conversions.

Your website – whether it’s an e-commerce platform or a standard business site – is more than the online face of your company. It’s a vital part of your business model, and it will have an appreciable impact on most of your business-critical activities. (You can read our post on the global shift towards e-commerce here.)

Most businesses have a lot of priorities beyond server and network management. When you’re focused on building your brand and honing your product or services, you often don’t have time to manage and maintain a website – let alone deal with the security, infrastructure and support concerns that come with an online presence. Guess what? When you don’t prioritize your website, your customers aren’t happy.

It’s a good thing you have the option of switching to managed hosting, isn’t it?

Managed web hosting helps shape customer perceptions

From the first click to the final conversion, the “customer journey” should be seamless. Your potential clients will expect instant, responsive service throughout their journey to the checkout – and it’s hard to provide an impeccable online customer experience without the right type of managed hosting.

According to Econsultancy, decentralized website management makes it difficult to allocate resources and provide system support. “Too many cooks spoil the soup” – and too many conflicting strategies cause all kinds of problems with IT spending and network oversight. When you consolidate infrastructure management and let a hosting company handle support and security, you create a much more streamlined experience for your end-users. And a fast-loading, easy-to-use site ultimately means better ROI.

Managed web hosting takes a proactive approach to security

Heartbleed is still on everyone’s mind – and it should be. The recent open source bug demonstrated how easy it is for servers to leak data – and for hackers to take advantage of those vulnerabilities. Online security should be one of your top concerns, or you may risk losing customer data (and ultimately, customers). Managed hosting is probably the best way to ensure that your site and servers are fully compliant, secure and up-to-date...and that your customers stay with you for the long term.

Since it’s our day for cheesy clichés – those are happy, right? – how about “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? A good managed hosting system won’t just react to perceived threats, it will take active steps to predict and prevent them. Managed hosting offers a whole range of comprehensive security measures, including intrusion detection systems (IDS), comprehensive traffic monitoring and fully managed firewalls. (The best hosting providers also include 24/7 on-call tech support in their packages.)

And that should make everybody happy.

For more information on managed hosting and security for e-commerce, read our posts here.