When setting up a new business these days, it is very wise to set up a website as well. This is a no brainer if you are an online company, but you will need to offer more than just a page full of product links and a shopping cart. Starting a blog can be an excellent way of connecting with your customers, and more importantly, getting some crucial feedback on how you can improve the customer experience. If you are a real world business, rather than an online one, it can still be lucrative to start a website, as you get to diversify your customer base.

It’s a wise idea to set up your new website where the majority of customers are, and this may be the country where you physically do business, though not necessarily. So for example, if you are based in the UK, then you should use a UK web host rather than opting for one in the US. This is a matter of providing convenience for your customers. There is nothing worse than a slow loading website, and if your British customers are trying to get onto your site during times when it’s busy in the States, a US host will be noticeably slower. Incidentally, if you are based in the USA, but have a large customer base in the UK, then it’s also a good idea to get a site up and running on a UK web hosting account for this reason, so your customers don’t get tired of waiting and buy from a competitor instead.

There is another truth about customers’ online habits. First, as already mentioned, they don’t like slow sites. Second, they will probably never even get to the second page of search results on Google. So you need to promote your website like crazy to make sure it appears very high in the search engines. When it comes to search engines, they are not single computers which handle the entire world’s search queries; Google for example, has many computers, strategically placed at locations around the world. What this means it that each one can provide local people with tailored results. That’s good for searchers, and not so good for you as a business owner. It means you could be doing great on Google in the USA, but not appear anywhere in the UK search results. Having a UK web hosting account helps a lot here, and so does having a co.uk domain name. So register one of these instead of a dotcom for your UK facing website.

It should be simple to apply these rules and get a site set up in the UK using a local web hosting account, and a matching domain extension, and you will then be a position to do better in the UK search results, which will lead to more traffic to your site, which in turn should help to improve the bottom line of your business. Also the opposite applies; if you are based in the UK and have a large set of US based customers, aim to get a US web hosting account.