April 08 2008

Hosting the last resort

Research reveals hosting is often a last minute consideration

Research has revealed that hosting comes bottom of the list when it comes to allocating time in any website design project, leaving award winning design and leading edge applications at risk of failure.

Independent research from the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) has revealed that new media agencies spend 26% of their time creating applications for their clients’ sites and 27% of their time on design but only 10% on the hosting infrastructure that will enable the website, online application or digital campaign to be seen by its target audience.

Of the agencies that took part in the research only 17% thought that hosting providers always understand what their client’s website is trying to achieve, suggesting the two key suppliers in the delivery of websites, online applications and digital campaigns are not working closely enough together.

Commenting on the findings of the research, Jonathan Robinson, COO at NetBenefit, says: “If a hosting expert is brought in at the beginning of a project, they will be able to build the appropriate capacity and performance into the hosting infrastructure to ensure the website remains available irrespective of traffic peaks and number of hits.  Agencies and hosting providers should work together throughout the project – a common mistake is to put off a project’s hosting considerations until the last minute when the design and application has already been created and opportunities missed.”

While we agree that hosting is an important part of a website it is something that can be improved retroactively and it’s a lot simpler to move hosts than it is to move agency especially if you’ve built the site using standard tools. In addition the rise of hosted SAAS solutions such as Venda, BT Fresca etc means that more time can be spent on producing the site and less time is wasted searching for and bargaining with a host.

by Marcus Austin (Web Editor)