Study finds lack of awareness regarding hosting of transactional websites
A new study has found that 45% of companies running transactional websites do not know where their data and website files are stored, raising concerns about the security of sensitive customer information.
The research by industry analyst Redshift Research on behalf of Q3 Internet Services also found that 27% of respondents did not know who their web hosting provider was, while 53% of companies could not give a reason why they had chosen their current provider. 16% of respondents said that the company’s web hosting provider was recommended by their web design agency, while 11% took a recommendation from a colleague.
The survey, which sampled the views of 164 IT buyers in retail, leisure & hospitality, entertainment, financial services and public sector, highlighted that system downtime and speed of performance are still issues affecting businesses. 18% of respondents said they had experienced a major outage in the last 12 months, while 33% had found their website to be too slow.
Only 11% of companies had changed their hosting provider in the last two years despite the fact that only 35% said that they were happy with the service from their existing provider. Reasons for not making the change included: provider reduced the cost (4%); fear of downtime whilst migrating (5%); fear of permanent data loss (4%); their provider made it too difficult to move (5%); better the devil you know (6%); and didn’t have time to investigate other providers (6%). When asked what would be the most important factor if they were considering a change of provider, 62% of respondents said security of data, 26% cited cost, while 10% said fast, reactive customer service.
Commenting on the research results, Raj Sukkersudha, managing director at Q3 Internet Services, said: “The research results demonstrate that the average organisation is surprisingly blasé about their choice of web hosting provider – until there is a problem. A significant percentage of companies running transactional websites don’t even know where their data is hosted. Given the sensitivity of much of that data, this is quite alarming.”
He added: “If the website doesn’t function well, is plagued with performance issues and/or is difficult to update readily, this will reflect badly on the business and have an impact on the customer experience, harming sales. A company’s web presence today is no longer a nice-to-have, it is core to an organisation’s brand and as a result companies cannot leave their web hosting choices to chance.”
