Why Your Local Small Business Still Needs A CDN

Local small businesses are the backbone of every community. If you didn’t know that yet, you probably noticed since COVID how many empty shops have appeared on your main street. You might now have to drive out of town to get your shoes fixed. Maybe your florist is gone and you have to order flowers for your Mum from El Paso. Scary right? Unless you happen to live in El Paso.

We all know what happens when the topsoil erodes and there’s nothing to hold the plants in place. Right? Seaside erosion, no windbreaks, drought. It’s scary. The same happens to communities. If there are no local, small businesses in place, then Main Street becomes a demilitarized zone while we’re all shopping at Walmart in the industrial park. Not a pretty picture.

Rocket.net supports local, small businesses. Why? Because these businesses help community members with more employment opportunities. They also support other local businesses. By buying materials for our own business locally, more of the money stays in our communities. Local shops are social hubs, too. They pass from generation to generation. And, you can never grow if you don’t start small.

“We’re passionate about educating entrepreneurs on our implementation of Cloudflare Enterprise and how it benefits businesses like yours. Because of our mission to help small businesses, we built our platform from the start with an Edge-first mentality.”

Rocket.net

Why Local Small Businesses Still Need a Website

If you want to find out about a business, you go to their website. So far, so good. But smaller, local businesses and solopreneurs often believe they can do without an Internet presence. 

Sometimes they simply shy away from the costs or are already active on social media channels. Maybe they have a Google Business Profile and assume that’s enough. But in practice, websites are pretty important for small businesses. Websites are the backbone of your online marketing – even for a local, small business like yours.

Thanks to reasonably-priced online services, managed hosting, and easy-to-use CMS like WordPress, local businesses don’t need to hire expensive marketing agencies. Small businesses can be a part of the digital economy without breaking the bank.

Today, an online presence is pretty much “de rigueur.” You can design a website yourself with the right tools, like WordPress and with a helpful partner on your side – like Rocket.net.

“Small businesses can sell their goods to people locally and outside the city where they’re located. Having an online business means you can also trade with other businesses, regardless of their location, within minutes.”

Rocket.net

What are CDNs and How Do They Work?

You’ve probably met a lot of CDNs. Hardy, polite, and fond of ice hockey, CDNs are the “nice guys.” You probably work with a CDN and maybe didn’t even know it. They’re hard workers, for the most part. CDNs live in beautiful cities too, like Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary … We’re talking about CDNs and not Canadians!

“What? … but it says CDN right here …” Rustle Rustle … Whisper … “Ohhh …”

A Content Delivery Network, commonly referred to as a CDN, is a network of edge servers strategically placed around the globe to quickly deliver digital content to users.

When someone visits your website, the request for content (images, fonts, text etc.) is routed to the nearest CDN edge server. This is way faster than accessing a web server in Bermuda when your website visitor is in Des Moines.

A CDN enables anyone visiting your website, regardless of geographic location, to receive fast-loading content. This makes for a great experience. Fast is good! No one likes waiting. The faster your website, the better chance you have of making a sale.

Small Business Example: Local Photo Studio using a CDN

A typical use of a CDN is for storing and loading images. This is important for a local photo studio. Wedding images, school photos, as well as video production might be offered on their website. There is probably a download area where customers can view, choose, and then order photos after a sitting. 

The principle is that images are not stored on the website server and accessed by users there, but are distributed in a network of servers all over the world. The images then only appear on the photo studio’s website as an external source. This saves your own resources and gets your website loading faster.

Did you know that a wait of just 3 seconds will cause half of your mobile visitors to leave your website? That’s a depressing figure – especially if more than 75% of your sales are mobile.

At Rocket.net we only believe in providing the fastest delivery – the best in class. That’s exactly why we partnered with Cloudflare to deliver all the traffic on our platform through their Enterprise CDN. That makes your website not just fast, but fastest!

“Cloudflare is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.”

Cloudflare

Do You Have a Local Audience? How Your Small Biz Benefits from Cloud CDNs

Anyone who has ever hosted a video on their server and wanted to integrate it into their own website will certainly have quickly noticed that the video loads kind of slowly. The same if you try to update all your WordPress plugins at once … slooooooooow … right?

This is because most shared website hosters don’t usually optimize their servers for the pure delivery of content. Some even throttle such downloads in order to not put too much strain on the entire infrastructure. 

In short, normal web hosting isn’t designed to ensure fast downloads, but rather to remain accessible.

CDN Benefit #1: As Much Traffic As You Want

Let’s say your photo studio creates a video of old images and clips for Fred and Elma’s 50th wedding anniversary. When Fred and Elma access your website, it loads quite quickly. But if Fred and Elma and everyone else at their 50th wedding anniversary suddenly visit your website to see the films, the server collapses and the website no longer loads properly. 

Too many concurrent users? Traffic bursts due to a sale? Nope. Your standard shared hosting may not be up to the task. 

While your shared hosting may fail when you need it the most, a CDN has you covered – and with more than just clear uptime benefits. In fact, Rocket.net goes one step further with our Private Cloud for WordPress. Now your website can burst whenever it needs to with minimal impact to any potential downtime.

CDN Benefit #2: Always-On Security

Having your website hacked can be a nightmare. While you may feel like you’re immune, website hacking happens more frequently than you might expect. It’s critical that your WordPress website is protected. 

Regular hosting is suspect to malware and perhaps even being hacked. Rocket security WAF+Imunify360 provides protection for your small business.

CDN Benefit #3: Guaranteed Performance, Improved SEO 

Gone are the days when people rocked dial-up connections and it was okay for websites to take light years to load. Today, people have high expectations and will leave your site if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds.

A CDN works by caching some elements of your site in data centers around the world. Result? Faster loading time and improved SEO.

CDN Benefit #4:  No Need to Purchase Premium Plugins

While we have you covered for the updates of core and plugins, you might be asking, what about premium plugins? Who needs them? Not you. Why? Rocket does everything for you right out of the box – Straight from the Cloudflare Enterprise CDN. You can shed security plugins like Wordfence, image optimizers, file managers, activity logging and more.

With a CDN, things are different. Your website is different. Your online marketing is different.

“A CDN isn’t something you have to have for your website. But it provides so many benefits that it has become a go-to choice for anyone trying to optimize their website for better speed, reliability, and security. Because the primary purpose of a CDN is to increase the performance of your website, you should consider using it as long as it can do that.”

Web Speed Tools

My WordPress Sites are Small and Local. Do I Really Need a CDN?

There has always been a misconnection that local business websites don’t need a CDN because they can select a server close to their location. But CDNs have huge benefits beyond serving their local audience.

You need a CDN for your local website not just to impress the kids. A CDN makes good business sense because it solves many problems. For instance:

Your Cheap-But-Not-So-Good Web Host

A CDN costs extra but it brings you more sales.

Your website hosting plan might be cheap, but at the end of the day isn’t it actually costing you money? Too many commodity hosting providers are competing not on service — but on price. This often translates to a slow, insecure, crowded hosting web server. 

If you lose customers because they don’t wait for your site to load, then cheap hosting becomes very expensive! 

There is no Local Web Server in Alaska

A CDN helps you connect regardless of your location.

Disclaimer: there may be some really great web hosting companies in Alaska. The internet has empowered us to work where we want or need to be. Not every local business has access to a local web host. There’s Barry in his basement, but he’s already at full capacity. A CDN will help you reach everyone — especially if they can’t get to your shop without a dogsled.

You’re Serving a Really Big Local Area 

A CDN helps you reach everyone in your local area.

Your shop might be on Chestnut Street, but people have heard about you 500 miles away in Capital City. Don’t you want to sell to them too? Your local community is as large as you care to make it. To put this in perspective, Alaska is almost three times the size of Texas, and it’s an 800-mile drive from Anchorage to Juneau. 

Is your shop in a tourist town? Do you sell to tourists? Your local area might actually stretch to Dusseldorf or even Delaware.

Your Website is in Demand 

A CDN keeps your website always on and always fast.

Remember those tourists from Delaware? Well, they told two friends, and they told two friends, and suddenly your natural honey soaps are getting featured on The Today Show. Too bad your website goes down thanks to your cheap web hosting. All those lost sales!

A CDN might be more expensive, but it will ensure that every time someone goes to your website, it will be available and fast! That means more money in your pocket. Remember us when you’re famous, okay?

When Saving Cents Costs You Dollars

A CDN helps you connect regardless of your location.

One of the problems with cheap web hosting is the hidden costs. Sure your monthly hosting fee is 99 cents a month, but only until you reach so many visitors or so many downloads. Then your monthly fee blasts off and not in a good way You can avoid this with CDN peace of mind.

Your website uses a CDN so that is always on, and always fast, regardless of where or when it’s needed. The price doesn’t change. Think of it like money in the bank for your website.

Because our Enterprise CDN not only caches your content as close as possible to your local visitors, but it optimizes your content on the fly. It also keeps your site protected with the ability to infinitely scale across the entire Cloudflare network. That’s a good investment that will let you sleep at night!

Why Rocket Hosting is Good for Local Business Websites

Good web hosting is at the heart of any good, successful website. Whether you use a CMS like WordPress or develop your own website, your local small business needs web space to make your business accessible on the Internet. 

Rocket.net is itself a small business. We understand how important a website is. You’ve got too much going on trying to maintain and grow your business. The last thing you need to worry about is your website.

We stand behind our products. Rocket.net is powered by Cloudflare Enterprise CDN. It’s a product we believe in and use ourselves. As a Rocket.net customer, you enjoy Cloudflare as a standard part of your hosting with no additional costs to you (a $6,000 per month value with no hidden fees). The result –  response times 2-3x faster than Google Cloud, Amazon, and Azure.

Rocket support takes care of everything. Many small businesses either don’t know how or rely on developers to fix their websites. Our team of experts is always on. We strongly focus on providing the best customer support in the WordPress hosting space 24/7. We’re constantly monitoring performance to ensure your website stays up and running and operating at top levels. 

Ready for speed? 

Once you’re ready for a test, we’ll be waiting here on chat! Let us do a FREE website migration for you so you can see the difference yourself on a temporary URL, without updating any domain settings!