- One-product website
(mini-site): Usually a very small site with two or three pages; its
focus is to sell just one product, or to collect visitors' email
addresses to try to sell them at a later date. This kind of site is
usually just a long sales letter plus an order page and a contact page.
- Company brochure site:
Usually around 10 or so pages describing what the company does, its
products or services, its location, the markets it targets, an about us
page, a contact page, etc. It is basically an online brochure of the
company.
- Theme-based site:
Revolves around a very specific topic or market niche (for example:
work-at-home moms), and is updated frequently with new articles,
tutorials and resources. These sites can also sell products from
affiliate companies, or sell their own products.
Each of these sites has different web
space and bandwidth requirements.
- A one product website
doesn't need a lot of web space. However, if the site ranks well with
the search engines or has a large number of affiliates promoting it, it
will generate a lot of traffic and the data transfer allowance will
become very important.
- A company brochure site
doesn't need a lot of web space or bandwidth. For this kind of site, a
basic package offered by a reputable host is usually more than enough.
- A theme-based site
won't probably need a lot of web space or bandwidth at the beginning.
However, if the site is updated frequently with new articles and
resources, its web space requirements will increase. Also, as the site
gets more traffic and offers more content, the data transfer allowance
will also become important. You must plan for the future from day one,
and get more web space and data transfer than you seem to need at the
beginning.
Here are some examples of how you can
estimate and calculate your web space and data transfer requirements (we
will assume that the average size of a web page, including pictures, is
50 Kilobytes).
One-product Site
If your one product site has just three
pages, it will just need 150 Kilobytes of web space (a drop in the
bucket considering that basic packages nowadays offer upwards of 50
Megabytes of space). However, if it receives 150,000 page views per
month it will require approximately 7.5 Gigabytes / month of data
transfer.
Company Brochure Site
If your company brochure site has 10
pages, it will only need 500 Kilobytes (aprox. 0.5 Megabytes) of web
space. If it has 5000 page views per month, it will need 250 Megabytes
(aprox. 0.25 Gigabytes) of data transfer per month.
Theme Based Site
If your theme-based site starts off
with 50 web pages of content, it will need 2.5MB of web space. However,
if you add ten pages of new content per week, you will need 26 Megabytes
more in your first year. After two years, you will need 52 Megabytes,
and so forth. As you see, your need for space may add up pretty quickly.
If we estimate that your site will have 30000 page views per month, its
monthly bandwidth consumption will be 1,500 Megabytes (approximately 1.5
Gigabytes). This figure will most likely grow as you add more pages.
Your space and data transfer needs will
also grow dramatically if you offer large files for download. For
example, if you give away a 1 Megabyte PDF E-book and 1,000 people
download it in a given month, you will need 1 Gigabyte of data transfer
just for that one particular download (and you still haven't accounted
for the data transfer consumed when users access and browse your site!).
Since web hosts will usually charge you
fees if you use more than your allotted web space and bandwidth, you
must carefully monitor your consumption of both. However, you should pay
extra attention to your bandwidth.
The reason is that it is easier to
control your web space use (after all, it is you who decide how many
files to load up to your host's server). Data transfer, on the other
hand, is not as easily controlled. For example, your site may suddenly
get a good search engine ranking for a popular search term and receive a
traffic boost, which will consume more bandwidth than you had originally
planned. Or, unscrupulous webmasters may "steal" bandwidth from you by
linking directly to images on your server, instead of saving them in
their own web server space.
Therefore, it is wise to plan for the
unexpected, by making sure that your host doesn't charge unreasonable
fees every time you exceed your web space and data transfer allowance,
and that it offers a free and easy way to upgrade to a better hosting
package whenever the need arises.
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