When choosing a new web host, the website bandwidth is part of the crucial factors that you may have to consider. If you’re not sure what is website bandwidth or the amount of bandwidth that your website needs, then keep reading. This post will discuss the role of website bandwidth and how you can calculate a suitable bandwidth allowance for your website.
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What is Website Bandwidth?
So, what is website bandwidth? Website bandwidth is the rate at which data flows between your website and your web visitors. To make it clearer, think of bandwidth as a sieve where your visitors are the cup and the data on your website is water. The larger the opening at the sieve’s bottom, the quicker the rate at which that water will go into your cup. In other words, the higher your bandwidth, the quicker the loading times for your visitors.
However, do not confuse bandwidth for data transfer. The latter is the total data that can be transferred whereas the former is the data that can be transferred in a certain time frame.
How is Bandwidth Measured?
Typically, bandwidth is calculated in billions of bits per second, or Gbps. The higher the bits per second, the quicker your website’s content can load. Slower rates of bandwidth can also be calculated in megabits per second or Mbps.
Importance of Website Bandwidth
Now that you understand what web bandwidth is, here is why it is considered to be very important. If you intend to minimise your hosting costs and maximise your website’s loading times, then you should consider the bandwidth carefully. Many people usually abandon a webpage when its loading time takes more than two or three seconds. Essentially, no one would like to sit around staring at a loading webpage.
Also, if you optimise your loading times, it can help to rank your website well on the search engine results pages (SERPs). The most popular search engine, Google, tends to highly rank websites that have less than two-second loading time.
Another benefit of optimising your web bandwidth is that it can assist you in maximising your website’s loading times. Websites that load swiftly provide their clients with an impressive user experience. It also performs greatly from an SEO (search engine optimisation) standpoint.
Furthermore, web bandwidth is an even crucial factor during peak times when there are abnormally many people visiting your page simultaneously. When you have a larger rate of bandwidth, you can still upload high-quality content without worrying about the risk of your website failing or crushing during such peak times.
What Amount of Bandwidth Do I Need?
When it comes to web bandwidth, each website will have different requirements. These bandwidth requirements are influenced by the average webpage size, monthly visitors, and file size. For example, a new website that has small webpage sizes and few visitors will not need as much web bandwidth as a bigger website.
That said, you may be asking, “What is the ideal bandwidth for my website?” to calculate the bandwidth that is ideal for your website, you should have the following information:
- Average daily visitors
- The average monthly visitors
- Average webpage size
- Average webpage views
- Redundancy
Redundancy is the predetermined figure that is set to accommodate any unanticipated traffic spikes. Think of it as a safety net. Redundancy is usually set between 1.3 and 1.8.
The easiest way of calculating your ideal web bandwidth is:
= Average webpage size x average webpage views x average daily visitors x redundancy x 30
The majority of web pages are primarily composed of HTML text and a few pictures or videos. The average page size ranges between approximately 2000 kilobytes (KB) and 3 megabytes (MB). To identify your average daily visitors, you should analyse your traffic reports on the cPanel. Successful websites could receive up to 20,000 new monthly visitors whereas a new website could get even below 1,000 visitors.
Once you have obtained your average monthly users, divide that number by 30 to obtain your average daily visitors.
For example, if you had 6,000 monthly visitors, it means that the average rate of your daily visitors is 200.
Lastly, to get the average webpage views per client, you will also have to examine your traffic metrics. The majority of your website’s visitors might visit numerous pages on your website before they leave the website. Let’s take an instance where the average webpage views are three.
Since we have all the numbers, you can calculate your monthly web bandwidth usage to be:
= 3MB x 3 x 200 x 30 x 1.5
= 81,000 MB or 81 GB.
Popular Options of Bandwidth Plans
When you’re looking for your website’s hosting provider, you should look at the bandwidth plans offered by the host. In the market today, it is common to find options labelled as “unlimited bandwidth”. But what are they?
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited bandwidth is a hosting option that places no limit on the rates of bandwidth for your website. Although this may sound like the most suitable option on paper, it is quite complex in reality. It is not possible to have entirely unlimited bandwidth.
What happens is that web hosts place certain limits on the bandwidth, even in the case of unlimited plans. The best way to know this is that if your website experiences an unusual traffic spike, it may be unable to accommodate all of your visitors.
Other popular bandwidth options include:
- 1GB. This is the lowest bandwidth limit that is available in the present market. This is a great plan to use if you’re starting a new company or blog.
- 2GB. This option is great for websites that are still new but have a consistent following.
- 10GB. This option is ideal if your website attracts high levels of traffic.
Conclusion
If you didn’t know what website bandwidth is or how much bandwidth your website requires we hope this article managed to shed some light. Now that we have explained the importance of website bandwidth and you can now calculate the bandwidth allowance for your site. Next step is to set up your website with the Easy Site Builder, start at £3.00 on hosting.co.uk. If you need some advice to set up your professional website ask our support here.
