You have 1 or 2 seconds to make an impression, and 2 or 3 seconds more to make a sale, or forget web hosting business!! Web hosting as a business has taken off in last 12 months, with a vengeance.
How many web sites are on Web today? They all have to be hosted somewhere, result being, there are now thousands of web hosts around globe today. How do people decide to choose you?
Potential customers will talk to friends; perhaps ask a local web design group; or consult their ISP (Internet Service Provider); but this may result in knowledge of only one or two hosting companies. There are hosting directories, and review sites which may be governed by whoever pays for largest ad or personal opinions that seem popular. The visitor will still have to make final decision.
If these visitors make their own decisions, and there are thousands of web hosts to choose from, there are very few seconds to deliver your offer, which must be instantly obvious. What can you do to turn this streaming traffic into sales?
First View – The look of your web site
Are design, content and delivery up to customer expectations? If presentation has obviously been thought about; a conscientious effort to delivery and content; then it is likely visitor will believe that hosting company will also look after their site conscientiously. If presentation is poor, then forget it, there are more than enough web hosts that look good. Of course, to other extreme, if web host’s site looks a million dollars, it is likely that visitor will be expecting to a pay a ‘million’ too!
The Initial Offers – What are your best packages?
With sudden growth of web, hosting industry has had to take a retail approach to content delivery. In retail trade offers are so many, that customer has to learn to speed read, or speed view. Visitors to web hosting sites have not got time to read all details on each of every one of thousands of sites, so speed viewing is a must; or is it?
Web hosts who have nothing to sell usually hide this fact by showing columns of text, expecting visitor to sort out what is good to them or not. The usual explanation for this is “ The visitor knows what they want and will find it without our hassling them.” The expectation is that with less hassle visitor will more likely become a customer. Not true.
Web hosts that have special offers, great deals, or offer specialised packages for say private, business or corporate customers; will tell you just that. Think about it, why hide fact you have a winner? By taking a retail approach to a very retail business, real dealmakers are not ‘backward in coming forward’.
Obviously making everything on site an ‘excellent’ offer is other extreme. Most web hosts offer 90% of what their competition offers, so to point out every good point offered would be overkill. The likely result would be that you would show visitor that you are new to industry, and less experienced; not good in times of future support.