18 replies to this topic

[anwiii]

i don't have much time to reply right now or review, but i quickly checked out the site and it looks 100% better. i will comment more later but just wanted to let you know that i think it looks more professional with more information users would look for....

[-Sky-]

I also recommend a a better theme for the Terms of Service. Perhaps a slight dark grunge background? I could make one for you if you wish. If not, then please change the color of the TOS rules. A white background with light blue/aqua coloring hurts the eyes and will drive alot of people away from it.

[rvalkass]

Ash-Bash, on Apr 2 2010, 11:11 PM, said:

Penguin foot - I deleted the PSD and will just leave, I doubt someone will notice.

I did I'm sure other people will. The best analogy I can think of is that it looks like a sign above a shop, but with one of the letters missing. You know what should be there, but it just looks sloppy and like they don't really care. It's the image that stands out on the front page, and is the first thing visitors will see. It's important to get those first impressions right.

Ash-Bash, on Apr 2 2010, 11:11 PM, said:

[*]Random caps - Fixed up around the whole site
[*]Plans page bullet points - Fixed changes into ticks and made more professional
[*]About us: State we are a sole trader - Stated in about us
[*]“UK self owned datacenters” - Also edited in about us

All of these are looking much better and more professional.

Ash-Bash, on Apr 2 2010, 11:11 PM, said:

[*]Provide more contact information - Contact us page has been layed out differently and contains easier ways and more contact ways

Your only contact method is still email. Take a look at Xisto's site. In the bottom right hand corner you find the address. This adds credibility to the company, and security for the customer. A telephone number is also good. I would certainly add these to your site. I tend not to deal with companies if they make it at all hard to find their contact details, and I'm sure many people are the same. The fact you've used some sort of privacy protection on your WHOIS records also removes credibility and trustworthiness from the site.

I also agree with Sky that the TOS looks awful There's no need to go for those horrible colours, so change them to match the rest of the site. On a related note, you may also wish to review those terms. For example, the first one states "no illegal use", but under whose laws? The same goes for item 21. You're based in the UK, your server is in the UK, so why would US and Canadian laws be relevant? Item 29 mentions an AUP, yet I can't find one anywhere on the site. Items 30 and 31 combined seem to allow you to charge people infinitely by cancelling their account and then charging them to reinstate it, without any reason and with no limits. A little disconcerting for any serious customers. Not providing notice is also somewhat mean. You've got contact details for your customers, so contact them to let them know if you change the TOS.

[Ash-Bash]

anwiii, on Apr 3 2010, 01:32 AM, said:

i don't have much time to reply right now or review, but i quickly checked out the site and it looks 100% better. i will comment more later but just wanted to let you know that i think it looks more professional with more information users would look for....

Ok Anwii well thanks for the feedback once you have time please do give me more feedback to make it the best . I am very glad after all the work it looks a lot better.

-Sky-, on Apr 3 2010, 08:41 AM, said:

I also recommend a a better theme for the Terms of Service. Perhaps a slight dark grunge background? I could make one for you if you wish. If not, then please change the color of the TOS rules. A white background with light blue/aqua coloring hurts the eyes and will drive alot of people away from it.

TOS will be fixed shortly later today, I have something planned for it, Though I very much doubt it will work.

Ok rvalkass, I will try and locate the PSD from somewhere or if it comes to it create a new one. About emailing I have asked my dad about an Office he said he will share one of his with me and I will have my own phone number, maybe an address. About the Privacy protection Xisto told me to keep that on or my account would be suspended lol? as I tried taking that off they suspended ITneed and emailed me saying I had to keep it :/

And for the TOS I will be updating that later today, I will make a reply when possible when the work is complete .

Could some people please suggest to me where to start advertising once all site work is complete and its at the best it can be.

[anwiii]

a couple things. when you click on the terms of service, look at your menu and see how it differs from your standard menu options. you have "vps" listed. this seems like an obvious error to me. the terms are a little cheesy so i have to agree with the others but that should prohibit you from starting to advertise right now. lastly, have you checked that you billing is operating correctly? have you tested it? if not, you should really test it rather than assume everything is working properly.

that's about it for now. as far as advertising, you aren't going to rank well AT ALL in the search engines with how you have your site set up. you should still submit to the search engines and directories though because you can still gain SOME traffic from it. i would create a newsfeed for your site and submit the feed. i would join all social networks and be active in them at least once a day. i would compile a list of forums that you can post in. since i know right off, your site isn't going to rank well, then forums with a low pr wont matter for any backlinks. just comile a list of a couple hundred forums and post in them once a week without spamming. i would REALLY encourage you to make a video and upload it to the video sites. make it a good one with a good non competitive keyword phrase you can put in your description and maybe your first comment. i would actually give away free hosting for a month for your first month or up until you have advertised the crap outta your site without spamming. this will encourage people to sign up and if they want to keep their site, they will have to pay for it. it will also get people to promote your site and have that viral affect of word of mouth for the first month. that is free advertising that you need to think on. create a press release and submit it. submitting a press release usually costs money, but is worth it for the advertising. also write a news article once a month or once every two weeks to gain even more exposure after you submit your articles. try to to get about 10 good backlinks with related websites. not for the pr or backlinks, but for the exposure. a user here recently created a free domain website. those sites are great if you can get those people to put your link for an almost free website. even a link exchange between yours and the other site is good. just get 10 good ones at first and then over time try to get 1 a month or so.

i noticed your two ads at the bottom of your page have nothing to do with webhosting. this is not good. if that company optimises like google which means the ads should be related to the content of your site, you need to optimize your site to get the right ads displayed. your ads though need to change to something related to webhosting so if people aren't interested in your site, they might just click on an ad.

also, create a newsletter and encourage people to subscribe to it. usually the best method for that is to offer something of value so people will be motivated to subscribe and then just send out a newsletter once a month or so. the people who subscribed but didn't purchase hosting are still in your list so you can still offer hosting to them through email or maybe join an affiliate program and offer something related to hosting in your email. it's called backend marketing and works even if they didn't buy your original product(in this case, hosting).

now the advertising aspect is going to take A LOT OF TIME(i'd say about 100 man hours). one thing people do is outsource the work to other people so if you have cash to do this, i suggest outsourcing all of the work or maybe half of it. but if you have never marketed online before, it's good to just do it yourself so you have that experience under your belt and so if you ever want to outsource anything in the future, you know exactly what needs to be done. advertising is REALLY REALLY easy. it's just time consuming. what's not easy is the words you use in your advertising. you don't want to sell people. you just want to inform them. people hate being sold to.

that's about it for now....i think you are just about ready to start advertising after you clean up a few things. you can always work on other things while you advertise.

[anwiii]

crap. i almost forgot. i would create a better hosting package with each plan. what i mean is, when you have three different packages, you want to increase the bandwidth with each package. you only have storage increasing except for the third package. so i would lower package 1 to 10g bandwidth.

the reason is because nobody will even want to buy package two if package one is cheaper and offers the same bandwidth. yea, you get 4 more gigs, but normally, nobody even needs more than 1 anyway. you can accomplish the same thing by just deleting package two all together and make package 3 the #2 package.

in my eyes, if i am paying double for hosting and my bandwidth isn't doubling, i could just buy two hosting 1 packages for the same price as the hosting two package. it really doesn't make sense how you have it.

also, i would oversell at first and list a limited time offer hosting package for the first 25 people or so who sign up for it. maybe offer 10 gig space and 50 gig bandwidth for $3 a month. you're over selling, but for new websites, it's not going to be a problem for the first 25 or so people. also, when you are just starting out, you are going to have extra bandwidth laying around anyway so you might as well make good use of it through initial advertising. so in fact, it might look like over selling, but it really isn't if you plan it carefully. i don't know what your reseller plan covers but i would suggest you work out the figures and determine what you can do with a little creativity.

something to think about......

[Spyda]

When i first looked at your site the first thing that I noticed as long and the same as a lot of other people who commented on your site was that you webhost does not stand out. You see if you want people to choose your webhost over the hundredds and thousands of other web hosts that there are you need to either provide a service that is cheaper or better than any other web host. If you are unable to do this then it will be extremely hard for you to get people to buy your webs host. You may get one or two but overall you most likely will be losing money since you are most likely either buying a reseller hosting account or you are one VPS or even furthermoer you might even be on dedicated server, but I higly doubt that since it is realtively expensive to buy a dedicated service and it seems like you just opened your webhosting account so I am suspecting that you did not go that far, but again if you did sorry for what i just said it just does not seem likely. Now, one webost that is owned by a friend of mine what he does to get people to buy his ewb hosting is he gives free domain names if you order the web hosting account for one year so if they wanan buy his web hyosting he has now given him an incentive to buy it since he has offered to get that a domain for one year. Now, im not saying you ned to do this but what I am trying to say is that you need to stand out and offer better services than other web hosts and get a better wbe design because again firswt impressionsa ARE EVERYTHING. IF you makje a good first impessions or somebody than it will affect the way they think of you for a long time and a bad one will affect you negatively so now people might look at your site at a negative outlook becaue of the way it looks. So again I think you just fix it and do something so that it will stand up more

[Ash-Bash]

anwiii, on Apr 3 2010, 06:01 PM, said:

a couple things. when you click on the terms of service, look at your menu and see how it differs from your standard menu options. you have "vps" listed. this seems like an obvious error to me. the terms are a little cheesy so i have to agree with the others but that should prohibit you from starting to advertise right now. lastly, have you checked that you billing is operating correctly? have you tested it? if not, you should really test it rather than assume everything is working properly.

Thanks for spotting this I swear I did go through everything but there is always some thing you miss, I am not to sure why I put that in either though has now been corrected. I am not really sure on how to make a 'Formal' TOS so I just stuck to a basic type.

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that's about it for now. as far as advertising, you aren't going to rank well AT ALL in the search engines with how you have your site set up. you should still submit to the search engines and directories though because you can still gain SOME traffic from it. i would create a newsfeed for your site and submit the feed. i would join all social networks and be active in them at least once a day. i would compile a list of forums that you can post in. since i know right off, your site isn't going to rank well, then forums with a low pr wont matter for any backlinks.

I have a old SEO tool that submits to 500 or something from when I had my forums that used to get me a ton of traffic I will use this again and see what happens. I am linking my site on my other sites to get traffic my URL shortner gets the most however there could bbe more. I will also be making a group on facebook once work is complete and we can launch!

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i would REALLY encourage you to make a video and upload it to the video sites. make it a good one with a good non competitive keyword phrase you can put in your description and maybe your first comment. i would actually give away free hosting for a month for your first month or up until you have advertised the crap outta your site without spamming. this will encourage people to sign up and if they want to keep their site, they will have to pay for it. it will also get people to promote your site and have that viral affect of word of mouth for the first month.

The video was also going to be done once I completed all my other sites I might as well do all of them at once though separate videos I am not sure what software to use to do this I know screen casting and Camtasia but how can I make it a good video with voice and video? The offer on Free hosting I think I will do, Obviously this will get us into the business with a good reputation and would be a very good starting point.

anwiii, on Apr 3 2010, 06:33 PM, said:

crap. i almost forgot. i would create a better hosting package with each plan. what i mean is, when you have three different packages, you want to increase the bandwidth with each package. you only have storage increasing except for the third package. so i would lower package 1 to 10g bandwidth.

I will edit the plans soon, I may even do a unlimited plan I am still not sure if I should do Post-to-Host (Like trap17).
I will look at other hosting websites that have just started up and been successful and see what plans they offer.

Spyda, on Apr 3 2010, 07:17 PM, said:

When i first looked at your site the first thing that I noticed as long and the same as a lot of other people who commented on your site was that you webhost does not stand out. You see if you want people to choose your webhost over the hundredds and thousands of other web hosts that there are you need to either provide a service that is cheaper or better than any other web host. If you are unable to do this then it will be extremely hard for you to get people to buy your webs host. You may get one or two but overall you most likely will be losing money since you are most likely either buying a reseller hosting account or you are one VPS or even furthermoer you might even be on dedicated server, but I higly doubt that since it is realtively expensive to buy a dedicated service and it seems like you just opened your webhosting account so I am suspecting that you did not go that far, but again if you did sorry for what i just said it just does not seem likely. Now, one webost that is owned by a friend of mine what he does to get people to buy his ewb hosting is he gives free domain names if you order the web hosting account for one year so if they wanan buy his web hyosting he has now given him an incentive to buy it since he has offered to get that a domain for one year. Now, im not saying you ned to do this but what I am trying to say is that you need to stand out and offer better services than other web hosts and get a better wbe design because again firswt impressionsa ARE EVERYTHING. IF you makje a good first impessions or somebody than it will affect the way they think of you for a long time and a bad one will affect you negatively so now people might look at your site at a negative outlook becaue of the way it looks. So again I think you just fix it and do something so that it will stand up more

Thanks for the reply Spyda, I do agree I will start loosing money if I do not get enough people buying the hosting. You and Anwii have been mentioning offers and as I said above I will be taking a look at the plans and seeing what more I can offer. Today I also removed the add at the bottom as I think this would give the site a very bad look and they may think they are paying for a package though the site contains ads .

Thanks for the feedback changes will happen in 3-4 hours .

[BlooDTake]

I like it but what i have to suggest you is to add some other colors too because as i see there is much grey ,try to change something with ligher colours if you can.
Nice design anyway,but i also think that it would be better if you add "tabs" on the Hosting types,and also i think that you should add it the other way, Unlimied hosting,shared hosting,reseller hosting.

All the best!