Bringing the Hosting Website to My Mind: 10 Tips

While developing the site poiskvps.ru, I often visit the sites of hosting providers and constantly come across them with the same drawbacks. Therefore, I decided to summarize my experience, and write some tips for creating really convenient sites for the sale of hosting services.

Tariff Information

Most often, the user gets to the main page of the site, and the transition to the site is carried out in most cases in order to find out the cost of service and get other information about tariffs. If you provide several types of services, then the tariffs can not be described in detail on the main page. It is better to briefly describe the range of prices and provide a link to more detailed information.

Limited number of tariffs

If your business expands and you add new locations in which you provide hosting services, make sure that this does not confuse the user. Agree that it is much more convenient for the user to choose between five identical tariffs in three different countries than between fifteen approximately identical tariffs, but with slight differences. Tariffs in different countries do not differ very much (for example, different amounts of traffic), but this approach confuses a potential customer and reduces conversion.
As an example, I can give two tariffs of one hoster: tariffs in two different countries are completely identical, except for the amount of traffic, but the user can easily get lost due to the large number of offers of the same type.

Quick registration

If a user lands on your site, then you need to make every effort so that he does not go to competitors. If you force the user to go through the tedious registration procedure with many fields, then some of the clients may disappear at this stage. In my opinion, to register a user, you need to leave only one field: an e-mail, which will act as a username, and either generate a password automatically or request it optionally.
Examples, in my opinion, are good and user-friendly registration forms. After entering the e-mail address and password (in the second case), the user immediately transfers to the control panel.

Full description of tariffs

Most often, customers who buy a virtual or dedicated server are not housewives and at least somehow understand the features of the service. Therefore, when describing tariffs, attention should be paid to details and provide more detailed information about the servers. For example, for virtual servers, I think it is necessary to indicate the type of virtualization, type of hard drive, amount of traffic, channel width and country of location. As an example, I want to give a screenshot from the site of one hoster, which clearly shows a lack of information.

Support and pre-sales questions

In most cases, a potential client will want to ask a few questions to their future hoster, so it is worth considering fast communication channels. Now more and more often on the sites of hosters you can see online consultants. There are a lot of advantages to this widget - the user can quickly get answers to their questions and talk with a living person. However, it’s easy to overdo it with an online consultant: the automatic appearance and the sounds of messages may not appeal to everyone. For example, if I hear the sound of an online consultant who is actively offering me something, I immediately close the page and leave the site.
In addition to quick support, it is worthwhile to provide a feedback form from the site and e-mail. However, with e-mail requests you need to configure everything very competently: very often I see that hosters “attach” e-mail for questions to BILLmanager billing, which in turn asks for an email address to be delivered to the hoster . I am sure that at this stage a certain percentage of potential customers goes to competitors. You can also describe on the site the hours of the customer service department and the approximate time for receiving a response. Well and most importantly, do not forget to check your mail, and sometimes it is very funny to read the answers to letters that were sent a week ago. By the way, the record that one of the hosters set when answering my question was 24 days to answer .

Secure connection

I am sure that when placing their sites, users want their information not to fall into the wrong hands. The very first thing to do is to configure billing via SSL. However, as practice shows, not all hosters want to use an https connection, and users access the site without any protection through http. Even more unfriendly to the user is the use of a self-signed certificate. I am sure that almost everyone who sees a browser message about an invalid certificate will immediately close the tab.

Various payment methods

The slow development of bank cards in Russia prompted the creation of a large number of different online payment services and electronic money, so users are used to choosing what to pay them, and the absence of their usual payment method can lead to a loss of the client, so connecting a large number of payment methods should increase the conversion. Also, information about payment methods should be placed somewhere in a visible place, for example, so that the client immediately finds the necessary information.

Billing

When opening a new project, the hoster has a problem: write your own billing or buy an already written version. Naturally, many people use the second option, so the billings of many hosters look the same. There are very few disadvantages in this regard; of the biggest shortcomings, only weak opportunities for non-standard actions can be noted. Personally, billing personally inspires great respect for the hoster from me, as it is clear that people took the issue very seriously, but you need to finish the matter with your developments. I saw several billing in which any actions could be performed only by creating a ticket to the service department, that is, billing was just a list of services without the ability to perform any action.

Spamming

After registration, each self-respecting hoster receives an e-mail address of the client. Naturally, the hoster believes that the client needs to know about all the changes in the hoster’s work, and begins to send spam in its purest form.

I will give examples of several such letters:

We want to inform you that since June 24, 2014, the Robokossa payment system has been integrated.
Also, do not forget that a 10% discount is available on all tariffs of dedicated servers.

Only 2 days you have the opportunity to get a bonus + 20% to replenish the balance through YandexMoney or QIWI.
The minimum deposit amount is 1000 rubles, the maximum deposit amount is 15 000 rubles.
The bonus is credited automatically within 24 hours after the payment.
The number of payments that can take part in the bonus program is not limited.

We hasten to inform you that you have the opportunity to order any of the existing tariffs, for a week for testing, the cost, respectively, can be found on our website.

Good time of day.
Would you like to visit the Data Center in the USA?
No problem, our team has prepared for you a brief description of the data center with which we work.
In order to see how the Internet lives in the USA, and not only, we invite you to visit our data center.

We inform you that from May 21, 2014, the text of the Agreement on the provision of information services will be amended in connection with the change of the General Director of the Horns and Hooves Closed Joint-Stock Company.

By default, any hoster believes that if a user has registered on the site, then he wants to know absolutely everything and voluntarily subscribed to the newsletter. However, as practice shows, you can register with the hoster very quietly. For example, BILLmanager billing can process incoming emails. If the system received a letter from an unknown sender, then a response is sent to the client with a request to confirm something there. As a result, after clicking on the link, the user is registered and subscribed to all kinds of messages.

The reasons for such mailings are almost unnecessary for the hoster. Here are excerpts from letters about the reasons for receiving the letter:

Distribution was made in accordance with the Agreement on the provision of
information services.

You received this letter because you previously registered on our site.

But the most important thing is not the “content” of such a newsletter, but the inability to unsubscribe from it. In almost all such newsletters there is no way to instantly unsubscribe from it. And if there is a link to stop the mailing, then it requires authorization. It’s easier to send such letters immediately to spam.

SMS verification

Some hosts will disagree with me, but from the point of view of the user, SMS verification does not look very friendly. Some hosters have introduced the practice of checking the customer’s phone number by sending a code in the form of an SMS message, which the user must enter before purchasing the service. In big cities, buying a SIM card without a passport does not take a lot of time, so this way of verifying customers will not stop scammers, but it can discourage a potential customer from ordering services: not everyone likes to leave their phone number inexplicably.

I hope my tips come in handy and the sites of hosting providers become a little more convenient.

PS Thank you andorro for the help with the preparation of the text.

PPS Thank you hosting company VDSina.ru for supporting the project.