A beef of mine is when I come a cross a website services or hosting provider that does not offer adequate upgrade paths for its customers. These companies generally feel that they better know a particular base and rather just ignore the others. They redirect the customers on to other providers. Giving money away in the process.

What type of company commonly does this? I come across a lot of website deisgn companies, especially smaller shops, that have this practice in place. They don’t understand that that yes they can add a lower tier offering that brings them revenues without a lot of investment of time or money. A lower tier offering that gives them more in the long run. How?

Integrate with a provider to provide lower tier prospects with a browser based Website Creation tool. In most cases the solution can be hosted by the provider and the client is able to sign up and start building his/her site immediately without needing to contact for support. The costs are low, usually billed monthly. The profits are there but honestly are not the key benefit. The key benefit is you have customers that are in your system and that re that much closer to needing to “upgrade” their sites. The first place they will turn to is you. That is where you convert them from the limited functionality of a Website Creation tool built site to a custom site that is your bread and butter.

That is one example.

In the hosting specific industry I come across some who try and pass off single packages and that is it. Are you kidding me? What happens if I need more? Do I have to find another provider? What if I want less?

I think at minimum, all hosting companies should have one or more packages that address each of the following:

1- Novice: Users generaly are just looking for an inexpensive, easy to maintain online presence. This would include a domain name, email, and a website creation tool.

2- Standard: Users are beyond the need for a website creation/template based site. They are looking for entry level hosting with little requirements for anything outside of adequate amounts of space and bandwidth. These types of users would just be looking to host 1-3 domains on a package and have email in addition to their hosting.

3- Professional: These users are more advanced that the standard users. They will require more space, more bandwidth, database functionalities, and various scripts. Fantastico is also a fatastic add-on for these users. Unlimited domains are also of great importance to these users.

This is a topic I will likely touch on some more in future posts.