Many web hosting providers may think of a web hosting contract as being the only link that binds their business to their customers. Adding other services to the interaction, however, is one way to ensure customer loyalty and add to the revenue stream if done correctly. If a customer thinks of their web hosting provider as a trusted advisor, then the provider becomes the interface that your customer comes to know as the way to retrieve all the information they may need.
The business model that these companies are trying with these small business portals pulls in relevant content from business partners, organizes that content with a dedicated editorial staff and places it all in a standard format that makes the details easy to find. The goal is to provide the type of information that any small business owner would find useful, whether the business is "brick and mortar," online or both.
The relationship with the customer can work either way:
o An existing buyer of web hosting services becomes more involved in the use of the portal and therefore becomes more involved with the provider as a resource.
o An interested small business owner who discovers the portal as a useful source of information may then move on to purchase web hosting services from the provider.
In the long term, the goal for creating such a trusted relationship between a web hosting provider and a small business could result in such one-stop comprehensive services as an online dashboard for the state of the Internet presence of a small business, metrics on the operations and results of marketing by email, measures for search engine optimization and even reputation surveys. Bundling a few extended services beyond web hosting and offering them free to both existing customers and newcomers will serve to enhance the reputation of the provider and create a tighter bond with all customers.
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2012-05-16
A new tactic is being used by fashion companies trying to stop the online sale of counterfeit versions of their trademark luxury products. Up until about ten years, ago, companies like Chanel and Louis Vuitton w...
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2012-05-10
A recent double release of patches by the PHP Group to remedy a vulnerability in Web servers is symptomatic of a problem that those who are responsible for Web servers know all too well. When a vulnerability is ...
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2012-05-08
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2012-05-03
The Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that was passed by the US House of Representatives last week by a vote of 248 to 168 appears to be the next piece of computer-related legislation that wil...
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2012-04-26
A recent report on the source and types of application hacking attacks upon Web servers highlights the linked growth of two characteristics, sophistication and automation, for the first few months of 2012. Web a...
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2012-04-24
The war over copyright infringement between Big Media and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) is not confined solely (of course) to the United States and Europe. Recently, a court battle was won by iiNet Limited, ...
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2012-04-20
Federal authorities, attempting to trace back three threatening emails that were sent over the last few months to Pennsylvania reporters about bombs supposedly planted at the University of Pittsburgh, found a we...
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2012-04-17
Anyone who played the game of Hot Potato as a child will instantly understand the current situation of the fees for servers involved in the Megaupload case. Last January, the popular file-sharing web site was se...
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2012-04-12
Attacks on web servers by hackers is one of those events most feared by web hosting providers. Besides being categorized by the damage done, these events can also be classified by the type of technique used in t...
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2012-04-03
Several trends have started to coalesce recently into a pattern that augurs well for the growth of cloud computing as a service that can be sold to customers who are already purchasing web hosting services. Clou...
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