If there was one industry related to my profession that I’d love to plan, design and build a website for, it’d probably be a Hosting company. UK, Scottish, Taiwanese, Canadian or Irish, they just can’t seem to communicate successfully to their target audience(s) and consistently misunderstand what potential customers are looking for. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t doubt for a second that most of these guys know their audience inside out but that knowledge rarely trickles onto their web presence. Perhaps it’s their technical nature that lets them down?
There is huge scope to dramatically increase hosting companies conversion rates and vistor numbers based on the evidence and feedback I’ve been listening to over my several years as a web designer. Sure, there are some companies out there that are doing it well but as both a customer and a family-member/friend/aquaintance to many, many people who have tried to source hosting services, I find that they are failing on key areas of their web sites and that this is losing them business.
UPDATE…(the above was drafted last week)
Just today I was wondering why hosting companies often have such terrible websites when I received a great little promotion in my email from hosting company, RackSpace. In an industry where most companies are in a race to the bottom and all about the lowest price, these guys are selling to me with clever campaigns, great design and benefit-driven messaging.
