First impressions

[SenseiSteve]

There’s a perceived value to every contact you have with a prospect or client, online or face-to-face. To prospects, very often that perception happens within seconds. To clients, this may improve or worsen over time depending on your support. Both are important, but your primary focus should be to retain your clients, minimizing churn. It’s so much harder to acquire new clients than it is to upsell existing clients.

Your thoughts on some ways to solidify a prospect's first impression of your business ..

 

[John @ S4]

It’s so much harder to acquire new clients than it is to upsell existing clients.

Never a truer word was spoken.

 

[Artashes]

I find web hosting to be an exceptionally difficult sector for first impressions. There is absolutely no way for someone to be impressed, unless they try the service. Things like pretty website design, testimonials or a number of recognized company-clients may persuade a better level of impression, but none of these things actually attest to the quality of service you'll receive over long term.

The only space where a positive first impression can be made is within initial contact (a sales question, for example) or a trial period. Staying proactive during this period will probably make all the difference in today's market landscape.

 

[myresellerhome]

Face value has little to no value in the web hosting industry. It mostly works through word of mouth.

 

[SenseiSteve]

Face value has little to no value in the web hosting industry. It mostly works through word of mouth.

How do you define face value? Word of mouth? I contend that price drives this industry, followed by competent support. In terms of first impressions, missing live chat conversations leaves a lasting negative initial impression of your business.

 

[PeterShene]

Face value has little to no value in the web hosting industry. It mostly works through word of mouth.

Web design is a hard industry, you already start off on the back foot.

Web designers and developers have in general a bad rep and most business owners have had trouble with one or two. There's a big stigma around us and so that first impression is almost already partially formed.

What I find to try to do is call them to get a good friendly chat in and try to get face to face with clients.

I also try to genuinely have good intentions for whatever they endeavor in, to give them my best advice and tell them when im not sure but I can find out.

I don't have a sales pitch I just speak like somebody trying to help somebody figure something out in an industry that I know something about, don't be arrogant though, just be helpful. THATS VALUE. Most of the time it works well. It takes time so you cant churn and burn with this method, you are investing in people however you can also if you want to understand that... you meet people from other walks of life and that there are things you can learn too which you can apply to your trade.

So besides all that you can learn from other people, its results in better client retention and as said above its costs way more to get a new client than keep working with an old one which is a well-known fact.

I think first impressions are important, but I think there are multiple first impressions, there's the one online with the stigma perpetuated by attitude like this:

Face value has little to no value in the web hosting industry. It mostly works through word of mouth.

and then there's the one when we meet and they're like oh, this is not what I expected... lets do business together, and il also let my friends do business with you, you are our guy

Ps and yeah you cant always meet face to face, maybe zoom if not you can still convey a friendly, helpful attitude over the phone.

 

[easyhostmedia]

I contend that price drives this industry,

I agree as a lot of people just look at cost, the reason so many on eBay with unlimited everything for $2 a year. these attract people looking for hosting who don't have any idea what they are looking for.
These people will eventually end up coming to decent hosts when they find out their host has suddenly shut up shop and they have lost their website.

 

[AlienVPS]

These days I am finding it very difficult to get reliable customers. Half of the time they are using our servers to DDoS which has become a major issue. This is more of a problem on the user end. Finding reliable, trustworthy customers who are not using servers for nefarious purposes.

 

[PeterShene]

I agree as a lot of people just look at cost, the reason so many on eBay with unlimited everything for $2 a year. these attract people looking for hosting who don't have any idea what they are looking for.
These people will eventually end up coming to decent hosts when they find out their host has suddenly shut up shop and they have lost their website.

I get about 10%(estimated) of my customers this way and people are shocked at what semi proper hosting can do for your website. They are shocked when they see we backup, it's faster, it tends to rank better and convert better.

When you tell most people of these benefits before they make a decision they go for the cheaper guy as mentioned above, maybe we aren't doing a good enough job of getting them to understand what the difference is.

In my experience here in my country, most hosts are terribly overloaded shared hosts for super cheap, looking at what they sell for I can't even fathom the number of accounts sharing a server.

We also do reseller shared hosting but we are careful not to overload, we keep an eye on server loads all the time, sure we make less money immediately, but we don't lose 10 - 20 people a month, secondary to that if a client enjoyed our hosting service and we get familiar with them, they tend to use our other services, so now we don't have a marketing cost for those clients meaning a higher profit on those services, it's just the other side of churning and burning.

Each side I guess has its advantages, I guess it's up to you and what you intend to build.

 

[easyhostmedia]

I get about 10%(estimated) of my customers this way and people are shocked at what semi proper hosting can do for your website. They are shocked when they see we backup, it's faster, it tends to rank better and convert better.

When you tell most people of these benefits before they make a decision they go for the cheaper guy as mentioned above, maybe we aren't doing a good enough job of getting them to understand what the difference is.

In my experience here in my country, most hosts are terribly overloaded shared hosts for super cheap, looking at what they sell for I can't even fathom the number of accounts sharing a server.

We also do reseller shared hosting but we are careful not to overload, we keep an eye on server loads all the time, sure we make less money immediately, but we don't lose 10 - 20 people a month, secondary to that if a client enjoyed our hosting service and we get familiar with them, they tend to use our other services, so now we don't have a marketing cost for those clients meaning a higher profit on those services, it's just the other side of churning and burning.

Each side I guess has its advantages, I guess it's up to you and what you intend to build.

i see many on ebay startup when the school summer holidays start in uk (kiddie hosts), they will get a cheap reseller account and then call themselves hosts and sell hosting for peanuts, but they don't even have a website. when i get bored i often message some of these asking simple questions. i was shocked when 1 never knew what an IP or DNS was