Hillary Stiff, David Snead and I are organizing a HostingCon workshop on metrics that impact web hosting profitability (in terms of both operations and valuation). Hillary (who has bought and sold more web hosting companies than you knew existed) will share insights on key factors that make some deals worth more than others. And David (whose law practice represents just about every web hosting company you've heard of) will moderate a discussion on how web hosting providers such as Web.com and Endurance International measure their performance.
I will spend a few minutes in between talking about metrics that most web hosting folks probably aren't keeping track of. Let's start with market definition: in the face of declining search volume for "web hosting" and "dedicated servers", should web hosting marketers reconsider their astronomical AdWords bids and consider associating their businesses with more of-the-moment keywords?
Next is the related and also important issue of reputation management. 1&1, for instance, has multi-page ads in just about every print magazine I read. But if I Google its name, I would learn on page 1, #4 of the search results that it's the devil. Glancing through the comments, it seems this blog post has attracted the attention of many other unhappy customers. Should someone from 1&1 have made an effort to engage these folks?
Last week I mentioned another unhappy example, which would be much easier than 1&1's predicament to rectify - if those involved so choose. A lookup of GoDaddy COO Warren Adelman's name shows that he still works at long-defunct NeoPlanet. (At least instead of displaying parked ads, WarrenAdelman.com now points to GoDaddy's executive bios page.)
Something else I find not quite right is the discrepancy between the business models of web hosting directories and web hosting companies. TheWHIR and TopHosts, for example, monetize each and every website visitor - often multiple times! In contrast, many web hosting providers have similar Alexa/Compete/Quantcast rankings, but generate zero revenue from 90%+ of their website audience. Is there a way to make better use of this asset?
Lastly (at least for now), I will ask the audience to consider what constitutes a "good" customer. Many companies monitor each user's resource consumption (bandwidth/webspace/support and billing staff's time, etc), tenure and the amount of referral business they generate. But as John Nigro commented on my other post recently, vendors should consider the real value each customer is getting:
"When you are in charge of selling business tools and you don't know what your customers do, who are the most successful customers using your tools, etc. then you are failing. It's very frustrating when someone in charge of a product cannot name even 1 successful customer using that product. All they can tell you are sales figures, conversion rates, etc. The data and indicators of product use are so readily available but rarely leveraged to increase customer satisfaction and value."
Anyway, these are just a few preliminary thoughts. I will probably think of additional points before the session (which is at 9am on Monday, July 23). I'll also make up some slides and post them.
Speaking of 1and1 being the devil, I have been a customer with them for nearly five years up until last month; there hadn't been much need for support calls but god, when there was, I was lucky if anything ever got done.
I finally lost it when my blog's database got corrupted and I needed to request a backup restoration. Almost a week later, despite being assured repeatedly that it would be completed "within 24 hours," I was informed after an hour and a half support call that they didn't actually have the backup they said they had, but were happy to restore one from after my site was corrupted. Uh...
When I asked to speak to a supervisor the support rep refused to transfer me. Repeatedly. All in all it was one of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had and I actually left despite having five months paid out already. I'm now on Dreamhost and from the get-go they've been nice, prompt and helpful. That and they haven't outsourced their customer service department. /eyeroll
Posted by: Joshua Meadows | July 18, 2007 at 09:07 PM