Web Hosting Company Survey Reveals What Customers Want - The Final Four

Supanet says that being a "reliable hosting company" achieved the number seven spot on the list of items that are looked for by customers. This is a quality that is made up of other characteristics. Customer service is one; doing what you say you're going to do is another. Also, since many web hosting customers know that the field is huge and crowded with fly-by-night operations, they want to know that you're going to be around for a while. The best way to convince new customers that you're reliable is by giving great service to the customers you have; time will do the rest.

The eighth item on Supanet's list is "up-time reliability." If you're hosting ecommerce companies, their ability to serve their customers is directly related to your ability to serve YOUR customers. Your customers need to know that their web sites will be up all the time, that they won't go offline unexpectedly, and that whatever glitches do come up at your end will be fixed quickly and efficiently. If you as a web host suffer a crash or otherwise let your customers go offline unexpectedly, then visitors cannot access your customers' web sites (to say nothing of site owners' inability to access their own sites!). A web site that can't be accessed is worst than a "closed" sign on a brick-and-mortar store. If a web surfer tries to find a site and it's not online, they may never try again. At least with a brick-and-mortar business, a potential customer may try the store again if it has hours posted as to when it is open.

The ninth item on Supanet's list is "easy and fast access to your data." This may be more important to content-based sites than ecommerce sites. Either way, customers see their web site's content as their data; why shouldn't they have a right to access it any time they want to? It has to be easy because not everyone who owns a web site is tech savvy these days, and there are few things as frustrating as technical barriers to what should be a simple process. Also, from a search engine optimization perspective, putting fresh content on your site on a regular basis encourages the search engines to index your site more frequently, which can help a site's standing on the search engine results pages. To companies who receive a lot of visitors by way of the search engines, this is very important.

The tenth item on Supanet's list is a "wide range of hosting packages." This is reminiscent of item three, multiple hosting features. Customers want to know not only that you have packages that suit their current needs, but that you have ones that will suit their future needs as well. This way, it will be quite some time before they outgrow what you have to offer.

If you can provide your customers with all of the ten items that Supanet's survey indicates are important, you will be in a good position to grow your business and build a reputation as an outstanding web hosting company.