Web Hosting Blog

Heart Internet Reseller Pro customers can now buy Domain Privacy on a domain for just £2.49 (reduced from £4.99). This limited-time offer is available for new purchases this month, and presents a great opportunity for sales with increased margins.

Domain owners are required to provide contact (WHOIS) information, but this leaves you open to spammers and other third parties abusing your contact details, including your address. You can protect your own domain names using our Domain Privacy product and offer this service to your customers as well.

How does Domain Privacy work?

We will protect your real identity in the domain WHOIS databases by providing generic contact information using our domain name identity-secured.com. So rather than your address, your phone number and your name being displayed, all they see is identity-secured.com. The same is also true for all your customers who buy Domain Privacy.

What are the benefits?

•    Personal contact details (including your address) aren’t on display to the world, and won’t be sold on.
•    You and your customers don’t have the hassle of unsolicited emails.
•    You’re in control of how people contact you via your website.
•    Our generic contact information and identity-secured.com website have no Heart Internet references or branding for easy integration into your own hosting services.
•    You can order Domain Privacy on any .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz or .name domain name.
•    Using our domain privacy product does not impact the ownership of your domain names, or your customers’ domain names, in any way.

To be eligible for this offer, you must be a Heart Internet Reseller Pro customer buying new Domain Privacy on a domain. Please note that the standard price will be applied at the time of renewal.

To get started, log in to your Heart Internet Control Panel. Domain Privacy can be found in the “Add-ons” section.

Alternatively, if you use HostPay and you do not already offer domain privacy or you wish to change your pricing, go directly to the “Add on Products” page in HostPay.

Name:Jenni Brown

About:One of the newest members of the team, Jenni is Heart Internet's SEO & Social Media Marketing Executive. Responsible for Heart Internet's Twitter and Facebook engagement, Jenni is a social network enthusiast and has been blogging for almost a decade.

Posts by Jennifer (15)

First, a big thanks to everyone who took the time to create some fantastic designs and take part in the competition. We had another great year of high quality entries and it really showed us how creative our customers are.  We will be showcasing the designs that nearly made it in a future blog post, but for now we’d like to focus on this year’s winner David Wildish.

Why we chose the winner
David’s design stood out from the minute it arrived in our in-box. What drew us to the advert was how unique it would be for a web hosting company to run an advert like this. Ignoring the traditional boxes and lists, David managed to use an eye catching graphic without diluting our key selling points and forgetting who our target audience are.  We believe people flicking through a magazine will stop at this page, engage with it, understand what we are selling, why they should buy it and where to go to buy it, which is exactly what we want from our  magazine adverts. Its also pretty funky!

David has won a 27″ iMac, a 32GB iPod touch, a year’s free reseller hosting and a free domain name, all worth over £2,000! The advert will also be used in one of the biggest digital creative magazines in the coming months.

The winning advert:

We really enjoy running this competition and there is  a good chance it will be back for a 3rd year in 2011, so get your thinking caps on

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)

Heart Internet resellers can now quickly back up multiple websites with our new control panel feature. We’ve had a lot of requests for this functionality, so it should be pretty popular!

How to back up websites

You can back up multiple websites in just a couple of clicks – click here to get started.
We’ve also been asked how to bulk back up MySQL databases for customers – you can do this by going to the MySQL Databases Backup page.

Why use backups?

Backing up websites on a regular basis is just good practice. The most common problem website owners experience when making changes to a website is not backing up their files before committing changes, in case anything goes wrong. Those who have backed up their website when a new script pulls everything down can restore their previous version in minutes. Those who didn’t will have that sinking feeling as they realise all their work is potentially lost! As well as self-inflicted problems (which are by far the most common), backing up your websites is essential to offset the headache of data loss in a worst case scenario, such as a website being hacked through stolen passwords.

5 ways to limit data loss

1. Keep regular backups of websites (download the zip files via your control panel).
2. Store backups on at least two different hard drives.
3. Make sure you keep any scripts/software you’ve installed up to date (particularly for security patches).
4. Keep a record of all the scripts you’ve installed for each of your own websites – especially if you have websites which you rarely update – so you don’t forget upgrades.
5. Ensure your customers understand the importance of backing up their files and websites on a regular basis.

Name:Ben Scott

About:As Senior Web Designer, Ben oversees all of Heart Internet's design, usability, SEO and conversion optimisation. Since joining the team in 2009, Ben has redesigned the Heart Internet website as well as the newsletters, HostPay templates, control panel and much more.

Posts by Ben (69)

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve permanently reduced the price on new dedicated servers for Heart Internet Resellers from today. Resellers can now enjoy 25% discount on any new servers (either monthly or yearly) – so if you’re buying a Linux Dual Core, for example, it will be £59.99/month rather than £79.99/month. You can choose to pass these savings on to your customers and/or increase your profits as you wish.

To take advantage of these new dedicated server prices, you must be a Heart Internet web hosting reseller ordering new servers (Please note: Our new pricing doesn’t apply to existing machines). The new pricing will be automatically applied when you sign up for a new server.

The new prices are as follows:

.

More information and details about Dedicated Server savings can be found on our Reseller Dedicated Servers page.
If you aren’t already a Heart Internet reseller hosting customer, take a look at our reseller hosting to be eligible.

Name:Jenni Brown

About:One of the newest members of the team, Jenni is Heart Internet's SEO & Social Media Marketing Executive. Responsible for Heart Internet's Twitter and Facebook engagement, Jenni is a social network enthusiast and has been blogging for almost a decade.

Posts by Jennifer (15)

If you’re one of our reseller hosting customers, you can now take advantage of our new pricing for Microsoft Exchange 2010 mailboxes. Each box is now just £4.99 per month for resellers (previously £10), so you can choose to increase your profit margin and/or adjust your pricing for customers.

Resellers with existing Exchange 2010 mailboxes will automatically be moved to our new £4.99 price, so you don’t need to do anything. However, if you cancel your reseller account, all Exchange mailboxes will revert to the regular rate of £10 per month.

Exchange 2010 is ideal for customers requiring hassle-free business email hosting. Each mailbox comes with:

• Free Microsoft Outlook 2010
• Access to email via Outlook or Outlook Web Access
• Mobile access (including iPhone, Windows Mobile and iPad support)
• Enterprise level virus and spam protection.

To set up an Exchange mailbox in HostPay, log into your reseller control centre and then go to Hostpay > Add-on Products, and choose ‘Exchange Mailbox’ from the drop down list.

To find out more about reselling Microsoft Exchange 2010 mailboxes, check out our business email hosting reseller page.

Name:Jenni Brown

About:One of the newest members of the team, Jenni is Heart Internet's SEO & Social Media Marketing Executive. Responsible for Heart Internet's Twitter and Facebook engagement, Jenni is a social network enthusiast and has been blogging for almost a decade.

Posts by Jennifer (15)

If you use WHMCS to look after your online business’ client management, billing and/ or support you can now manage your Heart Internet reseller web hosting using WHMCS as well. Supported functionality includes, registering and transferring domain names (plus renewals), web hosting account creation and suspension, automatic upgrades/downgrades, and password resets (from the client & admin area).

To download the Heart Internet module go to www.whmcs.com/members/dl.php?type=d&id=52 and to install simply upload the files to the modules folder of your WHMCS installation. Then follow the guides here http://wiki.whmcs.com/Heart_Internet for setting up and configuring the modules.

Your Heart Internet API authorisation code can be found through your Reseller Control Centre here https://customer.heartinternet.co.uk/manage/api

Name:Ben Scott

About:As Senior Web Designer, Ben oversees all of Heart Internet's design, usability, SEO and conversion optimisation. Since joining the team in 2009, Ben has redesigned the Heart Internet website as well as the newsletters, HostPay templates, control panel and much more.

Posts by Ben (69)

One of the cornerstones of all the supermarket chain’s sales and marketing strategies is to sell key household consumables that consumers buy regularly (and are price sensitive towards) at a loss. The prime example of this are baked beans, sometimes sold as low as 9p per can. Water could not be canned and sold profitably at that price. The strategy is simple; loss leading products are there to entice customers in to the store to then be hit by aggressive cross-selling and up-selling promotional activity which then turns the visit in to a profitable one.

That’s kind of interesting but I don’t sell baked beans!
If you sell web hosting, domain names are your baked beans. They are that loss leader that can be promoted at an eye catching price to entice people in and then be sold additional higher value domain names e.g. your web hosting, email products and further add-ons such as domain security. Unless your business is purely based around domain names, absorbing the cost of the domain names in to your web hosting is a tactic that could help increase conversions and your Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

This isn’t a promotional tactic; it’s a way of life
If you choose to sell your domain names using Every Day Low Price (EDLP), the danger of applying this as a short term tactical decision is that you will attract a stampede of bargain hunters looking for a cheap domain name and nothing else. You could attempt to increase the base ARPU through Emails to your new customers but it’s far less risky if they are profitable from day one. Your best bet could actually be giving the domain away free as part of the web hosting package. This will ensure each sale will be profitable without relying on people buying more to do so. The supermarkets have been using loss leaders for decades and are incredibly sophisticated at maximising the value of every basket, and there is no reason why you can’t do it either.

How to get people to buy more on their first visit?
Here are some quick tips to get you started and links to read more…

•    Use the old ‘related items’ method with cheaper products linking to more expensive ones plus the added benefits of upgrading clearly listed

•    Use a basket people can add to as they shop around your site rather than taking them straight to the check out

•    Also use an editable basket once they commit to the order process so they can add more at the last second

•    Run a price promotion if they bundle certain products

Further reading:
•    http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/articles/
•    http://www.seobook.com/website-checklist-closing-deal
•    http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-new-rules-for-successful-ecommerce-websites
•    http://www.addedbytes.com/online-marketing/ten-ways-to-improve-your-website-conversion-rate/

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stone-soup/3849277255/

Name:Stuart Gilbert

About:One of the key members of the Heart Internet Developer team, Stu joined the company in 2008 and has various responsibilities including the development of customer tools, HostPay, and the maintenance of the blog.

Posts by Stu (7)

If you are new to our reseller hosting or you have been manually setting up client’s web hosting, watch our step by step video guides on how to install HostPay and set up your domains, web hosting and add-ons. HostPay is completely free, will save you hours every week and will make it easier for your customers to buy web hosting (and buy more), so there really is no excuse not to!

What is HostPay?
HostPay is our purpose built web hosting shopping cart 100% free for all our resellers. Once you have HostPay set up you can sell web hosting, domains and add-on products to end users through your website in real time. It also comes with an advanced web hosting CRM and support ticketing system.  Features include:

• Register and Transfer domains in real time.
• Activate web hosting packages in real time.
• Sell Dedicated Servers, cPanel and backups
• Sell add-ons:- web services, search engine submission and more.
• Customer registration system.
• Fully branded themes for your business.
• Supports PayPal, PayPal Website Payments Pro, Google Checkout, WorldPay, Sage Pay (formerly Protx), Nochex & 2Co.
• Support ticketing system
• Customer marketing tools

Here are the videos…

Installing HostPay

Selling domain names

Setting up hosting, add-ons & payment

You can watch the videos from with your Reseller Control Centre or click here for the Heart Internet YouTube channel. We have a number of new videos in the pipe line so make sure you sign up as a subscriber to be alerted when they are uploaded.

We have a handful of videos close to being ready to be uploaded and we are keen to do as many as humanly possible so if there are any areas you would like to see covered leave a comment below or use the feedback form in your control panel (they don’t have to be reseller hosting related).

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for half a decade. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (182)