If you are interested, and why wouldn’t you be, here is a summary of the new products and features we launched in 2010.

Name:Ricky Hayes

About:A valued member of the Heart Internet team since 2007, Ricky is a System Administrator responsible for looking after the company's webservers, mailservers, upgrades and security.

Posts by Ricky (16)

We will be running another webinar in the next couple of months, so if you have any topics you would like us to cover, leave a comment below and we will add it to our list of potential subjects.

Name:Craig Cotter

About:As Product Manager, Craig's role is to put our customers at the heart of all our decision making and ensure that our products continue to lead the market, through product development and testing, along with consulting with our focus groups.

Posts by Craig (22)

Are all the web hosting accounts in your Reseller Control Centre still being used? If not we would recommend you do a quick audit and delete any inactive web hosting accounts from the system.

Housekeeping steps:
•    Log in to your RCC
•    Click on Manage Hosting Accounts
•    Choose which accounts to delete in the ‘delete’ column
•    Click the ‘Update now’ button

As well as speeding up your control panel page load times, by taking a few minutes to do this it helps to decrease disk space usage, reduce server restart times and ultimately increase server performance for you and your customers.

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for 5 years. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (242)

The intended purpose of our staging platform is so that your customers can continue to use your existing live site while you make modifications on the staging platform. Once you are happy with your changes, you can then apply them to your live site.

Set up your staging platform
You will find a link to the set up page at the bottom of the “Customise end user Control Panel” page. This link will take you to the brand new “Install HostPay staging site”. Simply follow the instructions and click on ‘Install HostPay staging now’.

Using your staging platform
You are now ready to get started. You can choose to change the theme of your staging area and play with a new look, transfer live files across to the staging areas to start making changes to existing files, as well as view the order confirmation pages etc. Note: If you put through an order in the staging area and HostPay is not in test mode, it will be processed as a genuine order by HostPay.

You asked us for this so it would be great if yet us now how you get on with this new feature. If you have any ideas how we can improve it let us know via your reseller feedback form.

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for 5 years. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (242)

2010 was no different, but we are conscious that the speed at which we release new features and make changes can mean not everyone is aware of them and may miss out. So here are the new features and products we added to reseller hosting in 2010 (with links to read more):

Products
-    Exclusive 25% discount on all dedicated servers
-    Exclusive monthly contracts for dedicated server resellers
-    Exclusive 50% off Hosted Exchange
-    goMobi mobile website builder launched
-    Brand new budget SSL certificate added to range
-    1GB premium mailboxes launched

HostPay
-    Sell dedicated servers through HostPay
-    New HostPay video tutorials
-    Brand new HostPay templates added
-    Customer ticketing system added to HostPay
-    PayPal payments Pro added to HostPay

Domain names
-    Add your records to Nominet whois
-    SRV records for domain names
-    Use the white label ‘EXTEND’ tag on all domain names

Other features
-    New one-click installs added: concrete5 & bbPress
-    Major eXtend control panel UI refresh
-    Back up multiple customer sites in one go
-    Back up multiple MySQL DB in one go
-    New API functionality
-    PHP5 now the default version
-    Free icons & HTML templates
-    WHMCS module
-    Enhanced control panel navigation
-    White label sales material for resellers

That’s quite a list! Thanks to your on-going feedback we have got plenty of new features lined up for 2011, so keep your eyes peeled.

Name:Craig Cotter

About:As Product Manager, Craig's role is to put our customers at the heart of all our decision making and ensure that our products continue to lead the market, through product development and testing, along with consulting with our focus groups.

Posts by Craig (22)

No catches
There are no catches, hidden fees or limitations placed on the account. It is our normal market leading reseller hosting package, just priced at £1 for the first month.

Large profits
Reselling web hosting is one of the most profitable opportunities for any online entrepreneur, and a fantastic way for agencies to develop recurring revenue. We want to break down any barriers preventing prospective hosting resellers from taking advantage of such a high margin product.

No risks
There are still too many designers, marketers and IT service professionals missing out due to perceived cost barriers. We hope our first month for a £1 and 30 day money back guarantee will encourage people to integrate hosting in to their portfolio and earn even more.

100% your brand
Backed by 24×7 UK support, our Reseller Pro account allows resellers to sell an unlimited number of websites and domain names, with every aspect of the service fully customisable to fit in with your brand’s look and feel.

Exclusive discounts
Heart Internet web hosting resellers also get access to exclusive price discounts and can also resell dedicated servers, Hosted Exchange, domain names and Premium Email under their own brand to complement existing services or as a dedicated web hosting reseller. For more information visit www.heartinternet.co.uk/reseller-hosting/.

Name:Jonathan Brealey

About:As a Director and Co-founder of Heart Internet, Jonathan developed the company based around innovative features, user-friendly functionality and excellent customer support. Jonathan has been a key player in shaping the UK web hosting industry since 1997, having co-founded WebFusion with Tim Beresford.

Posts by Jonathan (79)

1. Clearly define your audience
This is one of those bits of advice that’s sounds blindingly obvious, but so few people actually do. I’ve worked at very big companies that couldn’t tell you who their core target audience are, or you’d get a different answer depending on who you spoke to. Ask yourself these questions…
• Who is our ideal customer?
• What do they want?
• Why should they choose me?
• Where do they go?
• How do I let them know I exist?

Life is so much easier once you have a clearly defined target market. You know what type of product to create, how much to charge for it, how to position your brand and where to advertise your services. Make the product fit the customer, not the customer fi the product.

2. Be creative with your marketing budget
You can’t compete with the large web hosting company’s marketing budgets; it’s a simple as that. They spend £1m+ per year and if you try to go toe to toe with them, you’ll probably go bust. I’ve seen it happen a couple of times over the years I’ve been working in the industry. For example, the most competitive keywords advertising on Google are off limits to all but the biggest spenders with the average cost per click for “web hosting” currently running at £8. Some ideas you could pursue include:

• A lot of web hosts haven’t really got their head around social media. They have twitter accounts and pages on Facebook, but I’d argue 85% of them are poorly thought out or token efforts. That’s a gap for you to fill.

• Online press releases are great ways to announce news to a large audience, establish authority and build quality incoming links. At only £100 per release through a distribution service, this is great value for money.

• I personally would not go near the most competitive keywords through Google AdWords if I was on a limited budget but I would still use the Google Display Network. Put together a tight list of target sites and advertise your service there using graphical banners.

3. Mobilise your customers
Excellent customer support and product performance will lead to customers spreading the word without much encouragement. However, you can be more proactive than that and get even more customers to refer you to other people who are looking for web hosting. A refer a friend program with a financial incentive is a tried and tested way of getting customers to refer people. This can be in the shape of cash, credit or vouchers. Review sites are a big part of a customer’s journey. Unfortunately the reviews being left on these sites tend to be from customers who have had a bad experience, certainly much more than those who are happy. Companies are becoming wise to this and starting to counter the negativity by asking their customers to review them, and there is no reason why you can’t do the same.

4. Get to the know the web hosting industry
You are not competing in a vacuum and the more you know about the industry you are operating in, the more successful you will be. Who are your competitors, where do people go to research web hosts and who are the major web hosting news outlets with the most authority? If you can answer all those questions, you can relax. If not, here are some links to get you started…
• http://uk.webhostdir.com
• www.thewhir.com
• http://uk.tophosts.com
• www.webhosting.info

5. Sell the core products
Shared hosting, domain names, dedicated servers email solutions are the bedrock of non-managed web hosting companies. They also offer huge cross sell and up sell opportunities. For example:
• Domains: More domains, email, shared web hosting, domain privacy
• Shared web hosting: Dedicated servers, Hosted Exchange, search engine submission, SSL certificates, higher spec hosting
• Dedicated servers: Server back up, higher spec servers, cpanel, MS SQL, Hosted Exchange, SS certificates

6. Get visitors to trust you
If you are asking a customer to essentially look after their web site and make sure it is secure and always accessible, there has to be an element of trust on the part of the customer. The challenge is to make them trust you enough to hand over their money. You can reduce the level of perceived risk through an attractive and modern website. Nothing screams “Stay away” more than a website that looks like it escaped from the 90’s.

Beyond being sexy to look at, all but the most carefree of people like to know they are part of a group, it makes them feel more comfortable. Positive customer reviews and testimonials go a long way to relaxing potential customers. If you can source them, case studies are a great way of showing visitors their peers are already your customers.

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for 5 years. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (242)

To activate the new theme for your customers, log in to your reseller control panel and then go to ‘eXtend themes’ (found in ‘Preferences’). You will see a new option has been added to ‘select a theme’ (on the right).

Click on the image to activate it and you will see the results update in the live preview screen. The next step is to customise the theme with one of our 40 new headers (or you can add your own very easily if you prefer). Here are a few you can choose from:

Once you have made your choice, click on the ‘Apply brand’ button and you are done! Log in to one of your customer’s control panels and you will see the change has already taken effect.

Once this new theme has settled in, it will become the default for Starter, Home, Business web hosting customers and all new Resellers.

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 (92)

Well, the wait is finally over! You spoke and we listened! Fresh from the Video production studio (Well, me and my laptop) is the first in a series of step-by-step video demonstrations taking you through the process of customising your HostPay template.

The first video from this series is giving you an overview of changing your HostPay templates, swapping in your company logo, CSS tips plus a brief explanation on transferring and editing files.

All the videos can be found within the video section of your customer control panel or alternatively you can check out our YouTube channel (Make sure you subscribe to be the first to know about new video releases).

Remember, you need to have HostPay installed before you can follow this tutorial, luckily we have a demonstration on that as well! – Check that out here.

In the next installment of this video series, you can expect to get into much more detail about changing background, link and text colours and also creating new pages. Part 2 will be coming soon!

Customising HostPay: Part 1

Any questions or feedback please leave them in the comments box below!

Cheers

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 (92)

We have previously run ‘blog sneezes’ summarising our interviews, the online marketing posts, posts covering web design and the lists. In this post we are going to look back at our popular reseller focused blog posts where we covered the areas that hosting resellers want to know more about, mainly about selling more!

How to get more of your customers to renew
Whether you are a web designer who resells our web hosting as nice extra earner or you have a dedicated hosting brand/ business using our back end to help you, your long term aim should always be to have 100% of your customers renew. Strong products and good service will always remain king, but here are a few ideas to add an extra kick to your efforts… Continue reading

How to get your customers to buy more
Up-selling and cross-selling are not about the hard sell or getting someone to buy something they don’t really need or want.  When done properly the process should almost feel like a service in its own right. Continue reading

Integrating web hosting in to your existing services
Being able to buy everything from one place is always an attractive proposition to clients who don’t want to have to shop around. If your core product is providing web services for small sites such as banners, logos, HTML emails etc you can easily integrate web hosting in to your product mix. Continue reading

Web hosting resellers: Why you should have a hosting blog too
A blog can either be used as the centre point of all a website’s marketing efforts and brand management or it can become a dusty waste ground for the occasional press release and price promotion announcement. With a little time and effort a blog can greatly enhance both your reputation and your SEO efforts, which in turn means more revenue. Here is how. Continue reading

Selling web hosting to a niche
A niche by its very definition is much smaller than the mass market so revenue will naturally be smaller, but the profits could be much higher. By targeting a niche you avoid the costs involved in breaking in to a hugely competitive market. Large web hosts spend in excess of £1.5m a year advertising their products. A lot of web hosts come and go every year as the cost of acquiring a customer becomes just too high for all but the biggest of web hosts. Focusing on a niche enables you to focus your marketing expenditure on a tightly defined set of channels. Continue reading

Resell Windows or Linux? Why you need to do both!
Supported by Redmond’s billions, Microsoft’s hosting division has managed to carve out an impressive market share in recent years with just over 33% of all active sites reportedly run on Microsoft servers (Source: Netcraft).  By offering your customers Windows hosting you are opening up your services to a much wider customer base than if you sell Linux alone. Continue reading

Name:Matthew Telfer

About:Matthew is Heart Internet's Marketing Manager, and has held senior marketing positions in the web hosting industry for 5 years. With a passion for online marketing, Matthew is responsible for shaping strategy and developing the Heart Internet brand.

Posts by Matthew (242)