Criticise: Hosting Business Site

crocket · 16th February 2005

Hello,

Well I think its time for another bashing about what is ahem about my site

What is missing, what needs adding? What could make the site better? The more important question, how to pull in the extra few customers

I do know of some problems showing the support page in other browsers, where the table doesn’t align straight etc, I need to download a few browsers and check the errors for myself!

Edit, I totally forgot to post the site!
http://www.etglobalsolution.co.uk/

Thanks
Nitesh Patel

othellotech · 16th February 2005

99% uptime - that allows for 7odd hours of d/time - even @ the cheap end clients expect 99.9x

your testimonials are unbelievable, maybe showing the domain/site so people can check woudl help

unlimited doesnt exist - even if the authors of cpanel think otherwise

designs nice, loads quick, works ok in f/fox

iGsys · 16th February 2005

are you the same people that did the adsl a few years back?

Ben.

crocket · 16th February 2005

othellotech: Ok, ill make those changes

I've always used 99% because I would rather be honest then to be down longer then we quote, however this hasn't really happened recently! The last5 months or so we have seen well over 99.99%. I shall probably calculate the hours and make it around 99.5% just to be safe!

I’ll definitely take the other points and make changes in a few hours

apart from the plans.

iGsys: No, they were another company! Believe it or not I lost a few hundred quid with them when I wanted ADSL, basically paid them, no service at all, then bust! and tried everything to get my money back but never received a penny!

I won't go into the full story but basically, Back in those days, I was only running a resellers account, and was "covering" costs etc, and was never really into the proper hosting business, just called it that as I needed a name and I already had the domain (from my sound-alike domain - where I posted my story about how to try and claim money back etc) However things grew, and got successful, and here we are, and there isn’t any point changing the name / domain over. People buy domains all the time + it's a nice challenge to take on a bad companies reputation, and say were not them! at all! if you want those guys go to giointernet.com

hehe

iGsys · 16th February 2005

Hi crocket,

Yep, ET and gio were very bad.

Ben.

chrisbyrd · 16th February 2005

site looks nice. one think i would suggest, however, is try and convert all the imaged text to propper text (ie, left navbar, level1,2,3 packages etc)

i personally think it looks better. also - this wont harm your seo either!

Karl · 16th February 2005

Small thing I just noticed, I'd change the content language to en-gb from en-us

crocket · 16th February 2005

Thanks for your tips, ill start to put them into action later on in the day!

s-p · 16th February 2005

Recommendations from a personal point of view:

Home Page

Decrease font size of Company Name, its far too dominating. You want the customer to know exactly site their on, but not for it to be forced down their throat
Decrease shadow on company font. It looks rather amateurish in my opinion.
Re-work footer. It looks like the "ETGlobalSolution.co.uk" has just been stuck on there. Decrease the font size of this as well.
Remove payment icons from the bottom. I only really need to know about these methods once you've sold your ideas and plans to me.
As has been said previously, change some of the image text to just plain text. Will increase load time and look better.
Apply alt tags to images. If you want to be spidered by google and the likes its always best to give the search engine as much information as possible.
Play around with the background colour maybe? I'm not quite sure the grey suits the rest of the site too well. You could always just place a border on the site, align it left and leave everything to the right or the site as white/light grey. The background needs to be just that, something which is tucked away and used only to enforce the foreground.
Body of text below "Quality Hosting at Great Price" needs a little work. Doesn't blend in too well.

Other

http://www.etglobalsolution.co.uk/company.html - There is too much information on this page. Break it down into sub sections or preferrably different pages. I need to be able to find information instantly on your site, otherwise I might just leave. For example, network information should not be on the same page as your AUP.
Hardware - "Servers are powered by Intel™ Processors, Intel™ NICs, PC3200 DDR, and ONLY major name brand components." - Rather than display the image of a random server case, maybe detailing the brands you use with their respective trademarks (make sure if you use the logo's of these companies that you detail these are the registered trademarks of these companies). Information on the speed of the RAM isn't really a requirement in my eyes. If you're going to post server specifications, need they need to impress me. I'm afraid PC3200 DDR doesn't do that for me. If you have multiple servers, I don't personally feel the need for you to provide any specific information on specification.
http://www.etglobalsolution.co.uk/hosting.html - Too much information again. Having to scroll down the page (unless a portion of detailed text) isn't paticularly attractive to view. The introduction of the banner doesn't help too much either. I have nothing against the banner, its nice. Just the placement could do with some work.
Staying with the hosting page, the detailed breakdown of what's included in Fantasico Delux is something that should be kept for another page.
Shoutcast Audio Server - Given you're selling this product, there isn't enough information about the product. What is shoutcast, how it does it work? What is bitrate? Work on the premise that the customer doesn't know anything, then you can't go wrong. Be informative.
This page (http://www.etglobalsolution.co.uk/support.html) is all over the place. I can only assume you're working on this at the moment.
Contact - Rather than state phone contact is inappropriate, maybe state that its only for use in "Emergency Scenarios". Priority is given to calls raised by the ticket system?
Dead forums would put me off. It either a) Suggests you are new (therefore a risk) or that you simply don't have many customers. Either ways its not a positive sign. Provide the link in the members section until the forums are popular enough to warrant a link on the main site.
Given that the FAQ looks like a completely different site, I would open this in a new window rather than in the current session. You might want to include a link back to the site in the FAQ as well.

Just a few things to think about if you get bored.

Bloory · 16th February 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by s-p

Remove payment icons from the bottom. I only really need to know about these methods once you've sold your ideas and plans to me.

It's probably a requirement of WorldPay - I'm required to have them on the front page of my site too

crocket · 16th February 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloory

It's probably a requirement of WorldPay - I'm required to have them on the front page of my site too

It is an indeed a requirement of worldpay! I used to accept 2CO + Paypal, but worldpay looks much better, and customers recognise it as a "proper" host not accepting paypal anymore! (well that's what I tell myself anyway after spending a good £420 for worldpay)

s-p · 17th February 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bloory

It's probably a requirement of WorldPay - I'm required to have them on the front page of my site too

I didn't know that.

I guess you best leave them there.

othellotech · 17th February 2005

Quote:

Decrease font size of C...
Decrease the font size of this as well.

Increase the font size across the board - some of us like to be able to read the content/words

Quote:

As has been said previously, change some of the image text to just plain text. Will increase load time and look better.

If it increases load time thats a *bad-thing* (tm)

Of course follwing the advice wil actually decrease load time which is good

Quote:

(make sure if you use the logo's of these companies that you detail these are the registered trademarks of these companies).

That will generally be a given requirement as you actually need the logo owners *permission* to use the logo's or for the usage/publishing of the logo to be goverened by their press-pack T&C's

Cranky · 17th February 2005

The worldpay stuff could be scaled down in size a bit, and they're unlikely to say anything if you remove them anyway - if they haven't the time to adequately answer support emails I can't imagine them having the time to check customers' sites for breach of VISA/Mastercard/EU regulations.

othellotech · 17th February 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cranky

they're unlikely to say anything if you remove them anyway - if they haven't the time to adequately answer support emails I can't imagine them having the time to check customers' sites for breach of VISA/Mastercard/EU regulations.

Strangely ...
they *do* check and they *do* suspend installids who after warning dont update their sites
you tried calling support to dicsuss the problem - almost all of the questions we've ever asked in business hours get answered very quickly. email turnaround is generally 24-48 hours with them though