By: Mou Mukherjee on August 26th, 2008
Posted in: Reseller Resources
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When it comes to marketing, we often get tied up on the selling features of our product or service. One important thing to consider past features and benefits, is how our buyer makes decisions.

Instead of selling to customers, think about helping them to make a decision. Amazon does this incredibly well with customer reviews and book recommendations. When I’m buying a non-fiction book at Amazon, I often look at the comments to determine if others found the book useful. I also wonder, “Is this the best book on the subject, or is there a better one?” Amazon helps me with this decision, by showing me what relevant books other customers bought. The great thing about Amazon is you feel you’ve driven the decision. You’ve done your research and come up with the best selection. In the background, Amazon has presented you with what you needed to make a decision and guided you through the process. Some people might think this is sneaky. I think they have made my life easier.

Now think back to your buyers. What do they need to make their decisions? Because what happens when they don’t find what they need? They may postpone their decision, or worse, go knocking on your competitor’s door.

Does credibility matter to your buyers? If so, make sure you include background information on your website. When I’m buying something from a company I’ve never heard of, I’ll look for an “About Us” page. I might also look for their contact information to see where they are located, and perhaps even how many years they have been in business.

Do you have useful materials that have helped previous customers make decisions? Think about re-packaging them into guides, tutorials, or case studies.

Do your buyers need to evaluate your service before buying? If so, offer them a trial or demo account.

Try to think of all the things your buyers need to make a decision, and then think of an effective way of getting that information to them. When you help somebody make a decision, they value it, and that increases the chances that they will buy from you.

By: OpenSRS Team on August 25th, 2008
Posted in: General
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At HostingCon 2008 we asked visitors to fill out a survey about their business relationship with their service providers and some of the trends and changes to the ever-changing Internet. Much like OpenSRS employees, our resellers work and live online.  Earlier today, we released the results and wanted to share them with you.

Our survey findings revealed web hosts are missing significant business opportunities to tap into social network users. Many use social networking tools for friends and family, but not for business. Of the respondents, 60% have their own blog or personal website, and nearly three-quarters use social networks like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and FriendFeed to share information with friends and family.

Despite the majority of people using social networking services, 81% of the respondents in the web hosting industry do not believe these “web 2.0” or functional-hosting businesses could hurt their business.

This is definitely an opportunity to grow for web hosting companies.

Also, the more people use social media tools to share feedback and experiences, the larger your pool of understanding is to better serve customers. Listening and incorporating information related to your organization can be a business advantage.

The voices of your customers (and your competitor’s customers) are available online in a greater capacity than ever before. Knowing that someone is mentioning your organization online is invaluable. It means that you can respond. At OpenSRS, we monitor to ensure that we are current with the industry news and all types of conversations. We often share findings in our blog posts. Also, we frequently respond to articles and blog posts with our perspective or further details to keep the conversation flowing.

So, what can you do to address this changing dynamic for your business?  First, you can set up alerts using Google, Technorati or other free or paid-for services. These can be simply use basic keywords of your company name or your specific Internet industry focus. There are alerts for blogs and Twitter, too. You can receive these via email, text or RSS. The tools that work for you will depends on the adaptability to your workflow and your business needs. Our team tests lots of tools. Some work for us, and others don’t.

Survey respondents advised that their top complaint about their current provider was poor communication and/or support. Listening (also known as reputation monitoring) can provide another feedback loop for your customers.

Ken (our VP Product Management & Marketing) was quoted in today’s news release about the survey:

“It’s important that as the web hosting industry moves forward, we understand that Internet users are seeking a customized, personalized, Internet experience for both personal and professional reasons. Ultimately, it’s about customer relationships. Providers and resellers need to work together to provide the support, services and infrastructure that give users the best experience.”

Other results of the survey revealed that 73% of all domain name resellers enjoy working with their provider. In addition, three-quarters of domain name resellers believe their provider understands its needs and nearly one-half have no complaints with their provider, but of those that did, the top complaints were poor communication or support and lack of the full range of services their customers want.

Ken said it:

“It’s always great to receive positive feedback from the industry – OpenSRS has made a strong commitment to our reseller community because they have been incredibly supportive of us. By making it easy to sell and manage the highest quality Internet services, we give our resellers the tools they need to be successful.”

By: OpenSRS Team on August 22nd, 2008
Posted in: General
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On Sunday, I got back from my vacation in Nova Scotia to a pile of mail. Amongst the bills and fliers was a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” advising me that “as a courtesy to domain holders, we are sending you this notification of the domain name registration that is due to expire in the next few months. When you switch today, you can take advantage of our best savings.” The letter goes on to list the domain name in question and request a reply by mid-September.

For the record, all of my domains are registered with our own Domain Direct service. The domain in question expires on January 26, 2009.

This is a ploy for transfers that plays on the naiveté of registrants. Reading the letter further, I see they’ve spelled it out, “This notice is not a bill, it is rather an easy means of payment should you decide to switch your domain name registration”.

I bet countless registrants are duped into transfers every day. And that means names are constantly moving away from our resellers to less-than-scrupulous registries.

James wrote about these schemes on our blog back in February.

As an OpenSRS reseller, please consider our suggestions and tips to protect your domain name registrants while countering the aggressive marketing efforts of these companies:

1. Deploy WHOIS Privacy. This is the absolute best protection. It stops the solicitation to transfer practice dead in its tracks as there is no way for to contact the Registrant directly. Encourage your customers to take advantage of WHOIS Privacy and the protection it offers. OpenSRS includes WHOIS Privacy for free with every domain name sold  as part of our reseller domains package.

2. Consider Domain locking. A locked domain can’t be transferred, again, preventing the domain slam. The transfer attempt may generate a support call by the Registrant to remove the lock, in which case you have the perfect opportunity to make sure the transfer is legitimate.

3. Get Proactive about Registrant Communication. Let your customers know about this practice and ensure that your customers know who you are and who their Registrar is. Clearly spell out your communication policies surrounding renewals (i.e. “We never send mail invoices reminding you to renew.”) before the scammers have a chance to spread their mis-information.

By: OpenSRS Team on August 20th, 2008
Posted in: General
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You may or may not have heard about the recent flaw discovered in DNS system by a researcher named Dan Kaminsky.

Recently, ISP Planet spoke with Rick Yazwinski our principal engineer, to talk about the exploit, and about the impact its discovery had on the industry. You can read that article here.

We also wanted to take a minute or two to reassure our customers that we’ve taken the appropriate measures to ensure that our DNS system is safe from this exploit. Garrick Lau, who is responsible for IT Security and Compliance at Tucows, explains:

“This exploit targets “recursive” DNS setups as they are susceptible to this DNS design flaw. Authoritative DNS servers are NOT susceptible to this flaw. All of the Tucows DNS servers that are serving customers are Authoritative DNS servers.”

Garrick adds, “We were notified of this exploit back in June, during the last MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group). This notification came well before the exploit was public knowledge and at about the same time as Dan Kaminsky was briefing U.S. Homeland Security. At that time, various venders were hard at work creating patches for this flaw. This early warning gave us ample time to verify that all of our external facing DNS servers are all Authoritative and that Tucows and our resellers (and by extension, our resellers’ customers) are safe from this flaw.”

By: James Koole on August 19th, 2008
Posted in: Reseller Resources
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One of the easiest things to overlook when you start thinking about how to grow your business is writing.

Sure, you need to have the kind of products and services that prospective customers are after, be it a hosting plan with all the bells and whistles, or fully-featured, high-speed Internet access. But beyond your product or service, you need to make sure that you are effectively conveying that information to each prospective customer.

Who are you selling to?

To do a good job writing for your customers, you first need to know who they are. For example, if you are primarily targeting fairly tech-savvy users with a hosting plan, it might be acceptable to use terms like terabytes, or Linux, or MySQL. But if you are selling services to people who aren’t plugged in when it comes to hosting, then you’ll need to adapt your writing to ensure that you aren’t baffling them with words that sound like a foreign language to them. You may instead choose to use words like plenty of storage, secure web servers and blog-ready databases.

Similarly, you should make sure that you don’t make any assumptions about the level of knowledge of your users. And that goes both ways. Don’t assume that your customers are fully versed in the terminology and technology of the Internet. But at the same time, make sure you don’t treat them as idiots either.

Think of the geek and your grandmother

You might want to serve up multiple versions of the same information with a link from the version for “normal people” to a version for “geeks”. It can be as easy as putting a simple subheading with something like, “I’m up to speed on this stuff, give me the techie version” that links to a specs page.

For example, OpenDNS, a provider of third-party DNS service, caters to both groups on their page. Those with a solid knowledge of DNS and routers are after one thing – the IP addresses to plug in to their router. OpenDNS understands their audience and on the “Getting Started” page, they simple provide what they call “The Straight Dope” – the two IP addresses of their DNS servers.

But for those who need some hand holding (in other words, the average person), OpenDNS takes the time to explain their service and how to configure it in plain English. They provide pictures of the routers they have instructions for, and screenshots that help users configure things to use the OpenDNS service.

The golden opportunity

There’s a real opportunity for both hosting companies, and also for ISPs, to grab market share by being friendly and approachable in a way that really stands out from the crowd. As more and more people start looking to simply establish a presence online, it becomes even more important to tailor your service offerings and marketing to increasingly less technologically-inclined customers.

Take a look at your website and marketing materials from the perspective of the non-tech. Better yet, have someone who doesn’t understand the business read through your website and provide feedback. Is what you are selling clear? Does it make sense to the average user as well as the Internet expert? Is you pricing clear and understandable? Do you clearly explain why you are a better choice than the competition?

Your website is probably the single most important marketing tool you have. Make sure that the writing is effective and clear and that it serves the broadest section of potential customers.