Ok, we're exploring a theory that the real product being sold by hosting companies are the people who run the hosting company. If this is true, what are the implications for hosting company sales sites?
Let's talk about our home page for starters.
The Super Short Summary
The first job is to make it immediately clear that we are a hosting company. This can be easily accomplished with a sentence or so, right at the top. This seems so obvious it's silly to even mention it, but... If we look at a lot of hosting company sales sites, we'll find many who assume visitors know who and what they are.
Can our service be described in a sentence, and is that sentence staring the reader in the face as soon as the page loads? Remember, it only takes one second for the reader to get confused, and click away.
Above The Fold
Ok, once that's done, now what? What goes "above the fold" of our home page?
Well, if we conclude that we, the operators of the service, are the real product being sold, perhaps we belong above the fold?
I've been working online, in and around the hosting business since 1995, and have never once seen a hosting sales site that starts the home page with a video from the hosting company owner. I've never done it myself.
Should I? Should you?
We probably don't want to put our entire life story on the home page of our hosting sales site.
But do we make it really really easy for new visitors to learn about us, if that's what they want to do? A very prominent "Meet Our Staff" photo link displayed above the fold of the home page might do the job. I need such a link. Do you?
The About Us Page
As Joan Rivers might ask, "Can we talk?"
Can we talk about the "About Us" page that so many sites use?
Can we say out loud that these About Us pages almost always totally suck, without offending anybody too much? (Don't feel too bad if your About Us page sucks, I don't even have an About Us page.)
"We here at SomeHost.com believe in the importance of the customer relationship as it relates to primacy of coordinated synergy in Internet marketplace forces in the 21st century reality where server node cloud computing X9-4az Botsang Whatsit technology is used to provide full functioning yada, yada, yada and more yada."
If we are the product being sold, would a picture of us petting our dog be more effective than this kind of Netbiz buzz word fancy talk? Would you actually read your own About Us page, if it wasn't your About Us page?
Home pages and About Us pages. What do you think? Do these pages on your site do a good job of selling you?
Please add your thoughts, and help me figure all this out.
On to the next rant...