Many inexperienced and unreliable Web hosts that serve the small to medium-sized business market may appear competent, solely based on the professional aesthetics of their Web site, making it difficult to gauge the Web host's credibility.

Bearing this in mind, RatePoint (ratepoint.com) launched this week the RatePoint Consumer Approval Program, which helps Web hosting and technology providers increase their business margins by proving their credibility as a business.

Using their existing e-commerce and business customer base, Web hosting and technology providers can provide a highly automated, scaleable service that can be sold to businesses with almost no integration effort.

RatePoint, which was founded by the former executive team of GeoTrust (geotrust.com), is now offering unlimited Consumer Approval Program licenses, either to sell or to give away to customers, through August 31.

The program serves as a more affordable and effective alternative to the Better Business Bureau, enabling consumers to interact with one other while providing businesses with a customer feedback platform that is displayed on their Web site as an online badge.

"Small to mid-sized businesses have an issue because you can't walk into their store and look around," says RatePoint CEO Neal Creighton. "You may never have heard of them before, and consumers really want to know more before you buy from them. So these are the folks that primarily need the credibility, versus Home Depot or someone like that."

Consumers can access the online platform to write their own reviews of the service. The reviews are authenticated and forwarded to the business. If the company receives a negative review, the business can then work towards resolving any pertinent consumer issues.

Organizations must achieve a positive overall RatePoint rating, as well as pass a fraud check to receive a dynamically generated RatePoint Consumer Approval badge on their Web site. All program members will also be included in RatePoint's Merchant Directory, which will be connected to RatePoint's online rating service.

"I hear every individual business is going to need one of these badges," says Creighton, "and will probably be a member of the program as it becomes more popular, so that represents a pretty large opportunity for hosting companies to add this into their packages and to make more money."

The program include quick business approval and set up, international support for 11 languages, product marketing materials to facilitate sales and access to a management portal where resellers can manage accounts and receive the latest program information to optimize sales.

And judging by the strong customer adoption rate, it seems as though the RatePoint Consumer Approval program is on its way to achieving success. So far, more than 15 companies have joined the RatePoint Consumer Approval Program including ATW, Hard Hat Hosting and Brainus Networks, reaching a combined consumer base of more than 100,000 businesses.

"I think we're the first ones to really make something like this accessible and that's why we're really excited about it," says Creighton. "We learned that because of the GeoTrust business, but hopefully it'll go well. We do think it fits really well with the channel and nobody's tried it before."