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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Having an online presence is a mandatory requirement for any business, despite the nature of its products and services, size, or targer market. Unfortunately, many small businesses do not have the budget to hire a Web designer to properly design a professional-looking website.
In an effort to address a perceived gap in that market, Yahoo! Small Business (smallbusiness.yahoo.com/) recently partnered with Logoworks (www.logoworks.com) by HP to help these businesses get their websites online.
Now when customers sign up for Yahoo! Web Hosting, they will be able to acceess a relatively low-cost web design service made available through the partnership.
The “Do It For Me Publishing” service provides a five-page, custom-designed website for a flat fee of $299. Businesses can choose from a selection of templates along with two rounds of review and revisions with a Logoworks by HP designer.
In an email interview with the WHIR, Eric Steinle, director of product management for Yahoo! Small Business, explains some of the details behind Yahoo!'s new Web hosting and Web design package and what it can provide to small businesses.
UPDATE: On September 21, after this interview was conducted, Reuters reported that Yahoo!, which has been attempting to sell its Small Business unit, has been asking as much as $500 million for the hosting business.
The WHIR: Who is the target market for this new package?
Eric Steinle: The Do It For Me Publishing add-on service, is targeted to our Web hosting customers only. These are small businesses, usually 0 to 10 employees, service based businesses.
What is included in this new web design/hosting package?
ES: The customer is provided with consultative design sessions via phone, two rounds of site design, access to stock images, and the completed five-page website for the one-time price of $299. They are also given the option to receive continued maintenance and design services from LogoWorks.
What kinds of add-on services will be available with this package?
ES: The service is specific to the consultation and design work. The customer can also choose to continue with ongoing site maintenance and design, or leverage many additional services from LogoWorks, including business cards, custom logo design, and do-it-yourself logo design.
With the recent discontinuation of Yahoo's GeoCities service, would you say this new package is an attempt to gain back this potential customer base?
ES: This effort is not specific to serving the GeoCities customer base which largely consists of consumers. This is a needed option for our hosting customers that do not have the time or expertise to design their own site. The additional service will provide an additional value-based option to our existing GeoCities customers who decide to upgrade to Yahoo Hosting.
What distinguishes this package from competing web design and hosting packages out there?
ES: We believe that our partner’s expertise, the package’s price compared to others in the market, and the ease of use and flexibility of the Yahoo! Site Solution tool provides a unique value to the hosting customer. They can work directly with a single partner (LogoWorks for all design aspects) at an extremely reasonable price. The customer then has the option to continue with paid maintenance or a transition to maintain their site personally using an extremely customer friendly and easily updatable service in Site Solution.
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Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
About This Issue | Read Digital Edition
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