By Carl Burnham
February 22, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In Web hosting, a crowded market that many consider a commodity business, differentiation is king. Adding unique features to your offering can be key building value and creating a unique brand.
Some of those add-on tools have become almost standard in the Web hosting business, and among those are Web site building tools. Through site building tools, Web hosts can build their value while enabling their customers to get their sites online faster. Often operated directly from a Web browser, these WYSIWYG solutions come with a range of ready-made templates that can be customized to suit many types of business operations.
As small businesses look to establish themselves online, they typically don’t have the staff knowledge or interest in hiring designers to build their Web sites. Many of the Web hosts seeking to accommodate this market have incorporated easy-to-use Web site building tools into their overall offerings, either as a free feature or as a paid-for add-on.
There are several hundred online site-building solutions, from free html and Flash templates, to complete private label hosting tools. Prices range from free to per-month or per-server licensing. The basic capabilities vary, but typically include the ability to create from 5 to 20 Web pages from a library of ready-made templates.
Some larger Web hosts such as Yahoo! (yahoo.com) have designed their own site building tools. Yahoo’s Site Builder is Java-based, and works exclusively with its merchant solutions. However, many solutions are designed specifically for resale by Web hosting companies.
SiteGalore (sitegalore.com) provides several standard features, including Flash intros, e-commerce carts, guest books, blogging, Web forms, a WYSIWYG and image editor, with over 15,000 template options to choose from.
Beyond just offering its tool to Web hosts, SiteGalore has partnered with control panel developer Ensim to create further integration between the two products.
“Most small and medium businesses do not have the expertise, time or budget to build and maintain a professional Web site,” says Sandip Gupta, CEO of Ensim. “The Ensim and SiteGalore solution enables SMBs to develop top quality Web sites that help their businesses succeed online.”
Site building tool Soholaunch (soholaunch.com) is offered as an add-on to an account’s control panel, on a server license reseller basis. Soholaunch is bundled with Fanastico, a control panel enhancement for installing scripts, and starts from $9.95 per month.
“We believe providing Web templates to customers greatly enhances the value of any Web hosting package,” says Adrian Gonzales of Web host IceStorm.com, which offers the Soholaunch site builder. “In the past, we’ve had customers cancel simply because they couldn’t get their Web sites off the ground. They either had no time to create a Web site, or the thought of developing a Web site became suddenly overwhelming. Our incorporation of high quality Web templates into our web hosting packages has become paramount in our overall strategy of making our web hosting services more unique.”
SQLFusion’s product, Drag Drop Site Creator (dragdropsitecreator.com), uses PHP and Ajax technology to display page and database components in a Web browser for creation and modification.
“Drag drop site creator is a tool which makes templates an element of the past”, says Michael Frappier, Marketing Director of SQLFusion. “Indeed any element of a template can be freely customized, replaced and moved around in the page, ending up with a resulting Web site quite different from the template they were starting from.”
While there are a variety of site building tools available to Web hosts, with a variety of features and functions, many of the criteria for evaluating these solutions remain constant.
Make sure it is flexible, easy to use and can suite the needs of your target markets. Turnkey solutions typically lack a certain degree of flexibility and are designed to fit a more generic market. If customers will need Flash, Ajax technology, forms, RSS feeds, advanced usage statistics, or e-commerce features, those features need to be a part of your selection process.
A solution should tie seamlessly with your existing page design and brand as a one-stop shop, and make it easy for potential customers to create Web site using your hosting services. Consider solutions that can integrate well within customer control panels such as cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, or EasyAdmin. Private label solutions provide the benefits of easily adding your Web hosting logo and page designs on the back end to give the appearance of your own unique site building tool. Consider offering a free trial period to encourage sign up.
These tools are not geared to replace the need for more comprehensive design solutions that can be met by Web hosts. Services such as content management systems and custom scripting can further complement a Web host’s mix of solutions.
Once you have decided on a site building tool, provide an online demonstration to show the range of features included, what features are available as options, and what each function is capable of doing, via Flash or image screenshots. This could be tied in to a live chat capability to enable your sales staff to respond to questions.
Providing these point-and-click tools will help a Web host build value, making it easier for their customers to design their own sites and focus more on their business, enabling them, in turn, to have more success online.
