SMB Resource Adds to Yahoo! Hosting Clout
by Philbert Shih, theWHIR.com
March 16, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting companies targeting the massive and still growing small business market have introduced a wide range of service offerings in an attempt to meet all their customers’ online needs. Hosts these days offer everything from domain registration and Web design to search engine optimization, online marketing and Internet access. These services not only create additional revenue streams, but they enhance customer retention, as small business customers inevitably grow, and will in most cases prefer to get all their future online services from a single vendor.
But while hosts have worked to open up their product lines to new offerings, few have focused any of their energy on providing education and information. For a typical small business customer lacking in Internet savvy, just registering a domain name and getting a Web site running can be a formidable task. Yet there are various other services they may eventually become interested in, but unfortunately know next to nothing about. In the end, providing more information can give hosts a better chance of selling hosting and hosting-related services.
With the goal of filling these information gaps, Yahoo! (yahoo.com) announced last week the launch of Yahoo! Small Business Resource Center (smallbusiness.yahoo.com), a comprehensive hub that provides small businesses with all the information and resources they need to set up online. The portal will include approximately 1,000 new articles on Web design and hosting, e-commerce and search engine optimization, in addition to key business topics such as sales and marketing, human resources, legal and finance. Yahoo! contributes its own content and aggregates from leaders such as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Allbusiness.com, Buyerzone and Nolo.
The new portal complements Yahoo! Small Business’s core hosted service offerings of domain names, email, Web hosting and e-commerce hosting. With the content and services now available together, the company is able to offer its small business customers everything they need from a single online destination.
“The resource center brings together helpful tips and in-depth content with easy access to our award-winning suite of affordable online services to offer small businesses a definitive, comprehensive online resource,” said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Small Business, in a statement.
Yahoo! Small Business to this point has concentrated most of its efforts on the service side, jumping into Web hosting in late 2002 and adding domain registration in August of last year. Launching the resource center brings Yahoo! Small Business closer to being the one-stop shop it envisions.
“We’ve spent the last two years very focused on the service offerings: hosting, e-commerce and domains,” says Riley. “What we are launching [now] is a content center, to expand our offerings beyond just those services, but to be really that one-stop shop for a small business that has questions about online marketing, site design, finance, human resources, legal and those kind of things.”
Web hosting, however, will continue to be Yahoo!’s flagship small business product. “[The resource center] is designed to merchandise our Web hosting products,” he says. “Web hosting and e-commerce hosting is our core business. So we think this is very complementary to that.”
By providing businesses the information and resources they need, Yahoo! will be able to attract, retain and better service its customers. Riley believes that in the future small businesses will increasingly look to do things online and Yahoo! intends to be there and partner with them as their online needs grow. Web sites are the starting point, and the information provided through the new resource center combine with them, forming a platform that will enable customers to learn about and ultimately purchase other online business services.
Yahoo! is not alone in its efforts to become a more complete provider of online business services. Go Daddy (godaddy.com), for example, moved into Web hosting recently, after focusing mainly on domain registration. Earlier this month Network Solutions significantly expanded its Web hosting services in an effort to provide a more rounded set of offerings for its strong domain registration base.
