All web hosts have to ask themselves this question. What is the customer really looking for? I mean this on an average scale. Of course every customer is going to be different however what does the average customer really want. Some people say high bandwidth. Some people say lots of space at a low price. Some people say okay service but great tech support. So what is it that they want. Has anybody stopped to ask?

Before I get more and more involved in the web hosting industry I would like this question answered. I think we should all strive towards this. After all if we have what the average person wants than it should matter that we might not have what the other minorities want.

Does anybody have any thoughts or answers on this subject? :confused:

What customers are looking for is a lot of space a lot of bandwidth with low cost.They expect no problems will occur.They expect the host to run on their toes whenever a file is missing.
I suggest you start with higher prices so you can attract more business people who are serious about the hosting not like AOL users who start bugging your server with massive downloads and never read the rules about bandwidth.

Some customers are even looking for unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth :D

The more experienced customers are looking for a good service level. They understand more of what they need in bandwidth and space and so concentrate on support response times and quality of suppport, uptime levels and various facilities that they know they would need. And above all of this reputation! :cool:

Ive found that customer service is first, with support being second.
Without customer service.....you wont get very far, and that covers a broad area!

There are still those people thinking they are getting it all with the UNlimited hosts...I am sure we will always see this as long as hosts continue to offer it :mad:

I do think theres been an overall improvement on most things. A few years ago it seemed SPACE was the big thing...people getting 500mb accts. when a 50mb would be more than enough.:D

Ideal post for me, and something i think most people would be interested in contributing to.

These days when i looks for a host the first thing I will look for is Customer service and support, they are both equal and almost identical.
If I ask for something to be done I expect it to be done without any further requests, I expect the host to confirm when work has been done and I expect the host to tell me the moment there are any problems that may affect its progress. e.g. If you were a removals company and turned up at a house with a removal van and they told you they werent ready for you for another 2 days would that not pee you off good and propper when a phone call or e-mail would have been so easy.

With regard to bandwidth, I expect a constant connection speed from any server I purchase and I expect a host to inform me if they are about to cause a server I own to stop responding at least 12 hours before it happens, or 12 hours after it happened if it was unexpected.

I expect the host to know EVERYTHING about what they are doing, if they dont know the entire scope of their operation they should /kill the company!

are these unreasonable expectations of a host?

Not at all! Before starting webhosting, I couldn't stand talking to a support guy that would "errrm" at most things I asked and could only answer when the query was written down infront on them.

From what I have seen in the past, these hosts do die off pretty quickly and you tend to hear about them anyway.

It's a shame that most customers don't know that there are poor webhosts around, and typing "web host" into a search engine isn't going to return the ideal.

I think that sites such as this forum should advertised more in magazines and on webhosts sites aswell as the place go to find your ideal home.. (hope the admin are listening) ;)

You can't ask a blanket question like that. There are different customers looking for different things. You have Mr. Big Corporation who needs a dedicated server and 500 GB of bandwidth and gauranteed uptime.....then you have Mr. College who just needs 3 MB for his resume' and probably only cares if you offer 99% uptime.

Seriously - you need to decide your target market first.

--Tina

Spot on!

When choosing your market ensure that you know plenty about them and what you are going to have to provide both now and for the future. It's easy to make a mistake with this and wonder why no one wants your 10,00,000MB web space with 200K bandwidth.. (just an example)

There is nothing wrong with taking on two markets at the same time, but if you are just starting, it's far better to work with one and get the basis for your company off the ground.