I just had another argument that a site should have pictures of people and images of fancy "flame-spitting" servers on the front page. I think such images are very irrelevant and no guarantee that reality is close to them. Others have opinion that the customers will literary “fall for such a design”. I don't want customers falling for my design, I want someone savvy enough so I won't have to worry about supporting him on trivial issues. I guess it all depends who you consider the target population is. So I decided to pool you all again.

What do the customers want on a decent web hosting page?

1. Images of fancy web servers (which cannot be found this planet)
2. Images of a very-friendly-female-sexy-looking-technical support
3. All of the above
4. None of the above

I think that this poll is extremely bias. You list the options in a fashion to make the user click none of the above. I do agree with you on this issue however. It truly depends on who you are marketing. If you want to host 15 year old gaming websites, but some flames on a server and slap it on a site with a cheap price tag. However, if you want something a little more professional, it doesn't have to include images of sexy women showing cleavage. Although, nice eye-candy always helps ;) . Decide your target market, then decide which images are best fitted.

The pool was posted about the general trend for all the hosting sites you can get in the first few pages when you search google for "web hosting".

I do think that niche markets would win over general hosting site, for smaller companies that is, but still wanted to pool the opinion here on that one. Are the money in the gaming websites? Just asking because I'm not familiar with that area.

the money is in business hosting ;)

what customers want on a website is a friendly face that is either professional or funky. Take a look at my website, maybe you get some ideas.

I don't want to be rude belldoe, but that picture of that guy, detracts me. It feels cheap and impersonal. Is that the funky look or the professional look you were going for? BTW, nice dreamweaver flash buttons ;)

I think that a nice picture can give another touch to your website. It doesn't necessary needs to be a nice looking woman or a flashy server at all.

Try something original!

Personally I dislike it when people stick pictures of flashy looking servers on their webhosting businesses site. Some of the most common ones are Sun Fire 10k or 15k servers (they cost upwards of $1m USD new), or fancy 'gaming' cases such as those used by AlienWare, or people on ebay trying to make a really crap computer look expensive.

If you are going to put pictures of servers on your website, show me racks of 1U machines, with a well dressed tech guy standing next to them holding a clipboard or a piece of network testing aparatus (not implying that he's going to randomly disconnect your server just to check if the cat5 cable is OK :) )

Businesses want business-like people to manage the servers their website(s) are hosted on, because it portrays reliability and robustness. (I'm sure I saw a web hosting company with a stolen (royalty not paid) picture of an Enron CEO on their front page, no doubt they felt kinda silly after the whole fiasco was over).

harry, you said exactly what I was thinking ;)