I am about to start building my website for my new company. As many of you know, a good looking website is one of the most important things to gain a future clients trust. I am thinking of having a designer/developer build i complete custom billing, ticketing and management backend system. Has anyone had any experiance with companies similar to clientexec(who i did not like in the past) that i might want to try? Also please throw any ideas out there to make my site more unique than the usual hosting websites.

Don't bother buying third party software to use. Have your coder develop your own. When we developed our own inhouse software thats what we did and its great! You can customize your own software extremely easy.

Coding your own client billing/management system will cost you a lot of $$, and take you a lot of time, so just keep that in mind when weighing up the pros and cons.

We use ModernBill + kayako, and they do the job. :)

Josh agrees with Aussie Bob.

Start with a pre-coded script, and when you get the money, of course you can spend on custom coding if you'd like.

Also please throw any ideas out there to make my site more unique than the usual hosting websites.

I think that if something was that unique, we would probably already be using it ourselves lol. ;)

Unique doesn't always equal good. Don't sacrifice usability for uniqueness... there's a good reason that web hosting sites (and corporate sites in general) have similar layouts and looks.

One way you might be able to differentiate yourself is 'mass customized' company hosting. Target niche markets -- relators, pet sitters, limo companies, etc. and then sell directly to them with a separate company name and domain name that's really just a reformatting and retemplating of your main website. There's companies that are already doing this, but if you really know a specific target market you can do it pretty easily. This combines really well with outbound sales because you can install specific apps -- calendars or specific pet sitter reservation apps for pet sitters, photo galleries and listing scripts for realtors, etc.

You don't necessarily need a unique website, you just need one that does a good job of promoting your products and is easy to use. Make sure your checkout and orders forms are 100% easy to use and is not confusing.

There is a lot of talk on here about templates and similar looking sites. But when you get many people saying the same thing a lot the sites are going to look somewhat similar in terms of layout and displaying products. The reason for that is because that is what works and why make your site harder to use in exchange for uniqueness?

I agree with the site needs to be easy to use, but I think that unique is still a big part to success. Though there are many hosting companies with similar website, there are some good unique websites that are easy to use. take acunett for example. great unique looking site that is still easy to use. thanks for the input

Ah! This is a timely post from digg.com -- how to brand on the cheap (http://www.avivadirectory.com/branding/?p=1)

I recommend if you are going to stay in the industry long term to start with a custom code setup, it adds value and you can do so much more to focus on your clients. Esp as the previous poster said if you want to tweak towards their needs.

Nice article Karl...it was very helpful. Thanks

I decided to custom code my own ticketing software and ect. . . what features should i have? I know I am having a custom ticketing, knowledebase and billing. Now all I need to know is what else should the backend of my site contain to be most efficient to my clients?

I've learned a lot reading the postings on this site. Thank you.