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Sales Tips

 


Selling Web Hosting Accounts

A Commercial Web Hosting account is a great way to add profit to your bottom line. Margins are higher on Web hosting accounts because the price is usually higher than a dial-up account, and ISPA does the hosting. Your customers can place their Web sites on one of our robust Web server, and you reap the rewards.

While it is a little more complicated than selling a dial-up account, selling a Web hosting account is not that difficult. There are a limited number of questions, and you can learn the answers to those pretty quickly.

The first step in selling a Web Hosting account is to qualify the customer. Find out what they want to accomplish with their Web site. A good number of Web sites are informational only. Their purpose is to display information about the company, and possibly collect information from the Web site visitors. Other Web sites are used to sell products on-line, and may require an on-line database and Ecommerce capabilities. If you find out what your prospect wants to do on the Web, it will help you determine the best Web hosting plan for their needs.

There are a few key factors in determining what Web site to recommend. The first factor is the amount of disk space included with the Web account, which determines how many pages the Web site can be. The customer can load as many Web pages as they like on any plan, but if they exceed the amount of disk space in a given plan, there will be extra charges.

Generally, the average Web page is well under a megabyte in size. In fact, the average size of a Web page with a normal amount of graphics is probably under a fifth of a megabyte. So, being very conservative, you could say that a Web site with 5 MBs of disk space could hold over 25 pages, and a site with 20MBs could hold over 100 pages.

The amount of date transfer included is also important when recommending a Web site. Data transfer relates to the number of visitors (page downloads) that a web site receives. Every time someone goes to a Web site hosted on an ISPA server, data is transferred from our server, through our Internet connection, out to the Internet backbone. Our Web Hosting plans include a certain amount of data transfer. The customer's site can transfer any amount of data, but if it exceeds the amount of transfer included in their plan, there will be extra charges.

We can also determine an approximate number of page views that a Web plan allows the same way that we determined the number of pages that can be stored. If the transfer amount allowed is 2,500 MBs per month, and we think that the average page is under a fifth of a megabyte, then that site can have over 12,500 page views in a month. We never will know how big the customer's actual pages will be, but we can make a conservative guess to help them decide which plan is right for them. Make sure they understand that you are just giving them estimates.

The final consideration when determining the right Web site is whether Ecommerce features are needed. If the customer wants to sell products on their Web site, they will probably want to have features like Secure Server, and CyberCash.

With a Secure Server enabled Web site, ISPA will create space on a server that uses a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) so that data transferred to and from the Web site is encrypted. This will help protect sensitive information like credit card numbers. In order to have Secure Server enabled, the customer will need to purchase a Digital ID from either Thawte () or Verisign (). ISPA will handle all of the processing. All you need to do is tell us which company they want to get their digital ID from, and check the box that says Secure Server on the Web Hosting workorder.

CyberCash is a way to have the credit card automatically authorized and processed while the shopper is still at the Web site. For your customer to take credit cards on-line, they will need a merchant account that will accept payments over the Internet in addition to a CyberCash account. The customer will have extra charges from CyberCash, including a set-up fee, and a fee for all transactions. ISPA will work with you and the customer if they want to set up a Web site with CyberCash.

Which ISPA Site should you Recommend? ISPA has three levels of Web hosting, Value, Enhanced, and Premium. The Value Web site has less disk space and data transfer, and does not include Ecommerce features like Secure Server and CyberCash. The Enhanced and Premium sites have more disk space and data transfer, and include Ecommerce capabilities. The Premium site has the most disk space and data transfer, and is appropriate for a site which will need a lot of storage space, and that expects a large number of visitors and page downloads. The three levels of Web Hosting can be purchased with or without a dial-up account bundled in the price.

Web Hosting Features:

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Selling Dedicated Connections

As a company grows beyond a handful of Internet users, it starts to make sense for them to consider a dedicated connection. With a dedicated connection, a company has the ability to provide Internet access for everyone on their Local Area Network (LAN) over a single line, as opposed to needing multiple modems and dial-up lines. The connection varies according to the bandwidth of the line, which means how much data can be transferred and at what speed.

There are several benefits for the company that has a dedicated connection. A dedicated connection is more easily scaled as they add users, since there is no need for a modem and phone line for each new user that needs access. If they connect to the LAN, they can get Internet access. In addition, employees will be more productive when they need to use the Internet, since they do not need to wait for a modem to dial and connect when surfing or checking e-mail. The Internet is always available at their desk on demand. A Network Connection can also provide more available bandwidth for each end-user, which makes e-mail, Web pages and file downloads much faster than over a standard analog phone line. Finally, the company can run their own servers if they choose to, such as email, FTP, and Web servers.

If a prospect calls you for a network connection, you should ask some qualifying questions to determine the type of usage that the company will have. The number of users that can be effectively be served on a dedicated connection will depend on the bandwidth (speed) of the line and the amount and type of data being transferred. Following are some questions that will help qualify the prospect, and help you determine the type of connection they will need. We will assume that they already have a Local Area Network (LAN) or will be setting one up.

"How many people are on the LAN that will be connected to the Internet?"

"How many people will have access to e-mail?"

"How many people will have other Internet access (surfing, FTP, etc)?"

"Do you expect the number of people with Internet access or Web access to grow soon?"

"Do you plan on having your own mail or Web server on your network?"

Once you have determined the number of people and type of use, you can make some suggestions. Following are some guidelines for the type of connection the customer might need. However, bandwidth needs really depend on the type of use over that connection. There is no set formula. A group of 5 engineers that spend a good portion of time downloading files are going to need more bandwidth than 30 people occasionally surfing the Web. Also, if they are going to be hosting their own Web server, they may want to consider a higher bandwidth connection, especially if it will be a popular or graphic intensive site. For purposes of the following examples, we will assume normal Internet use, with no Web server hosted on the network.

If the primary requirement is e-mail only, then the speed of the connection is not as important than it would be if people will be surfing or downloading files. E-mail generally takes up less bandwidth (it's usually text only) and it is less time critical. A 30-second delay on an e-mail being received to the server is less noticeable then if someone is downloading a Web page. A standard analog phone connection and V.90 modem can be fine if the customer is only going to receive e-mail to a server, even if they have 30 or more mailboxes. Be aware, though, that often companies start with e-mail only, and then quickly decide that they want to give Web access to everyone on the LAN.

An Analog connection might even be suitable for 10 or 15 people that have Web access, but the customer needs to understand that there is little room for growth. In general, if the company has between 15 and 30 Internet users, you will want to recommend that they go with a 64K ISDN line if you have that service available. ISDN will give them the ability to scale up. If they have 35 to 50 people, they would want at least 128K connection, and may want to consider a T1 if they expect to expand significantly beyond that in the future. In fact, you can easily recommend a T1 for companies that have over 50 people, especially if the number of people or Internet use is growing.

As you can see, in addition to the number of current users, you need to find out whether the company expects the number of users to grow significantly. While they may say now that they only want to give Internet to five people, it is quite possible that they later decide to roll out Internet access to all fifty of their users in six months.

ISPA can help service your dedicated customers. We will order the equipment required at the customer site, as well as any equipment that might be required at your site. We pre-configure all equipment so that it just needs to be plugged in, and will ship it to you or to the customer directly. Our network engineers will assist in brining the equipment up and making sure it is working properly, and our high-speed customer care group is specially trained to support your customers that have network connections and routers. Call your Affiliate Services representative for more information on dedicated connections.

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