Rackspace Hosting Offering Free Credit to New Customers This March

The success of Internet Media companies can be partly attributed to their willingness to compete in many different markets. While companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo continue to focus on their core business of search services, these companies, as well as the other leading digital media players such as eBay, AOL, Microsoft, News Ltd, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Twitter etc also continue to look for other opportunities from developments in mobility, cloud computing, e-commerce, home media, social media, online VoD, infrastructure etc.

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Enterprise Chat for Hosting Customers with Bhavin Turakhia of Directi

By Liam Eagle,March 24, 2011Tweet Related Topics: directi software and tools worldhostingdays 2011

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The opening session in the main forum on Thursday was delivered by Bhavin Turakhia of Reseller Club.

He dispensed with the not-a-sales-pitch pretense and straight-up pitched a product, but it was a fairly interesting offer, judging by the questions that followed the pitch.

While Directi offers all kinds of services for hosting providers, he dove right into describing a new offering from the company, called Chat.pw for domains, an instant messaging platform built from the ground up for hosting providers and their customers.

He says the big social media products are considered by many to be the technologies that drive the web. Hosting companies are obviously a huge contributor to what’s going on online, but they’re not really recognized for that.

Chat.pw, says Turakhia, is a chat platform for hosting providers to supply to their customers.

For customers, it’s a productivity tool. It lets them do all the typical IM functions within their organization, and also bring users of other popular IM tools into their group chats. It also features webmail integration, and apps for iPhone and Android, with a blackberry one on the way.

It also has spots where you can include advertising for your own services. And there are opportunities to provide contextual ads within chat, telling users, for instance, that domains related to what they’re talking about. It supports ad tags from Google and Yahoo, but those tags can be replaced by your own tags.

One of the big benefits of the chat platform, he says, is that it puts your brand in front of customers for much more of their regular experience, as opposed to the very occasional encounter an admin would have with their control panel.

As it is built for hosting providers, it is equipped with APIs for adding users, as well as cPanel and Plesk integration.

The program is intended to be free, and provided to customers for free, with revenue generated from advertising a host’s own products (in a revenue-share with Directi) as well as an ad-free premium version with a larger set of features.

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Mobile-Optimized Websites – A Decision for Customers to Make

Research suggests by the end of the year, majority of the cellphone subscribers in the US will be using smartphones and mobile web browsers and by 2015, mobile web will gain popularity over traditional desktops.

1&1 Internet, a webhosting service provider has reported that majority of small businesses haven’t made changes in lieu of these developments.

Viewing a website on a traditional computer and on smaller displays such as smartphones or an iPad are two different things. Websites may appear clustered and difficult to navigate on a smaller display implying the need of a mobile-optimized website.

Although, businesses are hesitant in embracing this advancement, yet, it is the newest trend among cellphone users. These businesses need to use Google Analytics to assess the increasing number of people that have accessed their website through mobile web.

According to Christopher Penn, Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at Blue Sky Factory, if the number of mobile web visitors is greater than 1%, the company needs to devise a mobile strategy. If it is greater than 10%, the company needs to start implementing the strategy. With mobile web users more than 25%, the company is losing business if the website is not mobile-friendly.

The first step in creating a mobile-optimized website is determining the content that will be available of the website as suggested by Brian McDonald, Marketing Communications Consultant at MCDezigns. Typically, mobile users are looking for specific information. It is important that this information is easy to look for. Also, your contact information and phone numbers should be clearly visible for users who want to make a call to you, suggested McDonald.

The mobile-optimized website can be similar to your regular website with just basic information such as product and services offered, contact information, maps and hours of operation.

The layout should be simple with very less graphics and a company logo. Pages may be displayed as icons on the homepage and may have a home link to return back, says McDonald.

McDonald also advises to avoid complicated navigation tools and to use few pages with short titles.

Following options are available for building a mobile-optimized website:

If WordPress or Blogger is used then plug-ins might be required. If another blog application is used then it is important to ensure if these functions are provided by mobile themes.Services like MoFuse.com and Mippin.com can help to create mobile-optimized websites.A website developer may be hired to create a .mobi website from ground zero.

Majority of small business owners make use of mobile web in their day to day functioning. It is important to keep in mind the needs of these customers while designing a mobile-optimized website.

 

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Posted: March 22, 2011 under Business, News, Web Design.

Tags: iPad, mobile optimized websites, smartphone

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Virsto Hits Key Milestones with Customers and Products

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