First Impressions:
Hosting is always a tough niche to succeed in. The competition is fierce, and the “small hosts are unreliable” myth will always remain inside any new webmaster’s heart. However, with that being said, you seem to have a solid start so far.
My first impressions are fairly neutral. Your homepage doesn’t have a favicon, which I’d highly recommend adding. Having a favicon is a super easy way to market your website without paying much - if anything. I’ll use FP’s favicon as an example: When you see “FP”, you think Forum Promotion, and there’s little that can change that. Something that simple could influence whether or not a user would return to your website in the future.
Moving down to your logo: It’s okay, but nothing about it really stands out. In addition - it’s a really long piece of text. Your logo’s text should be something short: Think your site’s name, and maybe an ultra short tagline slightly below the name. Since we read left to right, it makes a lot of sense for your logo to align with the quick navigation on your website, and this is something that you’re currently not doing. As I said: This ensures that your guests have the easiest viewing experience as possible.
Poor
Design Quality:
Your design comes off as rather confusing when I look at it. The image below the navigation bar has designs across random places on the person, which makes the person look a little odd. This, however, is a very easy fix: Just move the red diamonds away from the person in the image, and that will add quite a bit of clarity.
Moving down in the theme: The package pricing section has been fairly poorly coded. Wherever the gray bar is, the text is almost impossible to read. This, again, is a fairly easy fix: Add some boldness to the text. This will allow your users to easily see exactly what you’re attempting to highlight.
Average
Originality:
Originality is so tough to achieve in a hosting website. It’s very, very difficult to stand out in a market that is so crowded. Unfortunately, I don’t see much that’s too unique on your website. Of course, you’re offering free hosting without ads, and that’s pretty rarely online; however, it’s still not something that you’re “trailblazing” in the web hosting industry. Have you thought about offering something unique and interesting for your paying customers? The basic thought of something “unique and interesting” is something that might seem simple, but it’s a fairly difficult thing to actually achieve in practicality. With that being said: Have you thought about perhaps having a support app for iOS and Android? This might seem like something “odd”, but it’d be something that I’d like to see more hosts add. Personally, I’m normally not at my computer, and most live chat systems are pretty rough to navigate on mobile. Something as simple as an app would really help improve customer service, and that’s something that I do feel like people would pay extra for.
Poor
Activity Level:
I actually choose this over the Site Structure category, since I felt this would be a little better for your website.
You do have a forum on your host, which is something that I personally love to see. It’s a really easy way for your customers to communicate, and with support boards (such as the IcyBoards support board), they can even create a community within your company. However, yours is literally postless. Perhaps it’s just in beta, but I’d still recommend that you at least try to post a few topics in an attempt to engage your customers. Threads as simple as “What’s your favorite color?” - can help you show your customers that you’re a real person, and that there’s a community behind the product that you’re selling. If you really want to take the community idea to the next level, you could even have a posting contest and give away free hosting to a random person.
Very Poor
Business Sensibility:
To start out: Let’s look at your homepage. The first thing that I’d like you to look into is your marketing. You have a fairly inconsistent message when it comes to uptime. There is a place where you promise 99.9% uptime and another place where you “try your hardest” to have 99.9% uptime. Uptime is no doubt the most important part of any hosting company, and you need to have a clear message on what your uptime is. This might seem pretty basic, but it makes a huge deal to anyone who’s looking to buy your hosting.
Within your hosting plans: There is a slight oddity within your plans. With your free plan, you get unlimited bandwidth, but with the super premium plan, you only get 250GB of bandwidth. While most sites probably won’t hit the 250GB of bandwidth per month, I still feel like you should reverse the plans bandwidth. It would make sense to have your paid plans as undoubtedly better plans than your free plan to encourage people to actually buy them.
Finally, on the “Hosting Plans” page, you seem to have some odd green lines. Is this supposed to be something that shows how easy it’s supposed to use? If it is, I’d recommend that you make it easier to understand how to read the charts, if not completely removing the charts. If you were to completely remove the charts and add a paragraph on the difference between the different types of hosting, it would help customers understand far better than the current charts.
Poor
The thing I liked the best I really like your site’s name. It’s really catchy and marketable:
The thing I liked the least: The lack of originality.
Overall Mark:
Your hosting company is off to a solid start! With a few design and pricing tweaks, along with a tad bit of originality, I can totally see your company taking off. Best of luck with this in the future!
