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Design
How's it going? Just have some personal questions for everyone reading this:
Does design affect your decision making when it comes to picking any services (hosting, vps, control panels), besides the fact that the host is good?
How and what are you looking for?
This is just out of curiousity. Thank you.
Comments
If the companies got a hard-to-see website yes, otherwise I could care less.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
1) Yes it does. If you have some stock template with zero customization it's an automatic red flag. Look at BUYVM For example and their custom system Stallion. That's a huge turn on for customers that know and want to invest their money.
2) Basically less stock templates and be unique. It doesn't have to be some design that costs thousands just do something DIFFERENT.
Also, hosting sites that want me to give you my FUCKING billing account information first before I choose my package?
Yeah, no. Shitty user experience and a deterrent in my opinion. Let us choose what we want, and if we like it, we'll give you our credit card #. Other then that, don't force clients for their billing information before hand. It's just stupid.
Actually, asking for billing information is good before, it's just like going into a market and saying "Hi, yes I want to buy X,Y,Z, so I'll pay first then I'll go and pick them up"
I prefer giving billing information first, because also by doing that, if the information is detected fraud/bad, they have secondary screening, and prevent you from even spinning up a image, which in turn helps them.
Might be good from the companies perspective, but what about the user?
I agree with that. Thank you for your input. I used to do design myself before, and I don't like how some of they websites look like. I thought it's just me being a designer.
Being a customer, I wouldn't like to share my billing information myself before I even pick out something.
Also, the shitty whmcs ordering pages. It's literally cancer and I see it on every host panel I've ever logged into or bought from.
Don't get me wrong, SOME GREAT hosts still use the stock design, but seriously I personally despise it. Something custom like Vultr's panel is extremely rewarding to look at and boosts the user's relationship aswell:
I might be the 1%, but it's whatever I know I'm not alone :P
In DO's defense, you can see 100% of their products on their homepage, then they enforce you signup and enter billing details before paying.
Same thing happens on places like BuyVM - they disable signup until you're ready to order.
True, but you don't have anything selected. That makes the end-user feel like 'Why the hell am I giving them my billing details?'. Atleast for BuyVM you have all that stuff shown to you at the checkout page :P.
^ Agree
well, just for the heck of it, we don't want your billing information pre or post order, no sir, no credit card information at all, not even PayPal. No interest to bear the burden in case such information leaks out.
Aw, the Vultr panel is getting a complete make over soon.
Really? Any sneak peaks? I remember @Francisco showing me some sneak peaks of the new BuyVM's design several months ago. I was drooling and still am, I love their new design.
I do hope Vultr keeps the blue/white scheme though, their ordering panel looks custom to me AFAIK.
Yes, design matters, especially overdesign with animations would scare me off. Also, domain names matter. No design at all, like Craiglist is always better than tasteful design. Logo, UX matter but less than price and value.
Linode, Vultr and Ramnode (name and design) are about perfect. Crissic is a good combination of an OK design, name, and value. I don't want to list bad ones:)
I'm biased, because I will never go with mailchimp for whatever cheap, while millions like it
There used to be this one guy who hosted his own little vps site and he was a older gentlemen I believe. He used to be an active LET poster several years ago and his site was so stupidly simple that it was good. It literally had just a black and white border.... and some type of cartoon hand drawn logo guy on it LOL. He had low prices and awesome quality he was well-liked. Wonder what the hell happened to him lol.
Tim from Hostigation isn't dead yet, no matter how many hit-men I've hired.
Francisco
Haha!! Yes! This guy!
Man, good times.. Thanks Fran, haha. Instantly googled and went to his site
Edit: Now that is a perfect example of a UNIQUE site that looks so simple stupid, that I actually feel comfortable buying something from it! Although, probably his credibility from LET and LEB adds value as well ^_^.
Really, it depends. For example, if I wanted a shared hosting plan and I see a website like this:
It would leave a bad impression, right? First impressions are what matter, so... A few seconds later after looking around... I see:
After the stock WHMCS, I leave. My first impression = thrown in the garbage (and it the company didn't last long, they closed down almost 13 months after opening).
(not saying that some good hosting companies are bad because they use stock WHMCS)
To summarize this, it's good to be unique (my opinion). It just seems more... you know, legit.
HAHA I recognize that guy. And I agree (once again) that it's way better than stock templates
For the record. I love BuyVM's new website design @Francisco
@doghouch Meh, if that's the website I'm trying to go to, I feel like I wouldn't get any services from it, due to the fact that it looked like they just tried to put together a "quick" site, instead of actually putting time to furnish their product front line
Well, I said it was bad @rgenzon
I do prefer sites to have a nice website, but sometimes it doesn't matter. I used + recommended buyShared before they even had a website.
Also, speaking of simple website designs, what happened to ramhost.us? I remember when I first discovered LEBs, they were like the main competitor to BuyVM
This is my opinion : First , when you search for hosting services i am preatty sure you search for reviews too so in the first place no matter, second many hosting company start with a basical webpage and when grow change the page (for no have time in the starting bussines , no have money , no have designers, etc, etc), and i thinck the most importat things is have a quality service (when you find a good hosting i think no need visit his page every day , if you dont have problem no necesarry to acces client area only for pay your services. Sorry my english.