The value of being assured

[Chris Marks]

What is your opinion on the usage of web host 'quality check' services? Do you use them? Do you display their 'seal of certification' on your site? Has it been of any value to clients that you know of?

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, I am referring to services like Host Check (hostcheck.net) and Hosting Assured (hostingassured.findmyhosting.com).

I'm just hoping to hear some experiences. Thanks!

[Robert]

No Company can rate you on how well you preform, only current and previous customers can. A testimonial will always outrank some "hosting assure" seal.

[Dapon]

I believe those type of things are more usefull to people in the industry than the general puplic. 99% of them don't even know what it is until it's pointed out to them. And I don't know about you, but when a sales man sends me to a refference they choose it doesn't cary much weight with me. Their brother could own that site for all I know.

[Living Media]

I don't know about the value (real or perceived) to my clients, or if it's caused any of them to decide to sign up with me rather than some other company; but I joined HostingAssured to get an additional resource: mediation assistance.

I joined Hosting Assured because they don't just allow hosts to join and place a seal on their site (one on their servers, actually, they don't want you saving the image to your servers and displaying that one), they offer to provide neutral third-party mediation attempts if a client is having problems with a host and is unable to resolve the issue. I'm hoping that, by communicating openly with my clients and by trying to be as clear as possible with my client agreement, documentation, and service offerings, I can avoid having to take advantage of the resource that HostingAssured offers. But it's nice to know that, should it ever be required, the service is available. It gives my clients the feeling that, should they run into problems, they don't have to immediately think about trying to find legal help or do a chargeback. There's another option, and it's advertised right on the site (and listed in the member FAQs as a way to resolve problems.)

Having helped a manufacturing company get ISO 9000 certified, I can speak for the questionable value of many certifications. Many of them are a sign that a particular set of tasks has been finished (in the case of ISO, up-to-date documentation of policies and procedures for all steps of the manufacturing process), but they're no guarantee that these policies will be adhered to 100% of the time.

[thebyp2]

i don't think theres much value in them. they may give that extra confidence to a person who already is ready to sign up.

i also don't think a testimonial serves much purpose on a website. i personally only trust third party recomendations if they are on a third party site. i've seen to many testimonials on peoples site which are blatently made up.

thats my couple of pennys anywho :)

[Chicken]

Any 'assured' certification only means somethingis it means something to your customers. I suppose you can educate them, but organizations such as the BBB are widely known, thus an 'assured' seal from them would be instantly recognizable. Some of the past 'assured' seals have been little more than a cash collection for the owners of the 'assured' issuers, not to mention giving them a link from you site to theirs (imroving their ranking and SE position, heh).

Really, this would be a good question to ask customers.

[Chris Marks]

Yeah, maybe we should start a poll on WHT for consumers?

[UH-Matt]

The problem with a lot of "assured" services is:

1. Often you dont have to be approved, so anyone can get the approval!
2. A lot of the sites ask you to display the approval button purely for there own traffic gains.
3. The link to your approval on there site will often display other hosts, do you want to promote other hosts to potential customers who click your approval button?

For these reasons we dont use them.

[Living Media]

Good cautions, Matt. (And welcome to the hideout!) FindMyHosting doesn't have advertisements, so neither does HA; and they're (thus far) a good, unbiased resource - I don't mind giving them more traffic and thus encouraging their behaviour. Hosts have to be FHM members to even try to join HA; and at the time I signed up, all applications were being manually reviewed, so there was a quality control.

If they ever start displaying advertisements for other hosts, though, I'll probably pull the button / link. It may not do much damage to their search engine ratings, if that ever does come to pass (they'll be crying into their beer, I'm sure :D ) but it falls under that heading of "not encouraging their behaviour". It's the principle of the thing. Also, if there wasn't the mediation assistance offer available, I'm not too sure if I would have joined the program. That really grabbed me.

[Deb]

but organizations such as the BBB are widely known, thus an 'assured' seal from them would be instantly recognizable. We just bit the ****** and went for the BBB Membership but I admit to being a bit disturbed by the regulations and costs. <rant> As a member of the Orlando BBB we are still not permitted to note as such on our web site. The fees we paid for the application, the paperwork etc filled out for the review, and the annual fees don't add up to enough to include a link. The link is an additional application fee, more paperwork, and an additional hefty chunk of annual fees.</rant> Will we pay? Probably, because as was noted, the BBB is widely recognized and therefore may help the comfort level of some potential clients. I'm not so sure some of these 'unknown' assurance groups would do any more good than the number of other 'award buttons' so freely available on the net. I can't imagine them helping more than a BBB sticker.

I'm also a bit concerned for the clients since I see a number of reviews from 'third parties' (review sites, magazines and assurance companies) taking the words of the host at face value and advertising them as facts. This burns me up inside when I -KNOW- the words are false so we end up with a client being "assured" that the false statements are true and *sigh* that isn't going to help :P

None the less, I assume any sticker is better than no sticker at all. Though it still comes down to value, and with the stickers costing so much these days, I'm not yet convinced that they are paying for themselves (too many consumers don't think to check with the BBB until AFTER they've been hurt. It's a shame they don't check FIRST as they should)

[UH-Matt]

Some interesting thoughts Deb. Thanks for sharing.

I think we will look further into some form of approval. Just need to make sure its genuine.

[Robert]

Deb,

how much are the fees?

[Deb]

It depends on your local BBB, number of employees, and annual revenue. You need to contact a local chamber to get exact details. I would assume most of the companies on forums such as these can plan on anywhere from $500 to $2k though I really have no idea how that stacks up since I could not 'see a chart'. All I could do was answer the questions and with that they gave me a price...

[Deb]

p.s. That's for both the local membership and the online membership put together.... Annually.

[suppleSupport]

Originally posted by Robert:

Deb,

how much are the fees?

How much does the BBBOnLine Reliability Seal cost?
There is a license fee for participating in BBBOnLine Reliability. Fees vary based on the size of the company. Pricing information can be obtained from your local Better Business Bureau. To find the BBB nearest you, visit: www.bbb.org/BBBComplaints/lookup.asp

taken from: http://www.bbbonline.org/reliability/answer.asp

EDIT: The link in their FAQ seems to be wrong... try http://lookup.bbb.org/

HTH :)

[hostpath.com]

If you spend the money on "assurances" in order to increase sales, you may be barking up the wrong tree. Unless your site is optimized for selling, and unless you know and understand your conversion rate, you've got more pressing issues to deal with.

Ask this question: how many more visitors will you convert into buyers if you have that seal? If you don't know the answer, then it may not be a wise investment.

[hostpath.com]

Originally posted by Robert:
A testimonial will always outrank some "hosting assure" seal.

You are a wise man indeed, Robert.

[DarktidesNET]

We're "Hosting Assured" and it honestly doesn't do anything for us. All of our customers come from word of mouth (okay, most...)

[kunal]

Originally posted by elevation:

taken from: http://www.bbbonline.org/reliability/answer.asp

EDIT: The link in their FAQ seems to be wrong... try http://lookup.bbb.org/

HTH :)

:offtopic:

elevation, what does your siggy say?? just curious..:D

kunal

[suppleSupport]

Originally posted by kunal:

:offtopic:

elevation, what does your siggy say?? just curious..:D

kunal

Nothing too exciting :) Just my name in Urdu/Arabic.

[kunal]

Aah, cool. :)

kunal

[allan]

Originally posted by Deb:
I'm also a bit concerned for the clients since I see a number of reviews from 'third parties' (review sites, magazines and assurance companies) taking the words of the host at face value and advertising them as facts. This burns me up inside when I -KNOW- the words are false so we end up with a client being "assured" that the false statements are true and *sigh* that isn't going to help :P


Deb, I did not want to sidetrack this thread, but I am really interested in more of your thoughts on this, and started a new topic:

http://www.hosthideout.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1023