Think Basis It's Good For Business

Being a “web guy” means that hosting is kind of a huge part of what keeps everything going from day to day. In the past we kept and managed our own servers at The Planet. It was largely good, though not perfect. But, after 4 years of self management we decided to go less stressful and also get some “Digg proofing” from the Media Temple (gs) service. In theory the service sounds great and their site makes it sound like the next best things since Twitter. Unfortunately the reality is a bit different.

Here are some things that have really bugged me about (mt). I’m not saying this because I hate the company. In fact I like their philosophy but…

1. They say you can host 100 sites on the service but you can only really host 1 SSL site.

I wrote to them about this several months back and they still haven’t updated their site. They state that you can host up to 100 sites on the (gs) service. Sounds great right? Well not if you have to have more than 1 SSL site. So if you run 5 e-stores you’re SOL. I asked them to clarify that small point in their marketing copy and they never did. I find this borderline deceptive and at the very least absolutely useless to making a purchasing decision between their (gs) and (dv) offerings. Especially if you already go through the arduous task of moving to their service. (see point #3)

2. The (gs) service has constant downtime and they post photos of their office parties online.

As I write this we’re going on over 2 hours of downtime. Thanks for nothing (mt). This was happening at the exact same time a client was on the phone with me inquiring about our service. Looks really good for a web developer when he can’t even keep his own site up and can’t get through to tech support. In fact I think this may have cost me the sale for an e-commerce site development project today.

Finally I said enough is enough but step #3 will explain further.

Did I mention the office parties? I wouldn’t really care but promoting their extravagant parties through Twitter at the same time my site is down is kind of rubbing salt in the wound. (This actually happened.)

3. There is no way to migrate to, from or between their services. #lame

We ran Cpanel on our server for over 4 years. During that time we could migrate sites between our servers, to and from other services with the push of a button. When moving to Media Temple we had to manually port over 30 sites including files, databases and e-mail accounts. A stupendous pain in the ass. Now that we’re here I decided that the (gs) is (bs) and wanted to upgrade to a virtual dedicated server solution and take up managing our own server again. Hell, I could keep a server up with only 2 incidences of downtime in 4 years (5 minutes total). But wouldn’t you know it, Media Temple couldn’t be bothered to come up with a migration solution between their own services. This is really inconvenient and an extremely stupid business practice. Not only are they giving me a good reason to just move to a proper dedicated server again, but they lost my business today because I can’t easily move 30 sites that are on their own servers. This one really boggles my mind.

4. Their MySQL solution is always going down so you have to upgrade.

Unless you upgrade to a MySQL grid container don’t expect your site to stay online for any reasonable amount of time on the (bs), I mean (gs). If I had a dollar for every minute I spent dealing with issues before upgrading, I’d be a rich man. It’s much easier to just pay the extra $20/month and save yourself the headache.

5. Putting in a support ticket takes at least 8 hours (and sometimes 24 hours) to get a response, and the phone wait time today was 27 minutes.

‘Nuff said about that.

6. Useless SSH access to anyone but the main user.

If you’re on the (gs) and want to give SFTP access or SSH access to a developer you’re boned. I mean you can set up the user and give him access but he will only be able to access a subfolder within his own account. Unless of course he wants to use plain FTP. Does (mt) even care about security? My answer here is going to be “not so much.”

This is rudimentary stuff for any business. Do you want to give your web guy your master password? What if things go wrong? It just doesn’t seem very useful to me. I can’t even figure out why you’d want to give someone SSH access to a useless folder. “Hey super cool programmer. Here is command line access that you can use to do absolutely nothing of use within this one folder that only you have access to.”

I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that the company will improve things drastically because I like the idea of a clustered service. But Media Temple, next time you have a party, please make sure that my site is up before you post the pictures.

There are a number of things businesses do that aren’t in the best interest of the consumer. A lot of them are unavoidable offshoots of wanting to maximize profit, but some of them can be shortsighted, lazy, or even dangerous. While I’d never say some of these practices can’t be extremely successful, I would certainly argue there’s a good chance you’re sacrificing long term equity for immediate gain.

1) Trying to Prey on Fear

Plenty of companies thrive on using a consumer’s fear of missing out on the product they’re after by using a manufactured scarcity to push people over the buying threshold. Suddenly the car that’s been sitting on the lot for six months has “several other potential buyers” as soon as you express some interest. Similarly, Gamestop insists you pre-order your games despite the fact that they’ll have dozens of additional copies laying around the store, and has even gone as far as refusing to sell these extras to customers in an effort to instill the value of pre-ordering.

While this strategy might be successful in the short term, it commoditizes the sale and reduces or eliminates customer loyalty. By manufacturing scarcity you encourage your customers to snatch up the product they want as soon as they find it, and it’s likely your competitors will be the beneficiaries.

I was recently in the market for a new bike, and as such, completely expected a certain amount of “used car type sales tactics” that would eventually culminate in someone asking me, “What can I do to get you on this bike today?” Shockingly, I was met with the total opposite, and the sales force practically bent over backwards to prevent me from making a hasty decision. They made some recommendations, helped me narrow it down to two, and then said they’d hold both of them for me so I could come back when it was sunny out and take them both on a “proper ride.” No pressure, no mention of possibly selling the bike I wanted while I was mulling over my decision. The end result is I now have a stronger allegiance to that particular retailer than I probably should…and a sweet new bike.

2) The Perpetual “Ending Soon” Sale

Every city seems to have a furniture store that has been going out of business for the past three years. The commercial shouts about how you better “hurry in this weekend, because everything must go!” The logic is sound enough. Everyone loves a good deal, so if you make people think you’re having an incredible sale for a “limited time only” they will come running. The only problem is, after two-plus-years of the same ploy the sale means absolutely nothing. Not only that, it has now devalued everything in the store to the point where if it’s not on sale, there is no reason anyone would want to buy it.

Allposters.com is a prime example of the perpetual sale. Here’s the last six months worth of sales offers I’ve received:

While the constant barrage of emails have (arguably) kept them “top of mind,” the offers are pretty meaningless and eventually just turn into noise.

Contrast this with Active.com’s considerably more intermittent–and product specific–offers that still maintain some “top of mind” value but don’t give me the expectation that anything I purchase through them should always be at a discounted price.

Granted, the immediate response to any individual offer will probably be less for the second example. However, the long term results will be more items sold at full retail and higher conversions during times when there is no sale being offered.

3) Arbitrary Product Release Dates

Small tech companies seem to be the biggest offender of this particular consumer letdown. Although premiering your latest product at a conference or having a usable demo ready for a board meeting is good in theory, it’s still useful to remember there’s a lot of truth in the whole “one chance at a first impression” philosophy. Ask cuil. Although balancing the strains of needing to drive profits with the need to deliver a quality product is always going to be a challenge, it’s hard to recover from an underwhelming product launch or an application that was hurried into production and doesn’t deliver on the vision you promised.

At a previous company I witnessed firsthand an incredibly disappointing product launch resulting from decisions to start selling something that simply wasn’t ready for consumers. Without going into too much detail, I will say the decision to rush to market had a lot to do with VC funding and a desire to show dramatic revenue growth over the previous year. However, after watching the product devolve from its original scope into a neutered version that could “be ready by January,” it became abundantly clear that none of this was for the benefit of customers.

The end result of this major product launch was an underwhelming amount of sales, a continued retooling of the product that resulting in halting all sales efforts for a one month period, and a number of dissatisfied customers that had been sold a product failing to live up to its initial value proposition.

Obviously it’s ridiculous to think you can keep moving something back indefinitely while you fine tune it to perfection (unless you’re Blizzard). However, if you’re honest about the reasons for your “drop-dead” release date, it might just be better to cope with some internal disappointment upfront to avoid a public disappointment when you launch.

4) Strict Adherence to “Corporate Policy”

While having policies and best practices in place is always a sound idea, failing to allow for some old-fashioned common sense and good judgment can be a huge mistake. Sure, it can be easier to hide behind a generic policy, but when it’s taken too far you’re left with instances like Jo-Ann Fabrics’ refusal to let a customer use the bathroom, or Bed Bath and Beyond not letting a customer use a phone to dial 9-1-1.

This seems like a head smackingly obvious statement, but by filling your organization with quality employees who are empowered to sidestep “company policy” when all common sense and human decency is telling them to do so, you’re sending a much stronger signal to your customers.

Like I said earlier, there are plenty of successful businesses that do some (or all) of these things, and I’m not saying these can’t be profitable (the first three at least). However, as a long-term strategy, and in an increasingly competitive environment, taking a step back every once in a while and making sure your customers’ best interests are aligned with your own isn’t a bad way to do business.