Oklahoma City, OK - Web Hosting Directory and Review site FindMyHost.com has released it’s newly revamped hosting discussion community HostDiscussion.com. The re-tooled HostDiscussion.com features SEO friendly community blogs and forums available to all Web Hosts to post their thoughts on Web Hosting at no charge.

In addition to free community blogs, the new site features a popular forum where Web Hosts are permitted to post their latest special offers. Web Hosts are also encourage to participate in discussions aimed at helping consumers find web hosting. Web Hosts are encouraged and allowed to freely post responses to customer requests and discussions – making HostDiscussion.com more Host friendly than other forums. Press Releases and other worthy News are also allowed to be posted in their respected forums.

“We felt Web Hosts needed a place outside their normal channels of traditional online marketing to help get their message across. A forum and blog site such as HostDiscussion.com gives hosts a more personal avenue to reach hosting prospects in a more cost effective and friendly way than traditional advertising,” said Christian Henning, President and Founder of FindMyHost, Inc.

“Hosts can now interact with consumers without fear of being censored, flamed, or banned – free of charge,” said Mr. Henning.

Membership is free to Web Hosts for both the Community Web Hosting Blog as well as the Community Web Hosting Forums. Web Hosts wishing to participate can sign up for a free account at http://www.hostdiscussion.com/register.php.

Web Hosts will also benefit from extensive Search Engine Optimization which has garnered HostDiscussion.com over 80,000 indexed pages and increasing on Google alone. A revised HostDiscussion.com was only submitted to Google less than a month ago.

Partnerships are also available in limited quantity for related Web partners.

About HostDiscussion.com

HostDiscussion was designed to facilitate open communication between Web Host and Consumer. Web Hosts are encouraged to reply to consumer threads and post their own Blogs free of charge.

To learn more about HostDiscussion.com please visit http://www.hostdiscussion.com.

About FindMyHost, Inc.

FindMyHost.com was established in January 2001 to protect Web Host Consumers and Web Developers from making the wrong choice when choosing a Web host. FindMyHost.com showcases a selection of web hosting companies who have undergone our Approved Host program testing and provides reviews from customers.

To learn more about FindMyHost, please visit http://www.findmyhost.com.

I am often asked what are some of the ways web hosts can improve their websites conversion rates.

The first thing I look at (and this has only come on board within the past year or two) is does the website offer a live chat option.

It’s not hard to figure out why its so important, the web hosting industry can be a non personal industry where most consumers like to go about their business in a behind the scenes role.  Retrieving answers to their questions in a quick and easy online fashion allows consumers to make informed decisions right then and there.

Not to mention, the live chat feature must be easily accessible but not too intruding on every page.  What I mean by that is to have the live chat icon accessible on all pages so that if the consumer would like  assistance they know where to ask.

There are some websites who like to take a pro-active stance with the tools provided and try and initiate a chat with the visitor.  It’s usually started with a pop-up asking if you have any questions or would you like to see our current specials not posted on the site.  This is a great way to initiate a conversion with a potential customer should they not know the live chat option is even available and/or if they might have any questions that need addressed.

The one problem I see with the pro-active approach are those websites that soon as you land on their homepage and or any other sub page within their website you are embarked with a pop-up asking to chat.  I recommend a few minutes before requesting a chat and not to ping the same customer twice if they did not accept the first request.  This will ensure the potential buyer is not turned off by this feature as it can sometimes be quite annoying when it pops up on every page.

Looking to purchase a live chat software for your website?  Here are three that I’ve used in the past that I recommend:

Live Person
http://solutions.liveperson.com
You receive all the tools mentioned above with the added benefit of not having the host or configure the system on your own server.  All systems are hosted with Live Person so little knowledge on setup is required.

PHP Live Support
http://www.phplivesupport.com
I personally like this live chat software. You have the optioin of hosting it on their servers or buying the software outright and running it from your very own servers. Features are very similiar to Live Person and installation assistance is available if needed.

Kayako
http://www.kayako.com
The live chat feature from Kayako is built into their ticketing system software.  So not only do you receive a Sales, Billing, Support ticketing system but each department can have their very own live chat.  Considering this live chat feature comes with the support ticket system, its great when your trying to keep everything under the one roof, however both Live Person and PHP Live Support are superior when it comes to features and reliability.

Feel free to comment on experiences with any other live chat software programs.

I’ve been involved with web design, web sites, marketing, and all that good stuff for quite awhile. When new revolutions in Internet marketing come around, it’s hard for the old guys to catch on to the new ways. I’ve been studying and watching all the successful companies go at it lately just trying to get back up to speed.

Word-Press Blogs and Social Networking sites like Face Book, Linked In, MySpace and XML sitemaps and sites designed with CSS all seem to be the rage. What’s more they are working.

It’s hard to not be a dinosaur at times and get complacent. The Internet moves at such blazing speeds you must keep up by participating in what you don’t understand. If you just miss out for a short span of 3 months, you are behind everyone else.

So I decided to get back up to speed. I’ve been behind the times spending my days managing and reacting rather than making waves. For me, it’s blogging, setting up a FaceBook site, and reading lengthy gobbledygook about Google and their best practices for your web site. So now I embark on my implementing what I’ve learned from not only competitors but also our clients who are so successful at what they do every day. 

I’d say it’s off to a good start so far. Host Discussion is SEO friendly in every regard. Blog posts are going to be a daily habit, and we will be networking more and more and gaining new partnerships and friendships each day. I guess we will see in six months how much difference all of the new changes will make concerning traffic and quality of visitors reaching our sites.

Today FindMyHost will begin experimenting with Microsoft’s new Virtualization technology Hyper-V. What makes Hyper-V on Windows so cool is that they have actually integrated it within the OS similar to how IIS is integrated. In addition, it is a 64-bit environment and I’m hoping all of our apps move over seamlessly.

We already virtualize quite a bit of stuff, but this will be a move toward total virtualization. This will result in an easier to manage system as well as lower costs all around.

It should be a great deal of fun and a good learning experience. The company also purchased a super fast beast of a machine to run the new environments on. If all goes well, I hope we can convert to the new virtualization setup within a month.

We are one of the first people to get our hands on Hyper-V thanks to the people at SoftLayer. They were one of the first Web Hosts to launch Hyper-V. Be sure to jump over and check out their Hyper-V product line at SoftLayer. I haven’t even logged in yet, but I am hoping SoftLayer’s always reliable tech support is ready for me. LOL. 

I’m sure more of our clients are offering Hyper-V. I will update this post with those clients once we find out who else is offering this cool new software from Microsoft!