I was recently going through the ordering process of pizzas at dominos.com. They have this feature of helping us build our own pizza. This gives us a lot of flexibility while ordering a pizza. That’s probably because I already know what I would like to eat. I was wondering how nice it would be if webhosts provided such a feature to customers who already knew what they wanted. I am sure there are a lot of webhosts out there who now provide this flexibility. But a majority of the websites do not include the feature of ordering custom hosting accounts.

The website is the gateway for a potential customer to your company. The ordering process is a part of this gateway. With a lot of self help tools in the industry, I think it’s a good idea to give a flexibility to the customer in choosing the hardware specifications or the features required for their hosting account.

However, the already configured packages should also be present for the noob customers. It’s like how a tailor makes a custom made suit for his client. The only difference here is that the tailor is the customer himself.

Now, with E-commerce software like Magento available in the industry, it is possible to create custom build packages for the customers. We, at Bobcares encourage and help customers who come to us with shopping cart requirements, to build their carts with configurable products. You just have to make sure that each add on or feature is created as a package in your control panel’s admin interface or your provisioning software like WHMCS or Parallels Billing.

It’s a good idea to give a flexibility to the customer in choosing the hardware specifications or the features required for their hosting account.

As soon as the customer clicks on the order button, the provisioning of the product should be done seamlessly, by integrating the provisioning software with the shopping cart. Almost all the major accounting and provisioning software have API’s to integrate with the third party shopping carts. This way, the customer gets a real shopping cart experience and his order is provisioned by the provisioning software. Only if it is hardware related will the provisioning require manual intervention. All other cases can be automated.

So why wait? Let’s build our own hosting package.

Tobby Davasia Kollemmalil has worked as a Lead Developer at Bobcares, before taking the role of Executive Team Member. He has worked in both the Technical, Development and the Training Division of Poornam. He has over 5 + years experience in the Web Hosting Industry. He is a regular speaker in conferences related to the Web Hosting industry.