WebhostingDay – a memorable trade show

A couple of weeks ago we attended WebhostingDay in Germany, a unique and memorable trade show. The fact that it took place at Phantasialand, an amusement park, had a lot to do with it.  It was a well-attended event with 2,000 visitors from all over the world and 55 partner companies. The organizers did an excellent job balancing the agenda with business, networking, and fun events. Check out a previous post “The Fun Side of WebhostingDay” to see a video of some of the fun and action.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by our booth. We enjoyed the chance to meet and talk with you. Also, congratulations to James from Interspire the lucky winner of our prize draw for a Digital Radio!

Presentations from WebhostingDay are available on the website, along with a video and pictures from the show. Cruise on over to the WebhostingDay website to have a look.

Upcoming Events – WHIR Networking and HostingCon

Our next trade show is HostingCon which takes place in Washington DC from August 10-12. We are also continuing to sponsor the WHIR Web Hosting Industry Networking Events. These are free events, but you need to rsvp in advance. This is a great opportunity to meet us, enjoy some food and drinks, and network with other folks in the web hosting and domains space. Look for Solomon Amoako, our Director of Sales, at the Chicago event and say hello. Here is the upcoming schedule:

• Chicago – April 16
• New York – May 6
• Los Angeles – June 18
• Miami – Sept 24
• Washington, DC – Oct 22

If any of these events are in your area, please register and mark your calendars. We look forward to seeing you there.

Day two is pretty much a wrap. Things are calming down in the exhibit hall, and WebhostingDay 2009 is rapidly coming to a close. We spent a great couple of days here meeting with some great people and having some good fun as well.

This was my first trip to Europe, and I found it very enlightening to see the some of the differences between North American and European cultures. One of the most interesting things for me was hearing a bunch of different languages spoken around the show floor. At any moment, we could have customers coming to the booth and interacting with Marco Zuliani, our EMEA Sales Director, or Luigi Lagonigro, one of our EMEA Account Managers, in Italian, German, French, Spanish or English.

Often times someone would come to the booth and start with English or German before realizing that one of our people was fluent in their language. Immediately the mood would change and the conversation would shift and things would become more casual.

Having the ability to explain what OpenSRS is all about in the language most comfortable to the person visiting was exceptionally valuable.

As well, at some of the trade shows I’ve attended in the past, there was a clear line between business and pleasure. It was pretty much all business during the day, and all fun in the evenings. At WebhostingDay, that line is blurred – one minute you might be talking to a prospective customer at the booth, the next you find yourself strapped into a wild ride or playing Wii games in the booth on the other side of the hall.

All in all, we found it to be a great conference and well worth the trip. To our hosts at Phantasialand and to the organizers of WebhostingDay 2009, we say thank you, merci, danke, grazie and gracias.

It seems like ages ago, but yesterday morning Bob Angus, Product Marketng Manager for Verisign, took to the podium to talk about how to maximize sales of Verisign SSL Certificates. His presentation was titled, “11 Simple Things You Can Do Next Week to Make More Money Selling SSL.”

Bob brought 11 basic tactics that aren’t tough to implement but that will pay off with a measureable increase in sales and more money in your pockets. Bob pulled together his list from the experience that Verisign has after years of selling SSL Certificates through their partners.

Some of the great ideas that Bob brought included making sure you have the Verisign seal displayed on your page. That seal tells customers that you care about and value their security. If you don’t show that you are concerned about security, then why would the customer think it was important?

He also suggests giving a cheat sheet to your sales people. It can be as basic as a couple of case studies that they can offer, or some stats that illustrate the value of using SSL Certificates. It’s not rocket science, and it works.

Next up was to default to selling a 3-year term. That advice works on the domain side as well. Why sell one year domain or SSL terms when customers are already there with their credit card out, willing to make a purchase?

Bob also suggests taking advantage of any upsell opportunities. When customers choose a cheaper SSL Certificate, be sure to try to sell them on something better (and more expensive). If you take the time to explain the difference (and the value), you’ll be surprised at the result. Again, the customer is already in the mood to buy.

A couple of more quick ones:

Sell with keywords not tech terms. Use SSL v.s Secure Sockets Layer. Try out some Google searches to see which keywords bring the most results. Bob talked about things like the Google Keyword Tool which can provide a lot of help in bringing the right kind of people to your website.

While you’re doing SEO, make sure your website is working well for you. Make sure you’ve got a sitemap, and that Google is able to get in there and properly index your pages. Use a custom 404 page to get people back on track if they hit a dead link. And optimize your search results by using 301 redirects, not 302.

On the search front, make sure your own site search works well. Bob showed the Verisign search page which provides results and links to products even if the search comes back with nothing.

He also talked about the value of a testimonial. Give prospective customers a quote from someone like them who speaks to the value that SSL Certificates offer. A case study is even better.

All in all, Bob provided tons of great information for anyone offering SSL Certificates. Verisign offers more of this kind of valuable stuff through a number of blogs. I’d recommend reading them as they all provide great insights on the technology behind Verisign Certificates as well as how to market them to your customers.

As I’ve mentioned, WebhostingDay has a different feel from any trade show I’ve ever attended. For starters, it takes place in a German amusement park complete with different themed areas including a really impressive China Town, the Wild West and the deepest part of Africa.

Here’s a short video I put together today to give you a taste of the fun side of WebhostingDay:

Day one of WebhostingDay 2009 is wrapping up – well, except for the usual evening activities that provide a way to unwind and relax after a long day of meeting, greeting and learning. VIPs are attending a dinner party show called “Fantissima” while the rest of the attendees enjoy some fun activities around the park including among other things, an old-time shooting gallery and a mechanical bull. Have I mentioned that WebhostingDay isn’t your ordinary trade show experience?

More on the fun and unique aspects of WebhostingDay will come in a future post, but as a teaser, I had the experience of riding “Black Mamba” this afternoon with a few of my OpenSRS colleagues. It was one of the fastest roller coasters I’ve been on in a long time and we were upside down enough times that I lost track of what was up and what was down by the time we escaped. I won’t tell you which one of us screamed the loudest, except to say it wasn’t me.

But lest you think it was all play and no work, the hosting.FAIR opened today and we spent a long but enjoyable day at the OpenSRS booth talking to customers and prospective customers about our business and theirs. We heard from about a dozen current OpenSRS Resellers from all around the world – Finland, Germany, Ireland, and Canada to name a few. To those who stopped by to say ‘hi’, thanks! I really enjoy that aspect of these types of events. We ‘talk’ to our customers via email, the blog, and a couple of other channels on a fairly regular basis, but it’s always a good experience to hear from them and to chat face-to-face. Nothing beats two-way conversation.

I heard about what we’re doing right, and about what we could be doing differently or better. Reseller feedback and suggestions are always welcome and while we invite both the good and the bad, we generally hear more from the former category than the latter which is a good indication we’re doing well.

Marco Zuliani, our Director of Sales, EMEA, had the opportunity to give his presentation this afternoon as well. He brought insights for attendees about changes and opportunities that we see for web hosts around domain names in 2009. From new gTLD’s and .TEL, to the personal web and how to maximize revenue by cross selling multiple domain extensions, Marco gave those in attendance some interesting things to think about when it comes to taking advantage of some of the emerging trends in our industry.

It was quite the day and tomorrow promises more of the same mix of business and pleasure with another chance to talk about OpenSRS and domains, and ride some rides and socialize.

More to come!

WebhostingDay 2009 kicked off this morning with a short introductory keynote from Prof. Dr. Böcker. He has worked as a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Bonn since 2000 and has an extensive background in IT and telecommunications.

Dr. Böcker pointed to the growth in attendance at WebhostingDay 2009. While some shows are shrinking and suffering from the effects of the current global economic situation, WebhostingDay is doing just the opposite. This year marks the fifth anniversary of WHD and attendance is at an all time high. Last year about 1,000 attendees were registered for WHD while this year, 2,500 attendees will attend – incredible growth.

There are people from forty countries around the world, drawn to WebhostingDay because, as Dr. Böcker put it, web hosting is a “people business.” This is the place to meet people, find out what the current and future trends are in the web hosting business, find out what the key topics are that have the potential to influence and change the business in the coming years, and to talk about the future of web hosting.

Dr. Böcker talked briefly about the economic situation. Obviously it’s impossible to get together and talk about business without talking about the impact of the global recession. While many sectors – autos, chemicals and others – are seeing significant shrinking, IT is still showing growth. Companies are looking at ways to reduce costs, increase efficiencies, and are being very careful with money according to the latest stats that Dr. Böcker presented.

Some of that is good news for web hosting firms who often have solutions that help companies do all the things they are looking to do in these tough times. For web hosting companies, the short term keys to success include providing the solutions that allow those companies to drive down costs through things like virtualization which offers better efficiency, better usage of equipment and infrastructure and reduction of capital costs.

Dr. Böcker says studies predict growth rates of better than 2.5% for IT in 2009. That’s pretty good considering what’s going on in other sectors and this fairly positive outlook for the web hosting industry is reflected in the attendance at WHD.

The message from WHD 2009 is that the industry remains strong, with great opportunity for companies that are able to capitalize by providing the services that businesses are looking for right now and in the future.

As I wrote this entry, I was cruising at 11,200m somewhere over New Brunswick, Canada. With about 5,400km to go before touchdown in Zurich, and then another short flight to Frankfurt, followed by a train ride down to Cologne and a cab ride to the venue in Breul, I was starting to have some second thoughts about making this rather lengthy trip to Germany for Webhostingday 2009.

It’s our first time exhibiting at Webhostingday and we have a total of five employees in Germany to tell the OpenSRS story to the European market. We’re accustomed to attending trade shows all across the USA. Over the last few years we’ve been in Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco and San Jose, among other places. At each show we met lots of customers and potential customers from all over the world and we had a great time telling people about OpenSRS.

But because Webhostingday is in Europe, it feels a bit different. There’s a language barrier to contend with, and unfamiliar cities with that old world feel you don’t find in North America.

In making the trip to to Webhostingday this year – thousands and thousands of kilometres from our home base in Toronto – we’re signalling to the European market that we’re committed to their needs and to providing exceptional service.

Of course, we’ve been active in Europe since we began selling domain names wholesale back in 1999 and some of our biggest and best customers are based in Europe. But we haven’t historically travelled to shows on the other side of the Atlantic. That being said, OpenSRS has long regarded Europe as an important part of our business.

If you are in Germany, by all means, stop by our booth in the hostingFAIR and say hello. I always love to hear from OpenSRS Resellers – you can bend my ear and tell me what we’re doing right, and where we could be doing better. And if you’re not an OpenSRS Reseller yet, I’d love the chance to explain why you should be.

Marco Zuliani, our Director of Sales for EMEA, is here along with his sales guys Luigi and Ben, to answer questions and talk shop.

As for me, over the next few days, I’ll be doing my best to give you a sense of what’s going on in Germany at Webhostingday. From the informational sessions to the evening networking events and, of course, the social elements, I’ll try and provide some coverage of what Webhostingday is all about.

It promises to be a great week at Webhostingday 2009!

WebhostingDay, billed as the largest web hosting event in Europe, takes place March 18th – 20th, 2009 just outside of Cologne, Germany.

OpenSRS is a Gold Partner with WebhostingDay and we’ll have our staff on the ground in Germany for the event. If you are planning to attend WebhostingDay, make sure you drop by our booth and say hi. We’d love to chat with you about your business, and how we can better serve your needs.

In addition to being at the event, Marco Zuliani, EMEA Sales Director, OpenSRS/Tucows will be presenting “Domain Names and Web Hosting in 2009 and Beyond” at 16:45 on Wednesday, March 18th. Plan to attend and learn more about trends and upcoming opportunities for web hosts around domain names.

One thousand attendees from 40 countries are expected to attend this year, including 50 exhibitors. More than half of the attendees at last year’s show were at the CEO/CTO level, making WebhostingDay a great place to learn and network. But the organizers have also tried to ensure that WebhostingDay is also a conference where participants have fun.

The venue for WebhostingDay is best-described as “non-traditional.” The entire conference takes place at Phantasialand, a fantasy amusement/theme park in Bruhl, Germany. The park boasts a pair of theme hotels, and one of the best indoor roller coasters in Europe. Suffice to say, this won’t be your ordinary trade show experience.