Customising HostPay

Customising HostPay


From our hotly anticipated video series on how to customise a HostPay template, i’m pleased to announce the release of the second installment.
In this video you’ll find out how to create gradient images, change the background colours of page elements, changing bullet styles and also how to change button colours.
In the third and final installment of this video series, we’ll be finishing off the skinning of the front-end template and also how to make changes within the control panel. Part 3 will be coming soon!
As usual, all the videos can be found within the video section of your customer control panel or alternatively you can check out our YouTube channel (Make sure you subscribe to be the first to know about new video releases).
Remember, you need to have HostPay installed before you can follow this tutorial, luckily we have a demonstration on that as well!

Any questions or feedback please leave them in the comments box below!

Refer a friend payments doubled

Until the end of October we are doubling the amount we will credit you for referring a brand new web hosting customer to us. This covers the Starter Pro, Home Pro and Business Pro products, and runs up to (and including) 31st October.

Up to £60 per referral
Choose between Amazon vouchers or Heart Internet credit and we will now pay you…

Product	Amount
Starter *Doubled*	£10 £20
Home *Doubled*	£20 £40
Business *Doubled*	£30 £60
Reseller	£40
Dedicated server (dual core)	£50
Dedicated server (quad core)	£60

Referring a friend
Log in to your Heart Internet control panel and go to ‘Refer a friend‘. Type in the email address of the person you want to refer to us and click the ‘Refer a friend now’ button. That’s all there is to it!

Read more about our web hosting refer a friend program or log in to your customer control panel and refer a friend to us!

Free web hosting CSS/ HTML template (plus newsletter template)

Free web hosting CSS/ HTML template (plus newsletter template)


We have converted another one of our HostPay templates in to a HTML/ CSS template and thrown in an exclusive newsletter template (using the same branding) for good measure! The web template comes with a home page, product page and generic content page and is fully W3C compliant. The newsletter has been tested across the likes of Outlook, Hotmail Yahoo and Google and looks pretty darn good in all of them. Here are some screenshots…

Home page

Product page

Newsletter

You are free to use them for personal or commercial purposes, however you are not permitted to copy, display or engage in any licensing, sub-licensing or distribution of the template. This essentially means you can’t copy the template to your website and offer it as a download yourself or distribute it amongst your customers/ members.

Go here to download all the files for this free web hosting template and newsletter.

6 steps to writing a newsletter that people will read

6 steps to writing a newsletter that people will read


A couple of years ago we re-launched the Heart Internet customer newsletter to great success. All the metrics we use to benchmark newsletters went through the roof; open rates, click through rate, conversions and revenue. Here’s the approach we took to make this happen.
Before we get on to the ‘how’, I’d like to quickly touch on the ‘why’. Customer newsletters, in my opinion, should be a no brainer. A good newsletter that is sent regularly will increase sales and revenue for immediate purchases, keep you in contact ready for future purchases and provide customers something to pass on and share.
1. Segment your customer base
If you sell multiple products which are targeted at different audiences don’t group them all in to one mailing list. Each audience has different levels of knowledge, different motivators and varying degrees of interest in a subject. A newsletter that goes to all your customers is only partially relevant to each segment.
2. Content that benefits them
A newsletter is not an excuse to copy and paste your press releases, write about the MD’s thoughts on the industry or provide a detailed explanation of widget X’s specifications. Give your customers content they want to read and keep these two questions in mind; “Is it interesting?” and “Is it useful?” This could be promotional prices, articles to help them improve an aspect of their business/ life, competitions/ prizes, new products/ services/ features they can use etc.
3. Take your time
The customer newsletter should be given the same care and attention as any other marcomms. You wouldn’t quickly knock up a magazine advert in 10 minutes and send it out, and you shouldn’t do the same with your newsletter. I receive newsletters from design agencies that have clearly only been written and built minutes before they are sent (or at least they look like it). At Heart Internet it takes a week from starting the first draft through to it being sent out.
4. Keep it short
No matter how long you spend on it and how ground breaking the content is, no one will read an email that rivals War & Peace. Short punchy paragraph are the order of the day with links taking people to a full article hosted on your site if they want to read more. Get straight to the point and skip the introductory paragraph about your company, they are your customers, they know who you are.
5. Clear calls to action
Research has found your newsletter has only got 51 seconds before the reader loses interest and only 19% of recipients will fully read a newsletter, the rest will scan the page. With such a short time and general lack of involvement, make your calls to action (e.g. click here to buy) prominent using buttons, highlighted text, arrows and any other disturber that fits in with your design.
6. Cross reference across all channels
Rather than duplicating our efforts writing content just for the blog and just for the newsletter, we regularly run blog articles through the newsletter. This catches customers who don’t read the blog and raises the awareness of our blog. After each newsletter we see a clear increase in visits to our blog.

Free web hosting template (CSS/ HTML)

If you are looking for a free web hosting template check out our free resources page with free web templates, icons and email templates (including the one below): http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/reseller-hosting/reseller-hosting-resources.html

We have converted one of our HostPay themes (click here to view the HostPay themes) in to a CSS/ HTML template free for everyone to download, Heart Internet customer or not. It is 100% free, you can make any changes you want to it and you can use it for any type of website you see fit, personal or commercial.

The free web hosting template is fully W3C Standards Compliant and comes with a home page, a hosting information page plus a generic ‘content’ page for anything else you may need. Here are a couple of screen shots:

Download
Click here to download the free web hosting template as a ZIP file: Download

Some small print…
We want you to enjoy using this template, but we also want to take credit for its design. With this in mind, you are not permitted to copy, display or engage in any licensing, sub-licensing or distribution of the template. This essentially means you can’t copy the template to your website and offer it as a download yourself or distribute it amongst your customers/ members.

Customising HostPay

Over the past few months we have been inundated with requests to create a series of videos on how you can customise the look and feel of a HostPay template.

Well, the wait is finally over! You spoke and we listened! Fresh from the Video production studio (Well, me and my laptop) is the first in a series of step-by-step video demonstrations taking you through the process of customising your HostPay template.

The first video from this series is giving you an overview of changing your HostPay templates, swapping in your company logo, CSS tips plus a brief explanation on transferring and editing files.

All the videos can be found within the video section of your customer control panel or alternatively you can check out our YouTube channel (Make sure you subscribe to be the first to know about new video releases).

Remember, you need to have HostPay installed before you can follow this tutorial, luckily we have a demonstration on that as well! – 

In the next installment of this video series, you can expect to get into much more detail about changing background, link and text colours and also creating new pages. Part 2 will be coming soon!

Any questions or feedback please leave them in the comments box below!

New Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 hosted email packages launched

We’re happy to announce that we’re now offering hosted email packages built on Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. All Exchange email hosting includes:
•    Free Microsoft Outlook 2010
•    Access to your email via Outlook or Outlook Web Access
•    Mobile access (including iPhone, Windows Mobile and iPad support)
•    Enterprise level virus and spam protection.
All our business email hosting is safe and secure thanks to our state-of-the-art data centre, which is manned 24/7, 365 days a year. There are no set up or hardware costs, you can easily transfer in any existing data, and you can also take advantage of secure email access from almost any platform, device or web browser.
As well as increasing business productivity with all the advanced and updated features Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 offers, you can save money by leaving all the maintenance and day-to-day running to us. Our professional email hosting solutions are easy to set up and use so you can reap the benefits straight away.
Whether you’re a new or existing customer, you can benefit by adding Exchange Server 2010 to your web hosting package or using it as a standalone product. If you’re a reseller, you can expand your web hosting services to include business email hosting or sell email packages separately as a dedicated product reseller.
Find out more about Exchange Server 2010 email hosting with Heart Internet.