The document discusses a case study of a web hosting company that engaged Entellects to develop a mobile app to provide their customers with access to web hosting services and account management features from their mobile devices. Key features of the app included domain search, control panel access, webmail, billing details, usage statistics, package subscriptions, and a help section. Developing the app for multiple platforms and interfacing it with the company's custom control panel presented challenges. The results were increased customer acquisition and positive word-of-mouth marketing due to customers enjoying the convenience of managing their web hosting from their phones.
2. ENTELLECTS INC
Company
50 people Web Hosting Company based in Chicago.
Industry
Internet – Web Hosting
Business Case
In recent years web-hosting companies has evolved all around the world drastically. As a consequence it
raised an enormous competition for web-hosting companies to place their unique identity in the web-
hosting market place.
A web hosting company has felt this concern & so wanted a solution which would act as key factor for their
services to get sold. They wanted a solution that would serve as their unique selling proposition.
Need – The web-hosting company wanted a solution that could immunize them from falling into just
another web hosting service provider. The need was to ideate a solution that could make them stand out of
the crowd. And its prospective customers should find a reason to go with their services while there are
other many companies in the market providing the same services in lesser rates.
Even from customers perspective it was well needed to facilitate them a solution that can help save their
time & manage their server space or any other controls more effectively.
3. ENTELLECTS INC
Solution
Entellects in order to add a USP to their existing hosting services proposed a web-hosting mobile app
solution. People of today are much friendly and access most of their information through their smart
mobile devices or PDAs.
Web-hosting app was the solution to enable quick access interface to all the customers that are using web-
hosting services on smart mobile devices like – iPhone/iPad (iOS), BlackBerry, Android & Symbian.
The web-hosting company engaged Entellects for developing the solution on all the four major devices
which has just mentioned above.
Branding platform from Apple store – As every iPhone app is published on Apple store; this eventually
serves as the branding platform for the web hosting app. The web hosting company gets recognized
through the Apple store visitors. This creates another advantage for a web hosting company that causes its
buzz around through mobile app market of leading brands.
4. ENTELLECTS INC
Key Features
The best thing we featured in this app is we developed it for all the four major devices – iPhone/iPad,
BlackBerry, Android, and Symbian. These are the platforms that are into huge trend in the market.
Accessibility through various devise/platforms increased its reach to maximum people.
From operational perspective the app incorporates the following features:
Domain name search – The users find it very useful to search the
available domain names of their wish right through this app. And
moreover they can even know it’s pricing to acquire it.
Control Panel feature – The control panel facilitates the web-hosting
service users to – Add Domain, DNS Control Settings, manage Email
Accounts etc.
Web-Mail – access to web-mail on the fly and across the user
accounts.
Billing – This features serves transparency as well keep the user
updated on the very current billing amount. People subscribed to cloud
hosting, dedicated hosting or may be shared web hosting service are
able to see their billing details accordingly. It made very easy or users
to make payments from their device itself for the respective web
hosting services they are getting.
5. ENTELLECTS INC
Usage snapshot, details & statistics – User can log into to its
account & can quickly get the snapshot of the usage he/she has
made. Through this it becomes very easy to unload/delete/shift
unnecessary data when the space is getting scarce. In addition
to this users get a push notifications right on their mobile
devices for any alerts regarding their hosted space.
View/subscribe to packages – facilitates the user to view,
select and buy the offered packages or any quick deals.
Social Media Sharing Feature – An added share on Social
Media platforms functionality has been provided to serve the
viral branding purpose.
Help – This feature as the name suggest contains FAQs as well
as other provisions to seek help from the hosting provider.
In the below section there are screen shots of few features
which have just mentioned here
7. ENTELLECTS INC
Key Issues / challenges:
While developing this app there rose some challenges that had to be eliminated to accomplish this app.
Enabling Push-notification - It takes telecom industry expertise to enable Push-notification feature in
mobile for an app. This solution needed such feature of Push-notification to notify the users about the
alerts. Entellects has worked towards it to implement this features looking at its virtues.
Interfacing with Custom Control panel – Usually companies work on C Panel or D Panel & it is not
much complex to provide interfacing with these. Unlikely we stumbled some companies that have
developed their own custom control panel; we needed to develop interfacing with such control panel as
well. This had been the most complex issue we faced to deploy this app.
User authentication method & server location identification – This issue arises from the fact that not
all the servers of a web hosting company may at the same location. They may have their servers
geographically scattered. It was needed to identify the server and its location and map it through with
user’s app with proper authentication to login.
To resolve this we have provided the user with the server key (encrypted server location) at the time
he/she installs the app.
Hence we have come to evolve the authentication system that prompts user to enter his/her server key
(that locates the server) and the user-id and password. Coupling all three together authenticates the user
and maps him/her to their respective server.
Deployment on four separate platforms - While looking at the market trend for available mobile
devices we have come to conclude to develop this app on different devices to maximize its outreach.
8. ENTELLECTS INC
Results
The results were overwhelming. After implementing the app the company has remarked much more
customer acquisitions than usual. The app supported them greatly in deal closures as they now had a
value added service in form web hosting app over their rivals.
The app even resulted in word of mouth marketing from their existing customers, because their customers
liked the app very much.
The web hosting company now find very easy to make their customers aware of newly offered packages
and facilitating them with payment facility right through their device.
