| Case Studies
Atlantis Hair - Building a website that
isn’t hair today, gone tomorrow
- Atlantis Hair explains how Hostway ensures www.atlantishair.com
is always up and running
Background
Hair care and colouring these days is an extremely precise business,
with the difference between tears and a tip, one degree apart.
Long gone are the days of peroxide blonde which literally stripped
your hair of its vitality, now you’ll be offered colours
once only found on a dessert menu, such as maple or toffee,
with nutrients to make it healthy.
Like the typical hair salon that gets on with its day-to-day
business of straightening, de-frizzing and colouring clients’
tresses, Atlantis Hair does all of this, but also faced some
specific challenges.
About Atlantis Hair and its challenges
Established in 2001, Atlantis Hair has already gained the reputation
as one of Sydney’s top hair salons. Clients, including
leading Australian beauty editors and celebrities, have embraced
the Atlantis philosophy of natural, healthy hair through its
organic approach to hair colouring.
As the sole importer of Atlantis Watercolour from Ireland that
features a range of natural colour products containing no ammonia
or peroxide, the salon has used the web to educate its customers
on the benefits its exclusive products.
In addition, Atlantis is also just launching an e-commerce service
to supply mop (modern organic products) as a home range of hair
products, whereby customers order and pay online to receive
delivery.
In a competitive market with a salon on each street corner,
Atlantis promotes itself as forward thinking in terms of products,
styles and techniques. And this means being “out there”,
be it being quoted in trend-setting magazines such as New Woman,
Cosmo, Better Health or Cleo, or being called upon to help behind
the scenes at Australian Fashion Week. And again, researchers
are doing their homework online so it’s vital the salon
communicates with its customers online.
The Solution
Managing the website fell to Jose Bryce Smith, director, who
felt her skills were more suited to running a successful salon,
than learning to build and manage a website. She engaged WebCentral
to host the site, www.atlantishair.com, but found the support
teams unresponsive after a series of technical errors, and invoices
being incorrectly processed. She looked at competitive offerings
and chose Hostway on account of its track record of providing
reliable services to SMEs and its transparent pricing model.
She chose Hostway’s E-commerce Gold Windows Plan and engages
the help of a third party consultant to manage mail-outs to
the client base and update content on the site.
The E-Commerce Gold service includes:
- E-commerce features, such as a cart order system and a
Web-based store manager, with a list for up to 20 products
- Domain Name
- Site Management tools (with detailed traffic statistics)
- Email (tenPOP3/SMTP accounts, Web-based email, unlimited
forwarding, unlimited email aliases and unlimited auto-responders)
- Free Software/Scripts
- Security features (Secure Socket Layer encryption, free
secure server URL and intrusion detection)
- Support and Backup (24x7 support via toll-free phone and
email, daily data backup)
- Multimedia (Shockwave, and a mailing list with up to 250
subscribers)
Ms Bryce Smith made the decision to change hosting providers
in May and the process of migrating to Hostway was completed
in approximately
12 hours.
“With our specific challenges of putting the Atlantis
name out for PR, developing the home range service and educating
consumers about our organic approach, it’s vital to have
a presence on the web,” said Jose Bryce Smith. “We
get feedback from clients that they love the site - especially
the trends section. It’s also useful for potential clients
to see the price list online before they come into the salon.
Now we’ve made the switch to use Hostway’s services
I haven’t looked back - the site is always up and we’re
saving money on a better service.”
Moneycafé
- "Flat white with a mortgage to go"
- How Moneycafé is making Australians more financially-savvy
Background
Picture the scene: you go into a café, order a flat white
and walk out richer than when you went in.
The mind boggles, but people all over Sydney are using an innovative
new service to become more financially savvy, be it to get the
right mortgage, ease debt, create a budget (and stick to it!),
get help buying a car or even write a will.
Moneycafé is an online financial services supermarket
that has its public face in the form of twelve Baristas coffee
shops around Sydney. The premise is straightforward: go in,
order a coffee, oh, and if you happen to need impartial financial
advice, mention it to your barista, and they’ll set up
a session with an expert, face-to-face, or via phone, fax or
email. Alternatively, you can go to www.moneycafé.com.au
and sign up free of charge to get more information.
Recognising that there were plenty of financial products in
the market, but so many that consumers were confused, Moneycafé
was established in 1999 as the brainchild of Greg Smith, money
expert. His aim being to bring straightforward financial information
to consumers all at the click of a mouse, or the grind of a
coffee bean.
The service offers between 300 and 400 financial products from
pretty much all available financial services suppliers. And
with the same commission being made from all suppliers, consumers
are assured that the product recommended is the right one for
them - not the advisors.
The Moneycafé Challenge
Brent Jackson, CEO, recognised that the company’s main
focus was going to be on information content and marketing the
service, not the technical side of supporting and maintaining
a complex site. He outsourced the site hosting to one of the
largest web hosting companies in Australia, however, he soon
realised that it charged a small fortune for an unreliable service.
Not something the Moneycafé could tolerate in start-up
mode.
“When you’re launching a new concept, and a new
company, you have to ensure that your suppliers are going to
support your efforts to establish credibility, especially if
it’s aimed at the consumer market,” said Mr Jackson.
“And if you’re launching a web service, then your
hosting company has to be able to guarantee that the site will
be up and running, whenever a user chooses to hit the site.
The Solution
Mr Jackson heard about Hostway, a web hosting provider aimed
specifically at small to medium enterprises, while previously
running www.anz.com. Now running behind the scenes, Hostway
keeps the service up and running, 24 hours a day, seven days
a week.
Moneycafé chose Hostway’s Platinum (Old Plan) Service,
which offers 200MB disk space, 10GB monthly traffic, use of
your own domain name and free assistance with domain name registration/transfer.
It also offers detailed analysis of traffic statistics, 100
POP3/SMTP accounts web-based email for remote access, unlimited
forwarding, email aliases and autoresponders, free Software/Scripts,
a guestbook and message board.
Security is guaranteed through the use SSL (Secure Socket Layer)
encryption, free secure server URL, SSH (Secure Shell/Telnet)
encryption and Intrusion Detection System.
Customers can also be assured of first-class support and backup
with 24x7 toll-free phone support, 24x7 support via email and
daily data backup.
The site was migrated from the old hosting company across to
Hostway within 24 hours, managed in-house by Mr Jackson.
The Benefits
Mr Jackson continued, “We’ve implemented new features
and functions without any trouble at all - all assisted technical
support team. We’ve even noticed how much quicker the
pages turn.
“The fact of the matter is the site has been up and running
without a single glitch since we’ve been working with
Hostway, and that’s what matters the most. Reputation
cannot be quantified.” |
