web hosting: 11 proof points
Rows on the facts page whose own text or source section carries "web hosting". The product name links the page with the full text. All skills.
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head of Group Strategy, UK2 Group | new domain platform One platform replaced them | 6 brands on 3 different providers, some going direct to the registry, each with different APIs, rules and management fees. | Manage development of a new domain platform. | Owned the business case, budget, specifications, contracts and migration strategy. | One platform replaced them (500,000+ customer domains). | 2008-2010 | turnaround, retention, launch, brand, marketing, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, budget |
| Head of New Media, Host Europe Group | New Media New Media department: all online touchpoints, ecommerce, digital campaigns, email marketing and SaaS dashboards across all brands | Promoted from web designer to management team to take ownership of the end-to-end online presence across multiple brands. | Create the department from scratch and run every online channel across every brand: ecommerce portals, SEO, branding, UX, email marketing, blog, development, copy, creative and reporting. | Built a team of five to six. Established KPIs and web metrics to steer the business. Prioritised the development roadmap and briefed the development teams. Introduced self-service support and pioneered site-building tools. Optimised the support centre. Built the affiliate marketing, content marketing and online ads programmes. Scaled SEO to #1 for "domain names", "web hosting" and "dedicated servers". | 123-reg became the first company to register 1 million .uk domains. Sat on the Senior Management Team and the on-call duty rota, still in his 20s. | Jan 2006 - Jun 2008 | turnaround, SEO, funnels, KPIs, roadmap, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, stakeholders |
| Independent Consultant | independent consultant Remote product and strategy consulting | Moved to Denmark after meeting a Dane on a ski slope; needed to finance the move and Danish studies (Prøve i Dansk 3) and wanted into the Danish startup scene. Former employers Host Europe (UK) and EuroDNS (LUX) needed product and strategy work; Everplaces (DK) was a local startup client. | Deliver product and strategy work remotely from Copenhagen while building a life in a new country. | Briefed senior management, product managers, designers and marketeers. Pitched products; produced user stories, specifications, storyboards and wireframes. Wireframed order funnels to improve conversion. Created the strategy to refactor the legacy control panel serving 3M domains. Wrote content and did SEO, including interviews with MailChimp, Creative Commons, the EFF, Rand Fishkin and Michael Palin. Remotely managed teams in the UK, Luxembourg and Romania. | Spotted Raspberry Pi before launch, got in touch and turned it into a sponsorship deal. The EuroDNS engagement turned into the Marketing Director role. | Sep 2010 - Apr 2013 | pharma, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, launch, marketing, startup, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, stakeholders, partnerships |
| Web Designer, Host Europe Group | domain search Domain search on 123-reg: one text field that interpreted whatever the user typed and searched every ending asynchronously | Domain search was the key entry point for upselling hosting, and the UX was clunky. You typed a name, picked an ending from a dropdown and hit search, because each registry needed its own API call. One domain at a time, and users kept hitting taken names. Frustrating, poor conversion. | Nobody asked for it: the shop window of the business was a poor experience and worth fixing. | One text field, interpret whatever the user enters, search all endings asynchronously and show them together. First use of AJAX in the stack. | New revenue up 20% overnight. The approach became the industry standard: if you search for a domain anywhere today, this is how it works. | Feb 2004 - Aug 2005 | API, growth, conversion, funnels, domains, web hosting |
| Sales Executive, Host Europe Group | alternative website an alternative ecommerce website made in his free time | The company website had high traffic (1M monthly visits) but was dated and cluttered. It explained the "why" poorly, and lacked focus and a core funnel. | Unasked, as a sales executive: this could be done better. | Built an alternative version in evenings and weekends, booked a meeting with the brand manager and pitched it. | Sales went up; moved to the web design team the next week and led it six months later. | Mar 2003 - Feb 2004 | funnels, brand, marketing, ecommerce, web hosting, team leadership |
| Head of Group Strategy, UK2 Group | Midphase pricing Midphase, UK2 Group's underperforming US hosting business unit | The US unit had a downward revenue trend: two flat-rate monthly accounts, very few customers on the top one, high churn. Tom was the CEO's troubleshooter across the UK, US and Ukraine offices, working remotely from the UK. | Diagnose the unit and reverse the trend without a new product. | Lifecycle analysis of the customer base. Restructured the two flat plans into tiered accounts with term-based pricing (3, 12 and 24 months), framed so longer commitments were visibly cheaper per month. Ran an anti-churn programme for existing customers: free upgrades to the new plans, added features such as backup to justify the structure, and switching costs such as losing the free domain on downgrade. Repositioned the brand and marketing and created a product roadmap. | ARPU up, customer lifetime extended, recurring revenue locked in. Downward revenue trend reversed in 6 months. 8 products launched in 10 months. | Sep 2008 - Sep 2010 | turnaround, retention, roadmap, launch, brand, marketing, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, budget |
| Co-founder, TextualHealing.com | TextualHealing.com TextualHealing.com, mobile barcode tickets and coupons via MMS | Fresh out of university as the dot.com bubble popped and there were no jobs. The idea was good; the founders were far too early and lacked experience. | Launch a multi-sided marketplace for mobile tickets. | Wanted perfect and kept polishing instead of shipping. No go-to-market plan and no viable first iteration. | Never launched. Years later a CEO's motto, "launch crap, but launch", completed the lesson: ship in small viable increments to capture value and learn early, but never ship junk; to learn fast, run a test. | 2002 - 2004 | pharma, growth, SEO, launch, marketing, web hosting, remote, international, partnerships |
| Independent Consultant | Raspberry Pi partnership A partnership with Raspberry Pi | Consulting for Host Europe around 2011, Tom found out about Raspberry Pi before it launched, before anyone had heard of it. | Turn a hunch about an unknown project into something for the client. | Reached out to the creators directly and offered them a server for their downloads. Shaped that into a sponsorship deal for Host Europe. | Host Europe became a sponsor of Raspberry Pi before it launched. | 2010 - 2013 | pharma, growth, SEO, launch, marketing, web hosting, remote, international, partnerships |
| Sales Executive, Host Europe Group | sales competition First job, answering phones in web hosting sales | Graduated into the dot.com bust with no jobs. Got a foot in the door answering phones at a web hosting company: not his passion, but the way in. | Be good at it while finding the way to the web team. | Learnt to listen to customers by answering the telephone. Won the annual sales competition. Spent evenings and weekends on the alternative website (row 31). | Won the competition. Nobody expected it, so the prize changed from a Psion organiser to a record player, still in use. The alternative website got him into the web team the following year. | Mar 2003 - Feb 2004 | turnaround, SEO, funnels, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, stakeholders |
| Head of New Media, Host Europe Group | 123-reg 123-reg.co.uk, the group's domain brand | Running all online channels for a group whose biggest brand was a domain registrar in a market with several larger rivals. | Keep the registrar growing while the group went through acquisitions and a rename. | Owned ecommerce and every online channel for the brand: the domain search and order process rebuilt earlier, #1 organic rankings for "domain names" and "web hosting", the affiliate programme, online ads and early content marketing through the blog, and the KPIs and web metrics to steer it all. | 123-reg became the first company to register 1 million .uk domains, on a platform doing 2M+ unique monthly visits. | Jan 2006 - Jun 2008 | turnaround, SEO, funnels, KPIs, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, stakeholders |
| Group Design Manager, Host Europe Group | group design Design across the group's brands after the Pipex acquisitions | Via acquisitions the company became part of Pipex, the UK's fourth largest broadband provider: multiple brands, multiple offices, each with its own design. | Manage the web design output for the whole group and keep the ecommerce funnels improving while the brands were being stitched together. | Coordinated a team of designers and developers across multiple offices. Created the project and campaign briefs. Led ecommerce across the brands and kept optimising the order process. Laid the SEO groundwork that the New Media department later took to #1 for the core terms. | Design and ecommerce run as one function across the brands. The platform reached 2M+ unique monthly visits in this period. Promoted to Head of New Media in January 2006 to build the department around it. | Aug 2005 - Jan 2006 | turnaround, SEO, funnels, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, ecommerce, domains, web hosting, team leadership, stakeholders |