PSPINC Official Company Blog

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 105 “Store and Share Your Passwords Securely with Pass Wizard”

3月

4日

Earlier this week, we announced that our password management software, Pass Wizard, officially came out of its beta stage. Pass Wizard was specifically designed to securely store and share passwords. We still have a free plan available, but we are now offering a paid plan for just $1.67/month (billed annually).

Pro users will have access to additional features for both individual users as well as groups. With the free plan, users can store up to 30 passwords. When using Pass Wizard Pro, users can store an unlimited number of passwords as well as take advantage of password-sharing features within their group. For small businesses, this is ideal as it eliminates the security risk of sharing passwords with employees via sticky notes or insecure shared documents.

For a full breakdown of some of the amazing features offered with Pass Wizard’s new pro plan, please check out our announcement blog post.

If you and/or your organization need a password management system, get Pass Wizard! You can store up to 30 passwords with our free plan or store and share an unlimited number of passwords starting at just $1.67/month (billed annually), making it one of the most affordable password managers on the market today.

Get started for free!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#announcement #blog #business #businessideas #businessowner #businesstips #cyber #cybersecurity #passwizard #password #passwordmanagement #passwordmanager #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #smallbusinessowner #tech #technology #web #webdeveloper

Pass Wizard - Pro Plan Now Available!

3月

2日

We’re excited to share with you that Pass Wizard, our password management system, is now officially out! We still have a version that is free-to-use (store up to 30 passwords). However, we’ve also added a Pro version packed with many more features, including storing an unlimited number of passwords. At just $1.67/month ($19.95/year), Pass Wizard is one of the most affordable password manager programs on the market today.

What is Pass Wizard?

Pass Wizard is PSPINC’s password management system, which allows users to securely store and share their passwords. With Pass Wizard Pro, users can store an unlimited number of passwords as well as utilize the new group feature.

We’ve designed the system to focus on security by utilizing secure hardware and state-of-the-art systems with two-factor authentication (2FA) to ensure your data’s safe and protected.

Additionally, it’s an ideal management system for small businesses to securely share company account credentials with their employees. However, it’s also great for individual users who just want a safe place to store their passwords.

How much does Pass Wizard cost?

Pass Wizard offers a free plan which includes the ability to store up to 30 passwords. Our new Pro plan is just $1.67/month, billed annually at $19.95/year, which includes the storage of an unlimited number of passwords and a group feature if you buy multiple user accounts. For customers that want to add more users to a plan, an additional $19.95/year will be charged per user.

What can you do with Pass Wizard?

woman in red pantsuit standing in front of a laptop on a desk

• Store an unlimited number of passwords
• Add users to their group for an additional $1.67/month (billed annually)
• Share select passwords with other users within their group

How does the share feature work?

business people gathered around a computer

When adding a new password entry, Pro users have the option of sharing passwords by checking the “Share with group” option at the bottom of the page. When selected, that password will then be shared with other users that are a part of the group. Only passwords with that option selected will be shared with the group. The rest will be stored securely under the “My Passwords” tab. In addition, only the individual who shared the password will have the ability to edit or remove it.

Interested in trying Pass Wizard yourself? Visit us online and sign up for a free account to get started. If you enjoy the system and have more than 30 accounts to manage, you will be able to upgrade your account to Pass Wizard Pro from the My Plans page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#announcement #blog #business #businessideas #businessowner #businesstips #cyber #cybersecurity #passwizard #password #passwordmanagement #passwordmanager #smallbusiness #smallbusinessowner #tech #technology #web #webdeveloper #webdevelopment

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 103 "Email Marketing"

2月

18日

In 1999, Pacific Software Publishing, Inc (PSPINC). released NewsMAIL, a software package for sending email to multiple email addresses. At the time, NewsMAIL was not an Internet-based service like it is today. Instead, it was a software package that delivered email after being installed on a Windows PC. The price was previously $499 and a designated mail server delivered the emails. At the time, spam wasn’t as much of a problem on the internet as it is now. So, spam filtering wasn’t widely available, making this service an effective way to keep existing customers informed on the latest news.

But the packaged version of NewsMAIL put a lot of strain on the mail server. To fix this, PSPINC modified the system from a package to an Internet service, which uses a browser to compose and deliver emails. Now, many companies and organizations use this service for their email marketing needs. Today, NewsMAIL uses two factor authentication (2FA) to prevent unauthorized subscriptions.

NewsMAIL is still an effective medium for announcements. The newsletter you are reading right now is also distributed via NewsMAIL. If you are interested in NewsMAIL, please check the site and contact PSPINC. We’d be happy to set up a free demo account for you.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #digitalmarketing #email #emailmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #newsmail #onlinemarketing #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter

Basic HTML and CSS Everyone Should Know

2月

16日

Whether you’re a coder or not, some basic HTML and CSS knowledge is always a plus. While there are multiple website builders out there now that do all the heavy lifting, they’re not always perfect. Every once in a while, you’ll find a broken image. Or you’ll realize you want to re-format some text so that it’s centered on your homepage, but you don’t want it to apply to all the other images on the page. As far as web design goes, website builders generally work within templates.

From a user’s perspective, it means that when you change one thing, odds are it’ll also change other aspects of the webpage. For example, if you decide you want a header to be blue instead of black, the website builder you’re using will probably make all headers on your website blue. So having some very basic HTML and CSS knowledge will be helpful moving on. Plus, it’ll look good on your resume.

Header Tags

When building out the content on any of your website pages, you’ll need to have some headings. An easy way to do that with HTML is using what’s called header tags. There are six header tags, going from H1 to H6. The lower the number, the larger the font size. As a general rule, H1 tags should only be used once on a page, so it’s generally reserved for the page name. The reason why is because using more than one H1 tag can come across as spam to Google. So, it’s considered best practice to just use one. As for the rest of the header tags, you can use whatever size you think fits best for your page.

What Header Tags Look Like in HTML

Image Tags

When inserting an image with HTML and CSS, there are a few things to keep in mind. For starters, you might want to use stock photos that are free to use. If you’re creating your company website, the last thing you want is to run into some copyright issues. Secondly, you’ll probably want to place it in a specific position (left, center, or right) and resize it so that it won’t be a tiny image on the page or take up the whole width of your webpage. When putting an image in HTML, you’ll want to use what’s called image tags, which will require you to add a source code.

As complicated as it sounds, it’s actually quite easy to do. In simplistic terms, it means that the HTML code needs to pull the image from somewhere, whether it’s a file stored somewhere on your site, or the image link if it’s an image you found online. Additionally, you’ll want to add alt and class tags to help improve the page’s overall search engine optimization (SEO) and make it clear which element you’re editing when you move over to CSS. For this example, I’ve found a picture of a mountain on Pexels, a free stock photo site. So I’ve inserted the link to the image as the source and entered the word mountain in the alt tag and because I want to change the picture’s position later, I’ve named the class center.

image css tags

To change the image’s overall position and size, you’ll have to add some code into CSS. Say you put your mountain image into HTML but you soon realize it’s too big and not centered. What you’ll want to do next is enter “.center {“ in CSS to start the process. After that, you’ll want to resize your image through percentages (rather than pixels or inches). That way, it’ll still be responsive when you look at the page on a mobile device. For this example, let’s make the image height half of what it originally is and the height 70%. To center it, you’ll want to set the left and right margins to auto and make it a block element with the display tag. And lastly, you’ll want to remember to close it with a “}” symbol.

Paragraph Tags

So say after you put your headings and images, you want to add some body text. In HTML, they’re called paragraph tags and it’s perhaps the easiest HTML you can learn, comparatively. All you have to do is start with a paragraph tag, insert whatever written content you want in there, and then close the tag. Simple as that. For the example above, I’ve just inserted some Lorem Ipsum (dummy text).
paragraph tags in css

If you want to change the position of that text, you’ll do something similar to what you did with the image tags in CSS. Say you want it to not take up the entire width of the page so that there’s some white space on both sides. To do this, you’ll want to add some padding on both sides so that the text won’t take up the full width of the page. To do that, you’ll add the padding-left and padding-right tags to your CSS and add a percentage. For this example, I’ve set them both to 20%.

If you want to put in some extra HTML and CSS practice, CodePen is the perfect site to do just that. Plus, you can find some cool designs on there too with the full HTML and CSS for you to use on your own site. After that, you can add it into your own site, which most website builders support. In fact, PSPINC’s web building tool, WebdeXpress, as well as PSPINC’s blogging platform, Bloguru, supports HTML and CSS.

The last thing I’ll leave you with is this: always to close your HTML and CSS tags. For HTML it’s adding </> to the corresponding tag. For CSS, it’s simply adding “}” after all your tags for each element. If you don't have the time to inspect and add to your website's code or if you find it all too technical, consider letting PSPINC help by requesting a quote.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #bloguru #bodytext #business #businesstips #coding #css #headers #html #images #paragraph #web #webdev #webdeveloper #webdevelopment #webdexpress #websitebuilders #websitedesign

What is a Customer Persona?

2月

9日

If you’ve ever worked in the marketing or sales field, you may have come across the term customer persona. But no matter what industry you’re in, creating a well-rounded persona is crucial in developing a strong and effective marketing strategy. Personas take the targeting process one step further by creating a fully-developed customer as if it were a real person. By definition, a persona is a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience. It requires some creative brainstorming but should still be based on some evidence, like information on your past customers.

This persona should envelop everything you think your ideal customer would be like for this specific campaign. Usually, the targeting process involves the assembly of some basic demographic information (age, gender(s), location, etc.). But creating a persona requires digging deeper into that information and adding some behavioral and psychographic details.

How to Create a Persona

a woman holding a small plaid purse in one hand and small shopping bags in the other

For example, imagine you’re an affordable product packaging company coming out with some new sustainable and biodegradable packaging. After some conversations, you decide that you want to target small organic food companies. So, what are those business owners like? Do they skew more male or female? How old are they? Where do they live? Are they married? Do they have kids? How much money do they make a year? These are all questions you should be asking yourself. And these are all things you’ll need to do some research to figure out.

But if we’re being completely honest, all of these questions should be answered when you’re developing your targeting strategy. Again, the creation of a customer persona takes this even further. Once you have all this information, you’ll start creating an entire personality going off of all the information you just discovered. You’ll give your persona a name and find a stock photo to represent him/her and start building it out even further. And for the record, giving your persona a name and photo is an important step because it makes him/her feel more real and that will help you in the long run for your campaign.

Giving your Persona a Personality

a man sitting on a bench near a plant with a small cup of coffee in one hand while one leg is crossed above his other knee

After defining your persona’s demographic information, you’ll start writing out their personality. What are they like? Are they outgoing or shy? What are they interested in? What does a day in their life look like? How do they behave online? These are all questions you’ll need to answer to develop a realistic and effective persona. But the most important questions will be answering these two questions: What motivates them and what frustrations do they have?

These two questions should be where your campaign can jump in. If we go back to our earlier example, a common motivation for any business owner is that they want their company to succeed. But maybe this organic foods business owner is frustrated by how much waste food companies produce in terms of product packaging. They’re interested in switching their packaging to something more sustainable, but they’ve found that most sustainable packaging is too expensive for them. This is where your biodegradable, but affordable packaging could solve their problems.

How Personas Help Marketing Efforts

a woman and two men looking at a piece of paper that one is showing while they're all sitting at a desk with a laptop in view and papers spread on the table

After figuring all this out, you can better market your products because now, when you’re creating marketing materials, you’ll refer back to your persona. If your persona saw this ad on social media, would he/she click on it? Would they go through the entire purchase based on this ad? If the answer’s no, then you probably shouldn’t devote your time and resources to this effort and figure something else out. And because you gave your persona a name, you can argue that that ad won’t work because Charlie would never click that. And that sounds much more convincing than saying, “I don’t think our target market will go for that ad”.

Customer personas can be a powerful tool for a marketing campaign. But only if you commit to the idea and all the details necessary to develop an effective strategy. It’s easy to create a fictional person and pretend like they’re one of your customers. But it takes much more work to build one out to the point of knowing who that person is and applying him/her to your overall campaign. From there, everything becomes easier because you’re basing your marketing efforts on that persona from what platforms to invest in to the kinds of messaging these ads will have. While building a customer persona takes a good amount of time and effort to put together, it’ll be well worth it in the end.

If you and your business need help developing a customer persona or require a consultation for your marketing needs, please feel free to contact us by phone or email or request for a quote on our Online Marketing page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businessowner #businesstips #customerpersona #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingcampaign #marketingonline #marketingresearch #persona #smallbusiness #targeting

What Content Monetization Looks Like Today

2月

2日

With the explosion of content creators over the past ten years, give or take, content monetization has changed the way people make money online. To start, content monetization is the process of making money off of the content you produce. This content could virtually be almost anything: videos, images, audio, text, or a combination of these formats. The most obvious examples consist of influencers on social media (YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagram models) and large publisher sites (like Buzzfeed).

The History of Content Monetization

someone recording a musician playing guitar and singing from a phone

But for a long time, content creators essentially created content for free, for either entertainment or educational purposes. When the concept of YouTubers exploded, people who made it big on the platform didn’t start making videos to make money. They started filming themselves to have fun or to educate others on what they thought more people should know. But once YouTube realized the potential they had on their hands, they dove into content monetization. And other major content-heavy platforms consequently followed. For written content, bloggers and publisher sites mainly generated money through advertising revenues. But when those started to drop, they too looked into content monetization models.

The simplest approach was simply placing ads around the content or before, during, or after the content (for video and audio content). Then, website traffic would mostly determine how much money the creator would make. It sounds simple enough but now there are multiple monetization models people can use to get paid online. But in reality, content creators experiment and adopt multiple content monetization models to find the ones that work for them.

Types of Content Monetization Strategies

1. Selling exclusive rights

someone signing their name on a legal document

This method is by far the fastest way to convert your content into revenue. But it comes with a catch. You’d have to relinquish all rights to the work, which includes any copyright or royalties. Simply put, this is like a work-for-hire type of method where you create and sell the content you create. This process could happen in one of two ways. You can create the content and sell it after you’ve already finished. Or you can find a buyer and he/she will tell you what to include in that content, much like ghostwriting or freelancing.

2. Affiliate sales

someone holding a credit card in one hand while her other hand rests on her laptop keyboard that's open in front of her on a desk

Affiliate marketing simply put is promoting third-party products and earning a percentage of those sales. This could be through referral links that you’d put somewhere in your blog post or the description for your YouTube video. Or they can be through referral codes that you can shout out in your podcast or the actual video. However, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. It’s one thing to promote the product or insert the link into your blog post. It’s a whole other struggle to get the user to not only click on the link but also purchase that product. Regardless, content creators who use this method work within an affiliate program, much like PSPINC's YourHost Affiliate Program. Within those programs, a unique referral links gets created and creators can then promote that product or service to get people to purchase it. It's not always easy, but if your content performs well on a regular basis, affiliate marketing could be the right content monetization model.

3. Subscriptions/memberships

computer graphic with log in to continue written on the screen with an insert email text box and a continue button. Underneath, there's also a see subscription options written.

If you’ve ever tried to visit select sites like the New York Times and you click on an article to read, a pop-up appears for you to create an account. Most of these sites consist of larger brands that have a consistent readership so they can get users to sign up for a membership and/or subscribe to get access to their content. But it’s more than just getting a reader’s name and email address. It also requires them to pay to view that content. To gain access to exclusive content, whether it’s news articles, blog posts, images, and/or videos, users have to pay to get it. And that is the subscription model at play when it comes to content monetization.

4. Donations

someone holding a box that says donations

Have you ever seen a pop-up that asks you to donate? For example, Wikipedia does this now from time to time. That’s content monetization at work. Publishers will directly ask for money to help keep their site running in the form of donations. But even if users don’t donate anything, they can still read, view, and/or watch whatever the content is for free. Unlike the subscription/membership model where users are forced to pay to view it.

5. Sponsored content

If you’ve ever seen a post on social media with the hashtag, #sponsored, that’s content monetization. Or for YouTube videos, if you’ve ever seen the tag, “Includes paid promotion” in the bottom left corner, that’s also sponsored content. What this usually entails is a brand seeking out an influencer, another brand, or a publisher that has the right blend of three things. A good number of followers, viewership, and/or website traffic, and someone (whether it’s another brand/publisher or an influencer) whose personality matches their brand and what it stands for.

How much it costs and how much return you’ll get for that sponsored content depends on how big the influencer is, how much exposure the post gets, and how much that influencer is charging. Regardless, sponsored content helps increase a brand’s overall reach and engagement and ultimately, sales.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#audio #blog #business #buzzfeed #content #contentcreation #contentmonetization #digitalmarketing #images #influencermarketing #influencers #instagram #marketing #marketingtips #memberships #publisher #smallbusiness #subscriptions #tiktok #videos #youtube

Website Design Tips for Non-Designers

1月

26日

Creating a visually appealing website is crucial for any business. But it can be a daunting task for a non-designer. Perhaps that’s why many businesses outsource this task to companies like Pacific Software Publishing Inc. (PSPINC) who have the expertise to not only design websites but build them as well. But there are a few things every business owner should know when it comes to website design.

Visual Hierarchy

website design outline drawn in a notebook with a phone sitting next to it

For a website, a visual hierarchy controls how the end-user receives information. In other words, it tells users what to focus on first. When looking at the sizing of content, whether it be text, images, or videos, our eyes immediately go to what’s biggest first. So, with that knowledge, it’s easy to see why enlarging content is the most effective way to tell users that it’s the most important part of the site. Additionally, you can use text and different colors to signify what’Fs important. For text, the use of headings, sub-headings, and body text tell users what to focus on first. And this, again, is because of the sizing.

As for colors, this can be a little trickier to get right because it’ll be different for every site. Of course, certain colors work well together, but a lot of this will come down to branding guidelines and streamlining the user’s experience. But a good rule of thumb is to have black text overlaying a white background. It’s usually the default choice in a lot of website builders and it’s the easiest to read. But adding other colors to the site’s overall design will be up to you, your brand, and what values your business wants to represent.

Readability

laptop open to a site called Swagger with Swagger-branded items placed next to it

There’s no point in anyone visiting a website if they can’t read anything that’s on the page because everything’s a different color, size, or font. It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many sites do this. Whatever color you use, keep your brand in mind. If your website looks completely different from your company’s logo and social media content, it shouldn’t be.

As for text on your site, sizes, fonts, line spacing, weight (bold or not), and colors should be consistent throughout all pages on your website. Regardless of color, here are a few things to keep in mind: use headings, sub-headings, and images to help break up the body text. Not only will this help improve your site’s overall SEO, but it’ll also increase the likelihood that users will stay on your webpage. After all, no one wants to just read a huge block of text online.

UX Design

UX design, for those who don’t know, stands for user experience and refers to how people interact with a product. From a web designer’s point of view, it includes keeping the overall look of the site consistent across all pages. This means that the navigation bar, color scheme, fonts, and writing style look the same on every page a user views. But before making it all look pretty, focus on usability first. By that, I mean, make sure that everything on the site works the way it’s supposed to. The design is moot if the site doesn’t work.

From a web development standpoint, you’ll have to use responsive design. What that usually entails is using percentages as opposed to pixels or inches when writing out your CSS code. However, large website builders have this already built-in for you, which makes it easier for you.

Mobile Optimization

Last but not least, is mobile optimization. Making sure your site’s optimized for mobile is increasingly important because more than half (almost 93%) of website traffic is mobile, according to Statista. But mobile optimization means more than just making sure your site’s accessible via a mobile device. Rather, it involves making sure that your website visitors have a user-friendly experience on your site when using their phones. What this means is making sure that users can still navigate the site well and that there isn’t content that’s being cut off.

A site that’s well optimized for mobile devices usually includes moving the main navigation bar to the side (opposed to the top) and resizing practically everything on your site. But like I mentioned earlier, that’s what responsive design is, which is what big website developers already have built in. However, get in the practice of manually checking anyway, just to be sure.

But if you still need help building and/or designing your website, contact PSPINC for all your web development and design needs!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #businesstips #color #design #mobile #mobileoptimization #pacificsoftwarepublishing #responsivedesign #smallbusiness #text #tips #userexperience #uxdesign #visualhierarchy #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websitedesign #websitedevelopment

How Companies Use AI

1月

19日

Although AI seems like a newer concept, it’s actually been around for quite some time. In fact, the first instance of modern AI happened in 1956 at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (DSRPAI). There, the term, artificial intelligence was coined after Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon presented their program, the Logic Theorist, designed to imitate the human’s ability to problem-solve. So to say technology’s gone a long way since then is an understatement.

Now, we live in the “big data” age, which is why AI's become a much bigger trend in recent years. We're now in an era where computers can hold and process an immense amount of data. Much more than any human being could process. And now, we’ve gotten to the point where companies can use AI to streamline processes, increase efficiency, and better market to their customers.

Administrative and Financial Services

open laptop next to papers spread out on a desk with a phone open to the calculator app and stacks on money

To perform fairly simple administrative and financial tasks, many companies use AI to do the work that used to be done by human beings. From a simplistic point of view, these robots are essentially inputting and consuming data and then doing the appropriate action needed. These tasks include transferring data into records, updating information, and fixing various system failures. For example, businesses can store information like name and email after making a sale or update customer files in situations when a customer moves or changes their phone number. Even PSPINC uses it with PSP Pilot, which is our free CRM service that helps businesses manage tasks and customer data.

Additionally, AI can streamline processes for the financial sector. One example of this is replacing a lost or stolen credit card. After handling the customer on the phone, robots will reach into multiple different systems to handle the whole ordeal. Companies also use AI to help detect credit or insurance fraud

Customer Service

a call center woman with a headset wearing a yellow blouse with another call center employee in the background

One very common AI practice is to use it to improve customer service. For example, many companies will embed a chatbox into their website, specifically designed to respond to customers’ questions and requests. Or they have an AI robot answer the phone when customers call in for support.

But for companies that handle more complex problems, automated phone calls aren’t always ideal. In fact, PSPINC still uses live support technicians to handle customer calls. However, AI is still very beneficial for businesses looking to streamline the customer service experience. AI allows companies to give their call center employees a break by using robots to provide 24/7 customer service on issues like password assistance or basic tech support questions.

Targeted Marketing

marketing professionals sitting at a table with analytical documents and a laptop in front of them cheering

Have you ever looked at something on a shopping site only for something similar to show up as an ad on your Facebook page? Or sometimes, you’ll see the exact product you were looking at earlier. That’s AI’s targeted (or retargeted) marketing hard at work. Using customers’ browser histories, robots can recommend similar products and services that the algorithm believes they’ll like as well. All of this, in turn, helps businesses increase not only sales but engagement and personalization.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#adminstration #ai #artificialintelligence #automatedphonecalls #bigdata #blog #business #businesstips #chatbox #customerservice #finance #marketing #pspinc #targetedmarketing #technology

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 98 "Using Forms on Your Website with Informakers

1月

14日

Have you ever wanted to collect information from your customers on your website? There are many times when you would like to receive your customers’ input. And many do so by creating a survey or an inquiry form. Without input from your customers, your website is just a medium for transmission and reporting.

Since its beta release in 2011, Pacific Software Publishing Inc. (PSPINC) has been operating Informakers, a system to collect information from your customers by easily creating forms on your website. For anyone with a little HTML knowledge, it’s easy to use. If you simply don’t have the time to create your own, we can create and design one for you in a short amount of time.

For example, we created the Contact Us page on our site using Informakers. This service is available for $8/month but is free for customers that already use our hosting services.

For more information about Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.'s hosting services, please visit our Dreamersi page.

If you have any questions about building your business on the Internet, from domain name acquisition to website creation, please feel free to contact us.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
https://pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #businesstips #form #forms #informakers #pspinc #smallbusiness #webdevelopment #website

Why Branding is More Than Just a Logo

1月

12日

When you think of branding, you probably think of the big brands: Apple, Coca-Cola, Netflix, you name it. For brands as big as those, you can almost immediately picture their logos. And that’s the true testament to how successful those companies are. But branding is much more than just the logo. However, the word, branding or brand, is somewhat of an obscure concept. If you were to ask people what they think it means, everyone you ask will probably come up with something different. But the real answer is actually quite simple: A brand is a promise. The promise that your company will live up to every time someone interacts with your brand.

Apple as an Example

(from left) mac laptop, iPad, and iPhone

But what does that attribute to in practice? Well, let’s take a look at Apple, arguably one of the world’s largest brands. Steve Jobs, the man behind it all, has said in the past that Apple owes its success to keeping its core values the same. When it all comes down to it, Apple’s core values consist of building the best product for people. The company’s certainly changed and evolved as the world and technology have. But it still keeps that idea as the backbone of the company.

While almost every other tech company out there has expanded their product line, pushing them out one by one, Apple’s stayed true to its promise. They’ve certainly added more products to their lineup, but adding to it isn’t their main purpose. And it certainly isn’t what they’re known for. There’s a reason why there are over 1.65 billion Apple devices in active use in the world and why Apple’s revenue hit approximately $274.3 billion in 2020. It’s not because Apple keeps coming out with hundreds of products every year (because they don’t). It’s because Apple delivers on the promise they’ve made to their customers: they build the best devices, no matter how the world changes.

The Branding Process

But for any brand, a logo is just one part of creating a brand identity. But just because there’s more to branding than just a logo, it doesn’t mean that a logo doesn’t matter. After all, when you think of Apple, you think of its logo. It’s synonymous with what their brand stands for and how they want you to feel about their brand. And that’s not an accident. It’s not just an image they place on their products. It’s also the color palette and tone they use in everything they put out there. It’s why branding is a process.

Creating a visually appealing and effective brand identity is vital. With a strong brand identity, you’re then left with clear guidelines that set the tone for everything your brand does from that point forward. That includes everything from the images your brand shares on social media, the language you use in your content, and what your website looks like. And brands can either do all that work internally or they can outsource it. In fact, PSPINC even has design services specifically designed to help with that branding process, which includes logo design, custom website design, and marketing services.

It can be a long and involved process but if your brand can reach Apple status, it’s worth it in the end. With clear brand guidelines, your brand will be consistent in everything it does, which is the key to a successful brand.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.