PSPINC Official Company Blog

Mobile App vs. Mobile-Optimized: Which One is Better for Your Business

4月

13日

With more than half (about 54.4%) of website traffic worldwide coming from mobile devices in 2021, making sure your site works on a mobile device is crucial. It not only has to function well but look aesthetically pleasing too. But with all the focus on mobile devices, businesses have started investing in developing an app. It guarantees that it’ll work well on a phone, as long as enough testing goes into the process. And the hope is that it’ll look good with so many people spending a lot of time and work creating it. So, which one’s better: a site that looks good on a mobile device or an app?

A Mobile App

a hand holding a mobile phone with apps displayed on the homescreen

A mobile app is a type of application software designed to run on a mobile device, which can also include tablets. But building one out takes a lot of time, effort, and money. If you’re building an app in-house, it takes some of the cost because it means you won’t have to hire a development partner, but the development process will still be costly. Not to mention the fact that it will consist of a much longer process compared to optimizing a site for mobile.

The app development process involves building out the concept behind the app, creating a layout for how it’ll function, designing it for a good user experience, testing it to determine where users may find friction in the process, and scanning for necessary bug fixes. Only then can the app go live. Even after that, it’ll still need to be monitored and updated consistently.

Despite the long and costly process, an app does have its advantages:

• Improves brand recognition
• Re-engages existing customers on a deeper level
• Keeps your business at the top of customers’ minds through mobile push notifications
• Presents a new opportunity for sales

Optimizing a Site for Mobile

a woman sitting cross-legged on a small thin mattress on the floor while looking at something on her phone

A site that works on a mobile device is vital for any business to make it today. Technically, every URL should work on a mobile device when users open it in a mobile browser. The difference between it working and optimizing it is making sure there isn’t any friction in the customer’s experience. For example, if you’ve ever opened a website just to see a cut-off image or been forced to zoom in or out to click on something, you probably didn’t stay on the site for long. After all, it looks outdated and unprofessional, which lowers the business’s credibility and deters you from going further.

To effectively optimize a site for mobile, your website not only needs to function, but it also needs to look nice too. But even when users access your business’ site on a desktop, the design should be clean without too many distractions. Thankfully, themes and templates offered by website builders already have this all figured out for you. Including WordPress, which comes as an easy install with all of PSPINC's web hosting options, Dreamersi, YourHost Neo, and Parcom. For users building their site from scratch, using a single or double column layout, effectively utilizing white space, and reducing the number of items in the navigation bar are things you should keep in mind when designing your site. Overall, businesses should be utilizing responsive design, which will adjust design element placements to fit in the available space when browser size changes.

Which One is Better for your Business?

two women sitting on a couch, showing each other what's on their phones

While it may seem obvious to choose a mobile-optimized site over a mobile app (based on the sheer time, effort, and money involved in the development process), there are times when using a mobile app is preferable. If your business has a product or service that causing some friction in their overall purchase experience, an app could fix those problems.

As an example, PSPINC is currently developing an app for DENREI, an invite-only social platform that uses email to interact with your online community. For now, users have to set up the email client using either Mozilla Thunderbird or Apple Mail. While it isn’t too hard of a task, it adds an extra step to the process that could potentially prevent users from moving forward. Given that it’s arguably the most important step in the process, PSPINC decided an app would be the best solution.

If you’re a business wondering if an app is the right choice for you, here are some questions to consider:

• Who is the target market? If your company’s audience skews a little younger, making your site mobile-friendly is the least you should be doing.
• What does the customer’s experience look like? Is there a step preventing them from converting them into paying or loyal customers? Is it something that can be solved with a mobile app?
• How likely is it your customer will download our app? If you’re going to put in the work needed to build a mobile app, you want to make sure people will download it.

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.

#app #brand #branding #business #denrei #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #mobile #mobileapp #mobiledevice #pspinc #pushnotifications #smallbusiness #webdesign #webdeveloper #webdevelopment #webhosting #websitedesign #wordpress

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 110 “Online Communities”

4月

8日

Before the internet, people made connections, both personal and professional, by meeting them in person. Now, everyone’s online. It’s hard not to be. Having an online profile on a social networking site can say a lot about you. On platforms like LinkedIn, it shows people how you want to present yourself to your work peers and/or prospective employers. But more than that, it’s a space where users can meet and find like-minded people. It’s why PSPINC’s created multiple, all of which are free to use. And now we have so many that we’ve created a unique portal page to showcase all of them.

Some are more dedicated to our Japanese audience like Japanese Online, where users can learn Japanese as well as the culture. There’s also San Diego Town and Los Angeles Town, each devoted to the Japanese residents and visitors of those cities. But we’re very excited about our newer up-and-coming communities. Loud Nerds is a place specifically created for tech professionals to showcase their work and network with others. Currently, we’re developing an app for DENREI our email-based platform, where users can create exclusive online communities of their own. All our online communities are unique in their own ways and we’re proud of the communities we’ve built on each one.

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 #community #denrei #japaneseonline #losangelestown #loudnerds #newsletter #onlinecommunities #onlinecommunity #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sandiegotown #tech #technology #webdeveloper #webdevelopment #website

Announcement: Click It Audio System Maintenance Downtime

4月

6日

Click It Audio Customers,

Thank you for choosing Click It Audio for your audio embed needs!

We will be performing system maintenance and updates as scheduled below.

Please note that there will be between 5 - 10 minutes of downtime during the update period.

The maintenance window is as follows:

* USA Pacific Daylight Time
- April 6th (Wed) 9:00-9:30am

* Japan Time
- April 7th (Thu) 1:00-1:30am

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com.

We would be happy to answer any of your questions by phone or email.

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.

#ClickItAudio #PSPINC

Announcement: Mail Server Update

4月

5日

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for choosing Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

We are always looking to improve the services we offer you.
As such, we will be conducting mail server update.

You may experience delay in sending emails for a few seconds during the time below.

The schedule is as follows:

* USA Pacific Daylight Time
- Apr 5th (Tue) 9:00 - 9:30am

* Japan Time
- Apr 6th (Wed) 1:00 - 1:30am

PSPINC provides services with uptimes of 99.9%

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com .

We would like to answer your questions by phone call.

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.

#Dreamersi #Mail #PSPINC #Update

Announcement: PSPINC Products SMS Service Outage

4月

1日

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for choosing Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

From 3pm PST this afternoon (7AM JST on 04/01), we began experiencing issues caused by a third-party SMS service outage. Currently, processes involving SMS text messages for some PSPINC products has become unavailable. You can still sign up or log in to our services as normal.

We will keep you posted once the outage is resolved.

Thank you for your understanding and continued support!

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.

#PSPINC #SMS

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 109 “Internet Explorer is Coming to an End”

4月

1日

Last year, Microsoft announced they were favoring Microsoft Edge by retiring Internet Explorer after 25 years. The first version, known as Internet Explorer 1.0 was introduced in 1995 alongside Windows 95. However, it didn’t gain much traction because many users preferred using their competitors’ browsers, namely Netscape, Mosaic, Lynx, and/or Opera. In fact, it didn’t become widely popular until Microsoft’s third iteration of Internet Explorer, which came out almost a year later in 1996. While Netscape was a worthy competitor, Internet Explorer ended up winning in the end for one very big reason: it was free, whereas users had to pay for Netscape.

The latest version of Internet Explorer is from 2013, which Microsoft released in 2013 and is the final version of the browser. After that, the company turned its attention to developing a new web browser, Microsoft Edge. And since then, Microsoft has been trying to get users to leave the Internet Explorer browser behind, guiding them towards Microsoft Edge instead. On June 15th, 2022, certain Microsoft operating systems will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 the latest version of Internet Explorer. Instead, Microsoft Edge will be the alternative moving forward.

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 #browser #business #businesstools #internetexplorer #lynx #microftedge #microsoft #mosaic #netscape #opera #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #tech #technology #web #webbrowser #webdevelopment #windows10 #windows95

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 108 “Choosing the Right Hosting Service”

3月

25日

Dreamersi is Pacific Software Publishing Inc.'s (PSPINC) premiere web and mail hosting software and one we built in-house. We designed the mail server program, spam prevention measures, web environments, admin interfaces, and other tools that come with our hosting packages. When customers purchase one of our Dreamersi hosting packages, our server team is given full control over the digital environment as well as the features built for it. Therefore, we can provide the highest level of customer service and support with this web hosting platform.

Next are Parcom and YourHost, both of which are cPanel hosting options. cPanel hosting is one of the most popular control panels among web developers and hosting companies. Parcom is the cheapest hosting service that PSPINC has to offer, so because of this, server specs may differ from our other hosting services. But it’s also always something we can customize for our customers. YourHost, however, is a pre-packaged server software that thousands of hosting companies install on their servers and offer their customers. On PSPINC, we've paired YourHost with ShopSite, a shopping cart software system and it is now a National Hosting Partner for ShopSite.

Good web hosting is very important to have for your website. Even more so now that the internet gives people an infinite number of possibilities and opportunities. PSPINC has built its successful business with its great web hosting services. So please consider using one of PSPINC's excellent web hosting services.

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.

#dreamersi #ecommerce #hosting #internet #parcom #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #shopsite #software #web #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websitedevelopment #yourhost

Announcement: Mail Server Update

3月

22日

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for choosing Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

We are always looking to improve the services we offer you.
As such, we will be conducting mail server update.

You may experience delay in sending emails for a few seconds during the time below.

The schedule is as follows:

* USA Pacific Daylight Time
- Mar 22nd (Tue) 9:30 - 10:00am

* Japan Time
- Mar 23rd (Wed) 1:30 - 2:00am

PSPINC provides services with uptimes of 99.9%

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com .

We would like to answer your questions by phone call.

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.

#Dreamersi #Mail #PSPINC #Update

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 106 "WordPress Site Management"

3月

11日

Many site owners use WordPress to manage their sites. However, it’s also often used as a stepping stone for hacking and hijacking because it’s a system many people use. For this reason, WordPress constantly makes updates. Without it, the site itself would have a lot of vulnerabilities. Needless to say, WordPress sites, including plugins, need to be updated frequently to eliminate vulnerabilities from external attacks.

Additionally, WordPress websites are often created by professionals that know about WordPress site creation and development. In some of these cases, the creator of the website (and not the owner) are the only ones that can access the WordPress admin panel. Which can result in websites being completely abandoned if the creator of the website cannot be reached.

Fortunately, Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. (PSPINC) offers a dedicated WordPress hosting environment. As a company, we provide you with all the services you need to update and manage your WordPress site. This includes updating your plugins, managing site access, and creating or modifying your site. We can even migrate your site to our environment for maintenance and management, even if you’re no longer a site administrator. If you want to host your site with WordPress, please consider Dreamersi, our hosting service.

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 #businesstips #businesstools #dreamersi #newsletter #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #technology #webdevelopment #webhosting #websitebuilder #wordpress

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 104 "How Restaurants Can Use NewsMAIL"

2月

25日

Do restaurant owners always sell the same dishes every day in the same way? Based on experience, they probably think about how much food to buy based on how much food they think they’ll use each day. However, it’s not always possible to buy ingredients at the same price every time. Plus, there may some leftover ingredients depending on the day.

Wouldn’t it be nice to offer specials to customers when you’re able to purchase inexpensive ingredients? Wouldn’t it be great to offer special dishes using leftover ingredients before they go bad? That way, you can use them before they go bad instead of discarding them.

But specials lie that can’t be planned. If you happen to have inexpensive ingredients or a surplus of certain ingredients, it’d be nice to use them to make special dishes. Ones that aren’t normally on the menu. Therefore, it’d be nice to inform customers of today or tomorrow’s specials.

Fortunately, Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. (PSPINC) offers a service that sends out emails to customers who sign up. With it, users can send 2,500 emails per month for $20 per month or 10,000 emails for $60. So why not use NewsMAIL to help your restaurant reduce food waste?

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.