PSPINC Official Company Blog

Creating a Digital Presence for Your Business

7月

13日

Today, your business can’t afford to stay offline. Especially with so many small businesses out there. In this regard, it’s hard to believe that about 28% of small businesses don’t even have a website, according to survey data from 2021. And if those businesses don’t have a website, they probably don’t have social media pages either. But not taking your business online can be a real disservice because many people research online before purchasing. It can be the simple act of searching what the best product on the market is or how to get to your physical store, but it happens all the time. But creating an online presence doesn’t have to be hard. At the very least, a business should have both a website and social media pages.

Building a Website

a woman looking at a website on her laptop with a mug of tea on the left and an iphone on the right

With so many web hosting options and website builders today, starting a new website for your business couldn’t be easier. And it's even easier if you’re just using it to provide potential customers information about your company. Basic information includes ways to contact you (a phone number and email) and your store’s physical location (an address). Additionally, you’ll want to add what your business is selling, how much each product is, and how people can purchase them. And you can easily add other pages to your website like an "About Us" section and a blog.

If you want to make it possible for customers to buy products directly from your website, you’ll have to build out your e-commerce site a little more. Features needed for a great e-commerce site take a little more time and effort, but they can be well worth it. But if building a professional website still feels like too daunting of a task, you’re in luck. PSPINC has a great support team that can help you out.

Creating Social Media Pages

a woman open to facebook on her laptop with 2 notebooks, a pen, and 2 small succulent plants placed beside her on the desk

Social media is a great tool to increase overall brand exposure and direct users toward your website. And it’s an easy and inexpensive digital marketing tactic if you don’t want to invest in paid ads. Each social media platform has a purpose as well as its own audience. But the one platform every business should be using is Facebook. Facebook is the largest with about 2.93 billion active users as of March 2022 according to Statista. Therefore, it’s also the most widely used. The immense number of active users alone is enough to argue that every business should be using Facebook to increase awareness online.

But to effectively use social media to your business’s advantage, you’ll need to figure out what kinds of content you’re going to post and how often you’re going to post. The content you post will depend on what kind of business you run but there is one thing to keep in mind when it comes to social media content. There should be a good mix of promotional and non-promotional posts. That way you won’t just sound like a pushy salesperson. As for your posting frequency, each platform has different recommendations, but the important thing to remember is to stick with whatever schedule you decide to use.

While creating and maintaining a digital presence for your business may seem daunting, it is essential to effectively compete with other small businesses. But if this all still feels like too much work, contact our amazing support team if you’d like our help in growing your business online.

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 #businesstools #customerservice #customersupport #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #facebook #socialmedia #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webdexpress #webhosting #website #websitebuilder #websites #webtools #wordpress

Announcement: Dreamersi WebdeXpress Update

6月

24日

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve now updated the admin panel within WebdeXpress that encourages customers to switch over to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) from Universal Analytics (UA). Earlier this year, Google announced they’d phase out UA. Because of this, it’s recommended for website owners to switch to GA4 sooner rather than later. That way, users can start accumulating data as your historical data from UA won’t move over to the new system.

screenshot of the new google analytics panel in dreamersi webdexpress

In line with this, we updated the WebdeXpress admin panel, a website creation tool our hosting service provides. The new changes are as follows:
• Added GA4 as an option.
• A notice on the side encouraging UA users to switch over to GA4 if they haven’t already.

screenshot inside data streams settings in ga4

screenshot inside data streams settings in ga4

To switch over from UA to GA4, you’ll first need to open Google Analytics. Then, you’ll see GA Setup Assistant under the Property column. From there, it’ll give you instructions on how to set up your GA4 for your website. After that, you’ll want to find the tracking ID on your newly updated GA4 property. To do that, open your new GA4 property in Google Analytics and go into the admin settings. Then, click on Data Streams which you can find under the Property column. After that, click on the web data stream icon (looks like a white globe against a blue background). Once you do that, you’ll see the measurement ID in the far right with a G in front of it. To add it to the new admin panel update, copy and paste that code and put it in the Tracking ID input box.

How to configure settings in WebdeXpress:
1. Click on “Site Settings Management” on the WebdeXpress admin panel.
2. Click on “Basic Settings” and then “Google Analytics”.
3. Select “Google Analytics 4” from the “Analytics Version” drop-down menu.
4. Enter the measurement ID for your website in the form of "G-XXXXXXXXX" in the input form.
5. Click “Save” at the bottom of the page.

If you’re not a Dreamersi WebdeXpress customer but need to update your embed code to support GA4, we have an incredible support team who'd be happy to help. To contact our support team, you can call us at 800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com.

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.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customerservice #customersupport #dreamersi #googleanalytics #marketing #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #universalanlytics #update #web #webdevelopment #webdexpress #webhosting #website #webtools

The Key to a Good Loyalty Program

6月

1日

Brand loyalty is what every company wants. While the main goal is to increase sales, it’s much easier and cheaper to get customers that continually come back. In fact, it’s five to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer when compared to retaining an existing one (according to Harvard Business Review). A loyalty program offers incentives (rewards) to build trust and increase customer retention.

From a business perspective, the goal of a loyalty program is to give loyal customers benefits that seem relatively high but don’t actually cost the company that much. In return, they hope the customer will spend on other products/services associated with the brand. But that’ll only happen if your company can build a successful loyalty program. In the end, it’ll be beneficial on both sides. It’ll promote the brand and encourages frequent and valuable transactions. And customers will be appreciative that the company’s rewarding them with exclusive discounts and offers for their loyalty. Like how our Dreamersi customers get InforMakers and WebdeXpress for free as well as exclusive discounts with their web and email hosting plans.

The Key to a Successful Loyalty Program

happy man holding two brown shopping bags

The most important thing to keep in mind when creating an effective loyalty program is the customer’s experience. The goal is to not only inspire and encourage loyalty but also create long-term customer engagement. While many marketing activities generally focus on the brand awareness and acquisition stages of the customer journey, relationship marketing focuses more on the post-purchase cycle. Namely, the customer’s satisfaction, loyalty, and evangelism levels. To do this, you’ll want to avoid the hard sale. Once customers opt-in for your loyalty program, you’re no longer trying to accomplish short-term goals like increasing customer acquisition and individual sales.

To do this effectively, you want to create positive moments that customers will not only remember but praise. Keep in mind that customers will remember the best and worst moments most. To give them the best experience possible, focus on boosting sensory appeal. And if you can find ways where your brand can go above and beyond customers’ expectations, even better. For the brand, it’ll also be important to identify where you can collect more customer data and discover ways to use it to meet (and possibly exceed) customers’ needs, desires, and goals. Transforming that data into meaningful experiences will also strengthen the relationship between the brand and the customer in the long run. All it takes after that is promoting it, which will be much easier if you’re providing true value to your loyal customers.

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.

#advertising #b2b #blog #businesstips #crm #customerexperience #customerservice #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #informakers #loyaltyprogram #marketing #marketingdigital #pspinc #relationshipmarketing #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdexpress

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 113 “Dreamersi Customers Earn More”

4月

29日

Did you know that Dreamersi, comes with exclusive access to other PSPINC products? For example, Dreamersi customers also have WebdeXpress and InforMakers at their disposable. And they even get special discounts whenever we discount any of our products or services.

WebdeXpress (WDX) is PSPINC’s intuitive website builder and comes with all sorts of great features. WDX makes it easy for customers to design their website, with the option to use a pre-defined template or fully customize it with HTML and CSS. All it takes is one click to download WDX to get started building your website.

InforMakers is another additional tool that’s available for free for our Dreamersi customers. With it, users can easily create custom online forms. It’s usually priced at $8/month for everyone else, but to thank them for their loyalty, Dreamersi customers get it for free. It’s a great feature for businesses because it can be a way to generate more leads and collect data on their customers.

Dreamersi is our premiere web and email hosting service. We developed and designed it in-house, which means we have full control over the digital environment. That then makes it easier to create custom development for customers looking for website features that aren’t offered by other website builders. So, please consider hosting your website with Dreamersi.

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 #customersupport #dreamersi #hosting #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #seo #smallbusiness #softwaredevelopment #tech #technology #webdesign #webdevelopment #webdexpress #webhosting #website #webtools

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

How to choose the right type of website for your business

6月

23日

So you have decided you need a website, what next? Perhaps you search online for Web Developers, or you talk to your best friend’s cousin who has built websites before. The next thing you know, you are being bombarded with requests.

Things like:

How many pages do you need?
Do you have content and images ready?
Can you provide some samples of websites you like?

I know this can seem overwhelming, but these are all important questions that will need to be answered to build a successful website. In many cases, we work with customers to answer these questions as part of our initial finding session.

However, there is another question that is equally important to the project but not as straightforward. That question is - what type of website do you want? Your initial reaction might be, “Is this a trick question? I want a website on the Internet.”

No, it’s not a trick question. When it comes to websites, they come in many shapes and sizes. The type of website you choose will have an impact both on how you manage it in the future, and most importantly - the budget.

There is no right or wrong answer, as ultimately it depends on your needs. Let's take a look at 2 common types of websites and the pros and cons of each.

Custom-built Website

What this means is a website that is coded by a Web Developer. This is generally done through the use of HTML, CSS, and maybe other coding languages the Developer is comfortable with.

Pros: Generally quicker to build, and thus more cost-effective for initial development. Often less bloated under the hood so it is capable to be much more optimized than a content management system for search engines.
Cons: Unless you know how to code yourself, you will need to hire a developer to make every little update. If you frequently change your site this can prove to be costly, and challenging if your updates are time-sensitive.

Content Management System (CMS) Website

You have likely heard the term CMS before, but you may not know what that means. In a nutshell, it is a website that has an admin section so it can be updated through a web browser.

Pros: Provides tools for the website owner to make updates immediately themselves, lowering the cost associated with future changes. Many have plugins that are easy to install and use to add more to your website.
Cons: Initial development is longer and more costly. There is also the risk of the website owner breaking their website when making updates. You will be responsible for making necessary security updates as time goes on (very prevalent with WordPress). Sometimes running these updates can cause issues with various areas of your website.

Depending on your initial needs and how frequent you will be updating your website, you will be able to make a decision that is best for the budget both in the short-term and the long term.

If you have additional questions please let us know. We have Designers and Developers capable of building custom websites. In addition, we have experience building many websites using CMS tools. This includes products such as our in-house secure web builder tool WebdeXpress, as well as WordPress.

You can call us toll-free at 1-800-232-3989, email us at contact@pspinc.com, or fill out our online form to get a hold of us.

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.

#CustomWeb #PSPINC #WebBuilder #WebDesign #WebdeXpress #Website #WordPress

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.65 "Hosting Services from Pacific Software Publishing, Inc."

5月

28日

Vol. 65

Dreamersi is a web and email hosting platform developed in-house by Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. Let me tell you the story of how we started this service. In the early days of the Internet, if you wanted to have a domain name of your own and manage your web and email, you had to get a dedicated Internet connection. As well as set up and manage your domain server, web server, and email server. This was a huge cost and involved a lot of time and effort.

In 1996, we started hosting these services on our behalf, and in 2000, Dreamersi was launched as an integrated system that automated these services. The following is a description of the site at the time.

----------

From Dreamersi.net on September 1, 2000

Dreamersi.net is a new service that makes it easy to set up a mail server.
For an initial fee of $150* and a monthly fee of $75, you can have 50 email accounts and up to 20MB of web space for free. If you wish, we can also provide you with a complete service from acquiring your domain name to hosting.

You can also create and delete email accounts, change passwords, and create large numbers of email addresses in bulk by importing files through the administration screen. You can also create a website without any knowledge of HTML by using Homepage Wizard, and you can easily embed bulletin boards, guestbooks, counters, and other commonly needed features in your pages.

Dreamersi.net will greatly contribute to your company's CI using the Internet.

If you have any questions or inquiries, please contact us at info@dreamersi.net.

*Initial cost includes domain name ($70) and DNS, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP configuration ($80).

----------

Currently, our service is provided at dreamersi.com with the URL https://dreamersi.com instead of dreamersi.net. Our email has evolved from the POP-only service of that time to IMAP, with webmail as a part of our mail servers. As for web services, space has been expanded from 20MB to 10GB, and customers have their choice of web environments. They can choose custom (to add their HTML or other web files to the web server via FTP), WordPress, and WebdeXpress (a web builder tool developed in-house).

In addition, the original price of $150 initial fee + $70 monthly fee is now $250 per year with no initial fee. This is the story of Dreamersi, the flagship hosting service of Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. With 21 years of experience and evolution, we hope you will consider Dreamersi when choosing your hosting services.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@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.

#PSPINC #WebdeXpress #WordPress #dreamersi #email #emailhosting #hosting #webdevelopment

WebdePhoto shutting down at the beginning of July

5月

25日

Effective July 1, 2021, we will be permanently shutting down WebdePhoto. If you are a WebdePhoto user and wish to download any of your photos please do so by the end of June.

Thank you to all of our WebdePhoto users throughout the years. If you are looking for a modern solution for displaying your photos on your website, we encourage you to take a look at our WebdeXpress web builder tool that comes free to all Dreamersi hosting customers. Within WebdeXpress you can build modern, responsive, and flexible photo galleries, perfect for your users!

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 #PSPINC #WebBuilder #WebdeXpress #hosting

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.60 "Why and when to hire a professional to build your website"

4月

23日

Vol. 60

There are many companies and people in the world who can make a website for you. Many services allow you to create your website. We also offer a service called WebdeXpress ®, which makes it easy for you to create a website yourself.

We believe that our job is to make it possible for users to create websites. That's why we provide you with the tools needed to create and host your website. However, there are some websites where we have to do it for you.

One such example is if you have an online shopping site and you want to create a shopping cart or calculate shipping costs or sales tax. You need to hire a professional to create the site and the program. Also, if you want to create a reservation system or register users to a database, you will need to develop a program. If you are not just sending out information, you will need professional help.

In some cases, you need a professional to develop the programming. In other cases, you need a professional to create a website for marketing purposes. Including things such as increasing a website’s rank or being found within search engines by using specific keywords. Whether you need a professional to create your website or not, it is important to clarify what you want to do with the website and choose the right professional for the job.

Please feel free to contact us at any time to discuss your website needs.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@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.

#PacificSoftwarePublishing #PSPINC #WebandEmailHosting #SeattleBellevue #SoftwareDevelopment #WebDevelopment #ApplicationDevelopment #Bloguru

#newsletter #pspinc #webdexpress #website