PSPINC Official Company Blog

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 124 “Simplifying Sales Cycles”

Jul

14

When selling products, it’s essential to always think about the sales cycle from the customer’s point of view. Many content management systems (CMS) have built-in or additional features that make it easy to set up a payment portal. But you can still inadvertently make the purchasing experience complicated or too invasive. For example, if users have to get through too many pages before they get to the end, they’ll likely bail midway. Or if you’re asking for personal information that customers don’t think is necessary, they won’t be willing to share it. Instead, they'll shop elsewhere.

While the purchasing stage of the overall customer journey may seem simple to you as the business owner or developer, it doesn’t mean it’s easy for the customer. If you’re unsure how easy it is to purchase something from your site, try it out! Act like a customer by going to your website. Then try purchasing your product. If there are too many steps in the process, get rid of some. If the questions are too personal, take them out because, odds are, you probably won’t need them. So, when selling a product on your website, pay special attention to how the customer will go through the sales cycle. Then, eliminate everything that could cause a customer to abandon the process and simplify it everywhere you can.

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 #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websitebuilder

Creating a Digital Presence for Your Business

Jul

12

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

How to Market Your E-Commerce Site

Jul

5

If your business sells online, a great e-commerce site isn’t the only thing you need to be successful. Like every sold offering, you also need to market your e-commerce site. After all, what good is an e-commerce site if no one knows about it? According to DataReportal, about 58.4% of internet users buy something online every week. And that figure will only continue rising. To reach those users, they need to know that you offer what they want or need. To do that, you’ll need to market your site effectively.

Optimize for Search Engines

a laptop open to google with a travel mug on the table

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is a process that will help your site and your products come up on relevant searches. This process involves finding and optimizing your site for keywords related to your business and what you’re selling. And throughout the process, you’ll want to focus on making sure your site is mobile-friendly and doesn’t take too long to load. All this combined will give users a better overall shopping experience, encouraging them to purchase from you.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

letter tiles spelling out pay per click on a desk with a computer keyboard in the top left corner and an iphone in the bottom right corner

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising refers to a paid marketing strategy that helps increase your site’s overall exposure. Specifically to people actively interested or looking for what you have to offer. As the name suggests, you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. These ads refer to paid search, display, or shopping ads, all run on Google’s display network. And because of how popular Google is, you’re almost guaranteed brand awareness. However, you’ll need to use relevant keywords to reach the right people.

Email Marketing

the google, mail, and phone apps close up on an iphone

Another great tactic to promote your e-commerce site is email marketing. On your e-commerce site, you can add a pop-up form where visitors can opt-in with their emails. With this, you can send personalized emails to your customers and/or potential customers about upcoming sales and overall company news. And with email marketing tools like NewsMAIL, creating an effective email marketing campaign is easy. People who sign up for these emails send the message that they’re interested in what you have to offer, increasing the likelihood that they’ll convert into paying customers. You can also use this tactic to personalize offers depending on their interests, send surveys to learn more about your customers, and even recapture those who abandoned their cart.

Social Media Marketing

Then, there’s social media marketing, which can be helpful for all things business-related. Like all the other marketing tactics on this list, it will help increase your brand’s awareness. Plus, it'll encourage people to engage with your content. To better market your e-commerce website, your social media content should not only promote special deals but also spark conversation. And when users engage with your posts, reply to them to build that relationship with them. Over time, they'll convert them from social media spectators to potential customers.

Optimize for Conversions

The focus of an e-commerce business is to generate sales and earn conversions. But sometimes, you might not be converting as much as you’d like to. This is where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. What this entails is making sure that the checkout process is as seamless as possible. The checkout process should be streamlined, with clear and actionable call-to-action (CTA) buttons and attractive visuals of your offerings.

Overall, an e-commerce business needs a good marketing strategy to be successful. But before you can do that, your e-commerce site needs to be in the best shape possible. Luckily, PSPINC has a stellar e-commerce hosting solution, YourHost. And our ShopSite plans are currently on sale for new customers. For the first two years, you can start your e-commerce site starting at just $15/month.

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 #conversions #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #emailmarketing #google #internet #marketing #marketingdigital #newsmail #ppc #seo #shopsite #smallbusiness #socialmediamarketing #technology #websites #yourhost

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 119 “ShopSite Plans on Sale for New Customers”

Jun

9

YourHost is PSPINC's easy and reliable e-commerce hosting solution. With the power of ShopSite, customers get resourceful e-commerce tools to help build and maintain your online store. We’re excited to announce that we’ve just reduced our price plans specifically for new customers! For the first two years, new YourHost ShopSite customers can start selling online with an impressive e-commerce site starting at just $15/month! After the first two years, standard rates will apply.

shopsite plans with pricing and features included in all 3 plans

shopsite plans with pricing and features included in all 3 plans

With our ShopSite plans, customers get incredible web hosting features! All ShopSite plan customers get access to our YourHost Neo web and email features, an SSL certificate, an initial setup by a trained technician, over 50 themes to choose from, over 25 payment methods, and U.S-based support from our team! Those who choose our Pro plan will also get many more features such as:

• Unlimited products
• Store search
• Real-time shipping rates
• Coupons
• Quantity pricing
• Cross-selling
• Product reviews
• Facebook store

This will be an ongoing promotion for new customers, and the new prices will be in effect for customers’ first two years on one of our YourHost ShopSite plans. Plans are billed monthly. Grow your online business by creating a stunning e-commerce site with one of our YourHost ShopSite plans.

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 #ecommerce #hosting #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sale #shopsite #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websitebuilder #webtools #yourhost

What Makes a Great E-Commerce Site

Jun

7

For small businesses that sell online, a great e-commerce site is essential. While there’s still something to be said for brick-and-mortar stores, the ease of purchasing online is unmatched. And it’s only become more popular during the last few years as online shopping revenue grew by 20% in 2021 (according to Retail Insider). It’s also important to acknowledge that much of that website traffic comes from a mobile device. The number of people shopping online with a mobile device increased by more than double since 2018 according to a 2021 survey of global consumer insights. This only means that creating effective and user-friendly e-commerce sites is even more important today than ever.

While every e-commerce site builder is different, there are still a handful of features that every good e-commerce site needs. Without them, it’s unlikely that users will complete the entire purchase cycle. For a customer, these aren’t things they actively seek in an online shopping site. Rather, they’re what they expect to see. Without them, customers find it blatantly obvious and if it’s an important enough feature, they may find the site unreliable. So, here’s everything you need to create an exceptional e-commerce site.

Necessary Features

someone holding a phone open to an e-commerce site

First and foremost, making sure the interface is user-friendly is the most important aspect of any website. But even more so for a shopping site. What this entails is a simplistic as well as responsive navigation menu. Especially given that so many website visitors will be using a mobile device. Users expect to see categories with some subcategories, all of which should be clear as to what they mean. The last thing you want is to confuse your customers all because you wanted to use a more creative yet unhelpful category name. Your navigation bar should also include:

• A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
• A Contact Us page
• A way for shoppers to view their cart, which not only incudes product names but also an image with it

Additionally, with it being a site where payment’s involved, the checkout process shouldn’t just be streamlined but also secure. The easiest way to ensure this is by purchasing an SSL certificate, which PSPINC offers in addition to our web hosting. Other vital security features include an address verification system (AVS) and a credit card verification value (CVV).

Regarding the purchase process, additional costs, shipping details, and return instructions should be clearly outlined before users check out. And they should have multiple payment options as well. While product pages should include images of the product itself, they must be high-quality images. And seeing products from different angle as well as how it works in action through multiple photos or even a video will make them more attractive to customers. Lastly, product descriptions shouldn’t just include physical attributes but also the benefits they can provide your customers.

Additional E-Commerce Features

a woman at her laptop while holding a credit card

From a marketing perspective, there are also some other features worth adding. If a product isn’t exactly what they’re looking for, they may want to find something similar. Putting recommendations makes it that much easier for customers. Plus, you can create targeted newsletters based on what customers looked at and/or bought previously. Allowing users to create a wish list of items they want but aren’t ready to purchase yet as well as a guest account option will also result in a better user experience.

A wish list persuades users to come back to purchase later while a guest account allows them to bypass the longer account registration process. There’s also the option of adding newsletter pop-ups or even in-browser notifications to encourage brand loyalty. Lastly, there’s the abandoned cart reminder. About 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned, according to Shopify. To take advantage of that statistic, creating a reminder that sends an email out afterward can be a way to get those users to come back. As popular as e-commerce sites are for businesses today, building them can be a hassle. Luckily, PSPINC has an easy and reliable e-commerce hosting solution, YourHost, to help build your e-commerce site.

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 #crm #customerservice #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #mobile #onlinebusiness #onlineshopping #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webhosting #website #websitebuilder #yourhost

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 111 “10% Off All YourHost Plans”

Apr

14

YourHost is PSPINC’s hosting service that uses award-winning ShopSite tools to create easy and reliable e-commerce sites. This month, we’re running a promotion for customers to get 10% off on all our ShopSite plans.

Our YourHost page on the website now shows the discounted prices for each of our three plans and it will stay that way until the promotion ends at the end of the month. To get this deal, choose choose one of our three plans (Starter, Manager, or Pro) on the YourHost site. Then, enter the promo code, “SHOPSPRING10”, at checkout.

This promo code will only work until the end of this month, so get this deal while you can. For additional help on getting everything set up, we have an amazing support team who is always ready for your 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.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customerservice #customersupport #ecommerce #hosting #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webhosting #websitebuilder #webtools #yourhost

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

Mar

24

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

Multilingual Online Shops Easier With ShopSite!

Dec

23

ShopSite is a service designed to quickly and easily set up an online store on your website and start selling. Given the year we have had, it is more important than ever to adapt to a digital business platform if you are able to.

Just recently ShopSite released version 14.0 sp2. This release came chock full of payment and merchandising upgrades for PayPal, among others. Something very significant with this new version is the update they have made to enhance the system for international use.

As many of you know, we pride ourselves on the software development we do not only for English websites/applications but for a number of Japanese customers both domestic and abroad. The updates they have made across the board to all versions of ShopSite (Pro, Manager, Starter) make it easier to deliver a fully functional eCommerce website regardless of the language.

Let's take a look at these international updates as outlined in their recent release notes.

State/Provinces fallback to text input (Pro, Manager, Starter)
If a shopper chooses a country that does not have a pull-down list of states/provinces to choose from, ShopSite will display a blank text input box.

UTF-8 Character encoding (Pro, Manager, Starter)
New installs now default to the UTF-8 character encoding which is the default of HTML 5. This encoding fully supports all characters. Previously ShopSite used ISO-8859-1 which only supported Latin-1 languages.

Whether you need a multilingual online shop or just an English language version, we can work with you to handle all of the technical aspects and help you start selling ASAP. As a National Hosting Partner for ShopSite, we have industry professionals on staff that can do the heavy lifting with you.

For a one-time fee of $1,962 (only a low annual hosting fee applies after year one), you can have an eCommerce website online. We want to talk to you!

Get Started

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

#ECommerce #SellOnline #ShopSite #YourHost