PSPINC Official Company Blog

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 210 “Custom Web Development”

Mar

7

For decades now, we’ve worked with small businesses to develop custom websites to fit their unique business needs to help grow their business online. While many popular website builders work for others, it doesn’t mean it works for everyone. It can’t account for every customization a business may need, which is exactly where custom web development comes in. Website builders can only do so much for you when you need more customization over how you want your website to function and what you need to succeed online.

Custom features like robust reservation systems, the addition of multi-lingual content, and mobile app creation are just a few examples of the kinds of custom web development work we’ve done in the past for our customers. Every business is unique in what they offer and what they need to succeed. Get your website custom-designed by our experts at PSPINC to get a custom solution to your custom business 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.

#b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #ecommerce #google #marketing #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websitebuilder

Employee Spotlight: Meet Andres

Mar

5

At PSPINC, we pride ourselves on offering our customers the best customer support. This is thanks to our amazing support staff. In this series, we will highlight and showcase a number of those friendly faces who are standing by to take your call or email, help with your IT problems, and assist with your online solutions.

Meet Andres

Andres is one of our Support Technicians on our support team. We sat down with Andres and asked him some questions to get to know him better!

How long have you been working at PSPINC?

I’ve been working at PSPINC for four years.

What do you do at PSPINC?

I am a senior IT engineer and provide managed IT services to 15 companies in the Bellevue, Seattle, and Tacoma areas.

What does a typical day on the job look like for you?

I take care of a few customer support requests in the morning. Then, I usually head out to perform IT maintenance onsite for a customer for a few hours before returning to PSPINC to work on any of our current IT projects.

What’s your favorite part about working here?

I really like the team of people that I work with. All of them are nice, helpful, and very professional.

What’s the most challenging part of your job?

Balancing the tasks of providing great support to end users and working on complicated projects at the same time is the most challenging part for me.

Before working for PSPINC, what was the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had?

I designed and ran a 300.00-watt Bitcoin-mining facility in South America for two years before working here.

What have you learned while working here?

To rely on my team and to use my coworker’s knowledge on projects.

What skills do you think a tech support member needs to succeed?

IT changes constantly, so it’s important to have curiosity and the desire to research, while also being open to learning new things every day.

What has been your favorite project at PSPINC?

We did a complete network and server build for a new soy sauce factory in the area, and it was interesting to work alongside the construction crew of an industrial facility.

Why did you choose to pursue a career in IT?

IT has been in my life since I was a kid. It’s my passion, so it’s never really been a choice for me. I started to get IT requests and projects from everyone around me starting at 16 years old, and it has just never stopped.

What do you like to do for fun outside of work?

I like playing video games, watching some anime, watching movies, and going out with friends.

What is your favorite movie?

Probably a draw between Amélie, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Empire Strikes Back.

What’s your favorite food?

Chinese dim sum.

Where would you want to go on your ideal vacation?

My ideal vacation is a Caribbean cruise with family or friends.

We hope you enjoyed getting to know Andres today! If you’re a business in the Greater Seattle area that needs any remote or onsite technical support, don’t hesitate to contact our support team by calling 1-800-232-3989 or emailing them at support@pspinc.com. Andres and his team are the experts dedicated to helping 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.

#b2b #blog #blogger #business #businesstools #customerservice #employee #employeeappreciation #employees #employeespotlight #interview #it #itsupport #marketing #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #sales #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 209 “Keep Your Data Safe with a Password Manager”

Feb

29

With how advanced cybersecurity has become, it’s important to make sure your personal data and online accounts are secure. Cybercrime unfortunately continues to rise as developers continue working on ways to protect users against hacks. So, what are some easy ways to keep your data safe?

Use a password manager: A password manager keeps your sensitive data safe in one place. With our password manager, Pass Wizard, it couldn’t be easier to keep your accounts safe.
Have varying passwords: Make sure you have a different password for every single one of your accounts. That way, in case of a hack, cybercriminals won’t be able to access all of them.
Use an authenticator app: Connect your online accounts, including your password manager (like Pass Wizard), with an authenticator app to add an extra layer of security to your account.

Get a head start on keeping data secure by signing up for our password manager, Pass Wizard. With Pass Wizard, you can rest assured that your online accounts are safe. With Pass Wizard Pro, you can protect your accounts even more by connecting your Pass Wizard account to an authenticator app. Pass Wizard is free for up to ten passwords, or $19.95 for a full year (that’s just $1.67/month!) for an unlimited number of passwords. Sign up today.

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.

#authenticatorapp #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #cybersecurity #marketing #mobile #pacificsoftwarepublishing #passwizard #passwordmanager #pspinc #security #smallbusiness #tech #web #webdevelopment #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 208 “Why Business Cards Are Still Relevant Today”

Feb

22

As important as having a digital presence for your business is, business cards are still relevant today. They’re an essential networking tool, which helps connect businesses, especially small businesses, to potential customers, partners, and/or employers. They convey professionalism and it is much more impressive to pull a business card out rather than verbally telling a potential lead your contact information.

Business cards also make it easy to market yourself and/or your business quickly but efficiently. You can easily slip it to someone in passing and it can serve as a physical reminder for people to check out your website or reach out to you later at a more convenient time. That’s why, along with our other brand and graphic design services like logo or custom web design, PSPINC offers business card design services. Get started by heading over to our Brand & Graphic Design 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.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branddesign #branding #business #businesscard #businesscarddesign #businesscards #businesstips #customerservice #design #ecommerce #graphicdesign #marketing #marketingtips #pspinc #sales #smallbusiness #technology

Bluesky Opens Up to the Public: How It Could Change the Social Media Landscape

Feb

20

On February 7, social media platform, Bluesky opened to the public after previously being an invite-only platform for almost a full year. The invite-only strategy allowed Bluesky to grow slowly as its developers worked on building out the service. Bluesky was first announced in 2019 by none other than Jack Dorsey, as a side project to build a decentralized standard for social media when he was still the CEO of Twitter (now X).

What is Bluesky?

bluesky app opening on phone next to mug of coffee

Many are calling it Twitter 2.0, as it closely resembles the platform from before Musk took over. However, there’s one big difference: it’s decentralized. What that means is that instead of the company storing users’ data on their own servers, independent servers store user data, giving users more control over their overall feed. Instead of an all-encompassing algorithm, users can create their own servers and switch without losing their data, according to Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber.

However, decentralized social platforms already exist, with the most popular one being Mastodon, due to its focus on discussing various topics. While popular with over 8.7 million users by October 2023, it isn’t nearly as easy to use because of how tech-heavy it is, with multiple servers, making it hard to navigate. Much like Mastodon, Bluesky offers multiple different servers, but switching from one to the other is seamless, and the overall interface is very reminiscent of Twitter’s old interface.

How Bluesky is Different from Other Text-Based Alternatives

After opening the platform to the public, Bluesky announced users could follow the Super Bowl game without hearing about Taylor Swift, which accelerated its overall growth by 1.6 million new users, bringing Bluesky's total user list to 4.8 million users. Then there’s Threads, Meta’s text-based offering, which is arguably the largest of the alternatives currently out there. But while it has the largest user base thanks to how easy it is to move your account from Instagram to Threads, it hasn’t captured the discussion aspect that X (previously Twitter) is known for.

What Bluesky aims to do differently is bridge the gap between the decentralized network and focus on the discussion aspect of Mastadon while delivering a user-friendly experience that Threads offers. While Mastadon, Threads, and various other platforms seek to replace X, they have yet to succeed for a multitude of reasons. With Bluesky eliminating the invite-only aspect of the platform and focusing on the lacking factors in other platforms, it may just have the potential to be a legitimate replacement for X.

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 #bluesky #business #businesstips #decentralization #digitalmarketing #elonmusk #facebook #instagram #jackdorsey #jaygraber #marketing #mastodon #smallbusiness #socialmedia #superbowl #taylorswift #tech #technology #threads #twitter #web #websites #x

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 207 “Sprout Marketing Plan Now on Sale!”

Feb

15

For a limited time, our Sprout marketing plan is now on sale! For your first month with us, waive the monthly fee to get your first month of managed ads for free! Every business needs good marketing, but knowing what the industry’s best practices are and how to succeed on platforms like Google Ads can be tricky. So, get professional help setting up and running your paid search ads from our expert marketing team!

With the Sprout marketing plan, get:

One Google Ad
Campaign creation
Keyword and audience research
Conversion tracking setup
Performance analyzing and monitoring
Bi-weekly written reports
Competitor analysis
Ongoing optimization consultation
One weekly ad revision

With over 36 years of experience helping hundreds of customers grow their online business, our marketing team at PSPINC has the expertise you need. Get started by heading over to our digital marketing page and get $160 off our Sprout marketing plan now.

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 #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #web #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 206 “Evaluate Your Website for Free!”

Feb

8

We’re happy to announce that we’ve released a new website evaluation tool, free for everyone to try out! While many business owners today know how important having a good website is, it isn’t always easy to assess how secure and optimized for search engines your site is. Now, with our new website evaluation tool, you can!

Just enter your website URL in the text box and click on the Start Evaluation button and you’ll get an evaluation on your site in minutes! With our website evaluation tool, it’ll look at:

SSL certificate: without one, users will probably encounter an error page that encourages them to leave your site.
Mobile friendliness:if your site doesn’t look good on all devices (including mobile devices), search engines won’t make it as easy for users to find via search.
Title tag: having a title tag is vital to good SEO, which affects how search engines populate your site in their search results.
Meta tag: a website without a meta tag doesn’t look good in search results, making it less likely people will click on it.
Header tags: headings won’t just make your content look nicer to users, they’ll also help with your site’s SEO.
Sitemap: a file that lists all your website’s pages and how they relate to each other and another influential factor in SEO.
Page load time: if your site takes too long to load, search engines will rank it lower in the search results.
Image alt attribute: another SEO factor that tells the “why” of an image and is an important accessibility feature.

Check out our new free website evaluation tool by going to our Web Design page to try it out for yourself! If you want to know more about how to fix any issues your site may have, enter your email in the text box below and you'll receive your diagnostic results with more information.

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 #cybersecurity #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mobile #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #security #seo #smallbusiness #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #websites

What Every Successful Website Needs

Feb

6

Every website is different in what it looks like, what it offers, and its overall purpose, but a good website has several key qualities that will distinguish it from a poor site. For a business, a good website is vital to its success as it helps establish credibility, build trust, increase brand awareness, improve its customer experience, and keep the company competitive online.

A good website will attract more qualified visitors, keep people on your site for longer, give off a better impression on potential customers, and drive conversions like an increase in signups, readership, and sales. To do well online, a website needs to be secure and possess certain characteristics that every website needs to thrive online. While there are many types of websites (i.e. blogs, portfolio sites, business websites, etc.) available, they will all still need some of the same features needed to succeed.

Essential Features of a Good Website

Having a secure website is vital to attracting users to your website, not just to protect users while browsing, but also to prevent them from encountering error messages. The easiest way to do that is to have an SSL certificate for your site, which will guarantee users’ data is safe when they’re online. Without one, they’ll run into a page that informs them the connection is not secure and not private, and it will recommend users go “back to safety”.

While having a secure site is a start, other essential features include:

Mobile friendliness: how well a website looks on a mobile device. An easy way to make sure your website works and looks great on all devices (including mobile devices) is by using responsive design practices.
Search engine optimization: elements that affect how search engines rank your website in its search results.
- Page titles: the title of a web page.
- Meta tags: an HTML code snippet with information about a website.
- Alt tags on images: read-aloud text for users that conveys the “why” of images that search engines index to determine your site’s search ranking.
- Header tags: HTML tags that separate headings and subheadings on a webpage.
- Title tag: an HTML tag that defines a web page’s title.
- Sitemap: a file that lists all of a website’s pages and how they relate to each other.
- Page load time: how long it takes for a page to load. The longer it takes, the lower search engines will rank your site.
- Backlinks: a link on your website that links to another website.
- No broken links: If a link on your website doesn’t properly link to another web page, search engines will rank your site lower in the search results.
Clear calls-to-action (CTAs): a direct instruction on what you want users to do on your website. Without CTAs, website visitors won’t do anything on your site, which is a missed opportunity to convert them into customers.
Easy and helpful navigation: a menu of buttons and links that let users explore your website. Making it easy will lessen the possibility of users getting frustrated.
Fresh, high-quality content: new or updated content on your website will result in a more favorable search ranking, and exceptional content will encourage users to not just come and stay on your site, but it will also encourage them to come back.
Strong brand identity: A website is just another opportunity to create a cohesive brand identity with your company logo, color scheme, types of graphics, tone of voice, and brand messaging.

If you’re not sure how well your website fares or if it needs an update, check out our new free website evaluation tool that will help you assess your website at a basic level in just minutes. Just check out our Web Design page to try it out for yourself!

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 #branding #business #businesstips #ecommerce #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mobile #responsivedesign #searchengineoptimization #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #website #websites

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 204 “Dreamersi Web and Email Hosting”

Jan

25

The first product we created as a company was web hosting. Before 1996, PSPINC focused on growing the Japanese market with already-popular software technology from the U.S. But in 1996, we introduced our premiere web hosting, Dreamersi, which we created in-house, and our customers still use today. Over the years, we’ve continually updated and improved our software and eventually introduced email hosting as part of Dreamersi services.

Even all these years later, Dreamersi is still our biggest selling point because of how much control our developers have over the system, making it easier to customize it toward our customers’ needs. We also offer even more specialized web hosting with VPS packages. In addition, we also sell SSL certificates, which everyone needs for their website today. Learn more about our Dreamersi web hosting plans by going to our Dreamersi page on our website.

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 #email #emailhosting #marketing #newsletter #officetips #pspinc #smallbusiness #ssl #sslcertificate #tech #technology #vps #web #webdesign #webdevelopment #webhosting #websites #webtools

Adobe Photoshop’s New AI Tools

Jan

23

Artificial intelligence (AI) has only gotten more popular over the past few years and will continue to, as search engines have employed AI-powered chatbots and AI image generators have only improved and become trendier. Because of this rise in popularity, Adobe has integrated AI tools into their Creative Cloud using Adobe Firefly, which they describe as “the world’s first ethical text-to-image generational tool”. Photoshop’s new Generative Fill and Generative Expand tools are Adobe’s first Creative Cloud products that incorporate Firefly completely.

Part of the hesitation users have toward AI in general is the lack of transparency with AI. With images, there’s also the issue of creative licensing and intellectual property. In a calculated effort toward increasing overall transparency, Adobe’s new tools powered by AI will include a label in their content credentials (which Adobe calls “nutrition labels”), which adds metadata to photos, making it clear the image has been altered using AI.

How to Expand a Photo with Photoshop's New Generative AI Expand Tool

Choose a photo.
Create a new file (CTRL+N/CMD+N) with the size and/or ratio you want your photo to be (if you don’t have a specific photo size or ratio in mind, go ahead and skip this step).
Expand the photo by clicking on the Crop tool (C) And pulling the left and right sides.
Click on the Generate button from the Generative Expand pop-up – Photoshop uses AI to fill in the rest of the photo for you.
Choose from three variations of the expanded photo, shown on the right side of the photo under the Properties tab.
If you’re not happy with the three variations, generate again by clicking on the Generate button, which is now above the three variations.
If you don’t have a specific photo size or ratio in mind, but just want to create a landscape (horizontal) image out of a portrait (vertical) image, just save (CTRL+S/CMD+S) the photo variation you like as is.
If you have a specific photo size and/or ratio in mind, select all (CTRL+A/CMD+A) and copy all (CTRL+C/CMD+C).
Open the pre-selected photo size file before pasting (CTRL+V/CMD+V) the AI-generated photo.
Zoom out to fit the image to screen (CTRL+0/CMD+0) and resize the image to fit in the pre-selected photo.

If you’re looking for more graphic design help, head over to our brand and graphic design page. Or if you’re looking for web design help, head over to our web design page where our Starter web plan is currently $200 off the original price for a limited time!

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.