PSPINC Official Company Blog

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

The Key to a Good Loyalty Program

May

31

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

The Benefits of Online Forms

May

17

Online forms are largely used by businesses for a variety of business and marketing purposes. They’re much more modern compared to paper forms and simplify and optimize the entire process for businesses. Online forms are generally cloud-based, meaning that the data’s instantly digitalized and stored in the system. This gives business owners instant access to accurate, verified, and up-to-date information and makes it easier to process this data further. Online forms also greatly reduce cost while optimizing for efficiency because it’s no longer necessary to physically print, mail, store, and organize them. It also decreases the possibility of misplacing, burying, or even destroying the data, which is a very likely occurrence when dealing with paper forms.

Marketing Purposes of Online Forms

Other than simplifying and digitalizing processes on the administrative side, online forms can be great for marketing as well. Much like other digital marketing efforts, it’s easy to track how well online forms are performing and adjust them as needed. When placed on your business website, it can be a great way to drive lead generation, serving as an email newsletter opt-in, or an alternative for users to contact your business.

Other than that, you can get feedback directly from your customers about your company’s offerings and/or their overall experience on your website. For example, after purchasing a product/service, customers can review the product/service they bought or answer questions about the checkout experience, both of which can be done with an online form. After that, businesses can even create an automated and personalized response to people who filled out the form. Because it’s an online form, the responses are immediately sent after they’re filled out and submitted.

Online Form Builders

someone holding a tablet open to an empty online form

As great as online forms can be for your business, creating one can involve a lot of coding, which isn’t a capability all business owners have. This is exactly why PSPINC created InforMakers, our intuitive form builder. With InforMakers, you can easily create, customize, and embed as many online forms as you need. Once created, you can customize the messages users get upon completion. After embedding and placing it on your site, you can view all your form submission data and export it into a tidy CSV file for your records. InforMakers is just $8/month. Or if you’re one of our Dreamersi customers, you can get it for free in addition to your web and/or email hosting.

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 #customerfeedback #customersupport #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #hosting #informakers #marketing #marketingdigital #newsletter #onlineform #pspinc #review #tech #technology #web #webhosting #website #websites #webtools

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 115 “Human Customer Service”

May

12

Here at PSPINC, we believe in excellent customer support. That’s why we have a whole support team that spends their day answering questions our customers may have. While automated customer service has gotten popular in the last few years, we persist. Even though we’re a tech company. Why? Because we still believe in giving our customers the best support they can get. With an automated system, there’s no capability to form a personable relationship with the customer. When our customers call PSPINC, they know they’ll talk to a real human being. And for customers that call often, they’ll know exactly who they’re talking to or who to ask for. That’s a benefit that doesn’t come from automated customer service.

Our customer support team gets quality feedback from customers about our products and/or services. And we learn more about them in our conversations that an automated system would never get. With that, we can collect valuable data on the customer and use it to market to them more effectively in the future. Many companies use automated customer service because they argue it results in fewer mistakes and can be cheaper in the long run. But just because it cost more, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth the extra cost. Because while people can make mistakes, so can machines. So, if you need any help with your website needs, give us a call. Our support team is 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 #hosting #marketing #marketingdigital #newsletter #officetips #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #smallbusiness #softwaredevelopment #tech #technology #webhosting #website

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 114 “Being Proactive in Business”

May

5

It’s important to be proactive in business. Rather than waiting for problems to arise, businesses should anticipate them and have a plan in place to solve them. Otherwise, you’ll be left scrambling to fix the problem. And in the process, you may lose customers as a result because they might lose trust in you as a company. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you’ll have to do your research to find potential problems. The best way to accomplish this is by testing everything constantly to make sure your new product and/or service works correctly. It’s exactly why PSPINC has a quality assurance (QA) department. And even if you think it’s great, you should still seek feedback from your employees. Especially because they too represent potential customers.

Additionally, you should test every part of the purchase funnel to identify places that could cause friction. For example, if your payment portal on your website isn’t working properly, customers will likely abandon the process altogether. Instead, they’ll look to your competitors to find a similar product. Today’s customers are smart and hold a lot of influence over the marketplace. If a potential customer tries to buy your product and finds the product problematic or the process too troublesome, they won’t hesitate to tell you. Or worse, they’ll tell others on social media. So, avoid this problem by being proactive before releasing a new product or 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 #customerservice #customersupport #digitalmarketing #entrepreneur #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #qa #qualityassurance #tech #technology #testing #web

What is a Customer Journey?

May

3

If you’ve ever worked in sales or marketing, you've probably used or at least heard of a customer journey. While it sounds self-explanatory, fully building a customer journey out will help to create a stronger strategy moving forward. And from a business perspective, continually improving the customer’s experience will lead to not only an increase in sales but also in loyal customers. A customer journey outlines the steps a customer takes when encountering a company, including where they could potentially drop off.

A customer journey typically has five stages: awareness, consideration, acquisition, purchase, and loyalty. The awareness stage consists of how a customer hears about you. This can be through non-digital mediums like word-of-mouth or newspapers. But nowadays they probably found your company somewhere online like through a Google search or on social media. Then, there’s the consideration stage, where customers decide if they want to learn more about your company, your product, and/or your service. If they’re interested, they’ll move forward to the acquisition stage, where they’ll actively explore your company’s content and see how your competition compares.

The Acquisition Stage

a man sitting at a small cafe table with a laptop, notebooks, and phone on the table while the man's holding a to-go coffee cup in one hand and the other hand on his hand

The acquisition stage is arguably the most important step of the journey. At this point, your customer knows who you are, what you’re selling, and how you stack up against your competitors. But whether they purchase or not depends on multiple factors. From the company’s perspective, you want to make sure your brand and what you’re selling is as presentable as possible, the customer’s experience is smooth and simple, and your prices are at the same level as your competitors.

If your products and/or services are too expensive, the customer will just buy them elsewhere. If you’re not the cheapest option, you need to at least tell your customers why. For example, if your product is better because of the material or usability, make sure your customers know that. Because while price is an important factor, many will be willing to pay extra if they think it’s worth it.

Getting Customers to the Purchasing Stage

a woman holding multiple shopping bags while wearing sunglasses and looking at her phone

Once they decide they want to purchase, they enter the purchase stage, hence the name. This could be physically paying for it in a physical store or going through the payment portal on your site. After that is the post-purchase stage. In a brick-and-mortar store, this includes everything the customer encounters after paying. For example, they could see poster ads hung around the store. For digital consumers, this could be a “Your order is placed” page with their order number and details or a follow-up email encouraging customers to follow them on socials and shop from them again.

If your customer is frustrated or overwhelmed at any point in the process, they’ll probably end the journey there. As a business, that’s the last thing you want. You want your customer to go through the entire journey. Actually, what you really want is for customers to come back repeatedly. Beyond that, you want loyal customers to start recommending your products to convert even more people into customers. Or more loyal customers, preferably.

How Loyal Customers Play a Role

a woman holding a bag with a small flower bouquet inside as she leaves a store

For people who are actively loyal to your company to the point of recommending your products, they are what’s called brand evangelists. Regarding the customer journey, repeat customers no longer start from the beginning. Instead, they skip forward to the acquisition stage or straight to purchasing your product.

From a business perspective, it’s important to know how customers interact with your brand. The best way to figure that out is by creating a customer journey. With it, you can identify the steps potential customers make both before and after they purchase from you. Or more importantly, where you need to improve to prevent people from leaving before they get to the purchase stage. After all, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t where to start.

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.

#acquisition #advertising #awareness #branding #business #businesstips #consideration #customerjourney #customers #customerservice #digitalmarketing #google #loyalty #marketing #marketingdigital #purchase #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #web

The Importance of Research in Business

Apr

19

Research is important in almost all industries, but particularly in business. With the world constantly changing, the marketplace changes with it. To really make it, businesses have to keep up with those changes to stand out amongst their competitors. The easiest way to do that is to encourage an atmosphere of constant research. By that, businesses need to know how their niche industries are changing, what their customers are responding (and not responding) to, and what changes they can make to improve for their customers.

Businesses shouldn’t just research to stay up to date on things. What you’re really doing is figuring out what consumers will find important in the future. Trends, while they can come and go, are trends for a reason. It means enough people respond to it that it becomes an important facet of their everyday lives. The ones that stick are the ones you’ll need to pay attention to.

Beginning the Research Process

man sitting in front of a aptop while writing something down on paper in front of him

Researching, while it seems easy, has a process. When starting, you need to know what you need to research. There are two big reasons why when it comes to conducting marketing research: to solve a problem or to find an opportunity to exploit. The first reason is more indicative of the ebbs and flows of your business. If there’s a big problem within your niche industry that needs fixing, you’ll want to not only know about it, but you’ll also want to be the one to fix it. The second reason is one that your company will want to research regularly because I guarantee you, your competitors already are.

Then, you’ll want to do what’s called primary and secondary research. Secondary research, however, is a little easier to do. What it really entails is looking through previously completed studies and using them for what you need them for. Primary research consists of surveys, interviews, observations, focus groups, A/B testing, and questionnaires. From a business perspective, these efforts are done to learn more about your customers. An easy way to figure out how your customers feel about your company and what they’re left craving is to just ask them. PSPINC's Opinion Stand is a great and easy way to figure that out. All customers have to do is click on a smile icon to tell you how they feel, which they can access either through a unique QR code or on your website. Or they can embed a form on their website with InforMakers to conduct a survey after customers purchase a product/service.

Using Data to Your Advantage

a woman in a bathrobe and a towel in her hair while applying a skin care product on her face while looking in the mirror

After doing all that research, it’s then time to collect your data. More importantly, it’s time to sort your data and determine what’s relevant and what isn’t. There’s an abundance of information out there, but it’s what you do with it that can make a difference. One very successful example is Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign. In 2006, Dove released a commercial that showed the work that goes into creating a billboard. Namely, all the Photoshop work that completely transforms what a woman looks like. At the end of the video, it says “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted”.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that customers are smart. They’re exposed to just as much media as we are. So, when it comes time for them to purchase, they’re more than willing to do the work of looking into your competitors to see if or how they’re performing in comparison. Whether it’s in the product/service quality, pricing difference, and/or how you’re promoting it. If your business takes the time and effort to do the necessary research, it’ll make things easier in the long run. You won’t struggle trying to keep up with the industry or your closest competitors because you’ll already be working on making those changes.

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.

The term "QR Code" is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

#blog #business #customers #data #digitalmarketing #dove #informakers #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingresearch #opinionstand #primaryresearch #realbeautycampaign #research #secondaryresearch #smallbusiness

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

Apr

12

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

Is Traditional Advertising Still Relevant?

Apr

5

With most of today’s marketing focused on digital efforts, it begs the question, is traditional advertising still relevant? The short answer is yes. Social media and Google Ads have become standard in marketing practices nowadays. And every year, marketers continue learning and adapting to all the intricacies and trends each digital platform has to offer. But there’s still something to be said about traditional avenues, which generally refers to mediums like print ads, TV commercials, billboards, and radio spots.

While many businesses largely write off the prospect of print ads, billboards, and radio spots, it’s a beneficial effort for smaller businesses. For local businesses, marketers focus more on getting customers inside their store, signing up for their service, and buying their products. To do that, they need a more direct approach by emphasizing the store location that runs for a shorter amount of time. Print ads in newspapers and/or magazines, billboards placed around town, and spots on local radio stations are great ways to do that. Especially if they’re trying to target an older audience. And the same can be said with direct mail marketing.

TV Commercials

a family sitting on the couch together with the dad holding a tv remote

As for TV commercials, they’re still largely effective. Despite the growing popularity of streaming platforms, TV commercials are still very relevant. Most streaming platforms even offer a free plan, which comes with ads. Examples include but are not limited to Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV, Tubi, and more. But the same would still be true, even without these free plans. TV is still the best way to increase brand awareness as it can effectively get your product, service, and/or company in front of a mass audience.

There are also times when TV viewership is higher than ever. Holiday specials bring in a sizeable audience, but the annual Super Bowl is the first big event that comes to mind. While sports TV can generally bring in a male-dominated audience, the Super Bowl is a unique opportunity to rope women into the mix as well. And it’s not just because of the halftime show. Super Bowl commercials have become just as popular as the game. They’re not only watched by millions of people but also talked about. Not just through word-of-mouth but on social media as well. From the last Super Bowl, commercials cost an average of $7 million per ad for 30 seconds of airtime. As expensive as that is, it’s worth the effort if you can afford it. In return, you’re not just getting the ad revenue, you’re also getting a guaranteed audience of about 100 million viewers.

Marketing today includes a lot of digital avenues, namely posting on social media and advertising on Google. With everyone already online, it just makes sense. But traditional advertising is still relevant for businesses that know how to use it to their advantage. For smaller, more affordable efforts, print ads, billboards, and radio efforts are a great way to reach local audiences. But for bigger brands who can afford to pay more for a TV commercial, it can be worthwhile.

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.

#ads #advertising #business #businesstips #commercials #digitalmarketing #directmail #googleads #local #magazines #marketing #marketingdigital #newspapers #radio #smallbusinesses #socialmedia #superbowl #tech #traditionaladvertising #tv #tvcommercials

How to Improve Your Site's SEO Through Content

Mar

22

For anyone who’s ever helped develop a website, search engine optimization (SEO) is very important. Optimizing your site for SEO helps better position your website and its pages in organic search results. For people who use website builders, many of those plans include an SEO tool. The best one, in our opinion, is the Yoast SEO plugin from WordPress, but there are many others out there. And it’s partly why PSPINC offers an easy WordPress install with both our Dreamersi, YourHost Neo, and Parcom web hosting plans. However, users can only use those tools with paid plans. So, here’s some SEO advice you should keep in mind when building and creating content for your site.

Adding Effective Keywords

people sitting together at a conference table, some of which are on laptops as they all work together

When you think about SEO, you might think about keywords first. Keywords are just words and phrases that users will enter into their search engines. So, choose your focus keyword wisely. You want it to be a word you know you’ll use a lot because it’ll be what you want a page to rank for most. But you also want to make sure it’s one that people will search for. An easy way to figure this out is to make a quick Google search with the keyword you want to use and see how many results come up. If it comes back with thousands or even millions of search results, you’re on the right track.

The same process goes with your keyphrase, which is like your focus keyword. The only difference is that it’s a phrase instead of just one word. To better optimize your content for SEO, try to use your keyphrase in your subheadings whenever possible. When you repeatedly use your focus keyword and keyphrase within your web content, it tells Google that you’re using relevant keywords. Google then rewards you by pushing your page higher up in the organic search results.

Improving Readability

a woman typing a document on a laptop while she sits on the couch

This should go without saying, but if your content isn’t written well, people won’t want to read it. Besides the obvious revisions in capitalization, grammar, and overall syntax, there are a few other things to be wary of when creating written content for online users. For starters, try to avoid using passive voice. Instead, use active voice. Passive voice happens when the subject of the sentence is acted upon whereas, in active voice, the subject completes an action. For example, instead of saying “The speech will be made by the mayor tomorrow”, say “The mayor will make a speech tomorrow”. If it’s a situation that can’t be avoided, use the passive voice. Just try to keep it to a minimum.

Additionally, avoid consecutive sentences (starting sentences with the same word) and limit your sentence and paragraph length. Sentences shouldn’t have more than 20 words each while paragraphs shouldn’t exceed 200 words. Between paragraphs, you should also distribute some subheadings and perhaps some images to break up blocks of text. Because no one wants to read paragraph upon paragraph without a break. At least not when they’re reading something online. Also, make sure to link some of your text to other pages on your website as well as other websites.

So, when you’re building and creating content for a website, there are two things to keep in mind in terms of SEO. Firstly, you’ll want to make sure you’re using effective keywords so your web pages will rank higher in Google’s organic search results. While Google Ads guarantees a top spot in the search results, using the right keywords will be vital in determining where on the list your site lands after that. Lastly, your content needs to be well-written, keeping in mind that it’ll be seen by internet users. The language should be conversational but still grammatically correct. Do all that and your site will be in pretty good shape for SEO. And as helpful as paid tools like Yoast SEO are, they’re unnecessary if you already know what to look out for.

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.

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People Who Wowed This Post

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