PSPINC Official Company Blog

How to structure and organize your website navigation

Apr

6

When it comes to designing and building a website there are many important things you need to consider when it comes creating something useful for your visitors. Above all else, “content is king” is a phrase that continues to ring true no matter what. If you aren’t providing useful content, what purpose do your customers have to come to your website?

With that being said, providing the best content is not helpful if you don’t organize it in such a way that your visitors can actually find it! Therefore, it’s really important that you invest time and thought into mapping out what pages you want to create, and how you want users to access them in your website navigation.

Common mistakes people make

Too Many Pages

The more pages you have, the more clicks you expect of your users to navigate through your content. It also presents challenges with how you organize your pages.

Too Few Pages

I know, kind of a contradiction of the last point, right? If you have too few pages, you end up cramming more content on fewer pages. Doing this forces a user to sift through to find the information important to them. At this point, you are encouraging them to seek their information elsewhere.

Bloated Top-level Navigation

When we say top-level navigation, we are referring to the navigation links a user can see at first glance when they visit your website. The more links you have in this space the harder it is for users to find what they are looking for. It also presents challenges when users on smaller screen sizes (such as tablets) stop by.

Multi-level Dropdown Navigation

A dropdown navigation is a box that appears when you hover over your top-level navigation item. It shows sub-pages that are nested under a specific category. While one level of sub-navigation is not only acceptable but very standard, adding another level of sub-navigation items should be avoided for usability reasons.

Tips for designing your navigation

While there is no minimum or maximum for top level navigation items, if you have more than 7 top level nav items, especially with a horizontal navigation, it is starting to get a bit busy.

Avoid extremely lengthy page/navigation names

Your site should be responsive (read a previous article for just some of the reasons) and when you are on a mobile device, your navigation should collapse into a hidden hamburger menu to make it easy for users to use your website.

There is a lot to think about when it comes to structuring your website navigation. If you need a professional opinion on your plan or help to build your website, please let us know. We have the industry experience to help you make the right choices for your website. Call us 1-800-232-3989, email us at contact@pspinc.com, or visit us at PSPinc.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

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

#Business #Navigation #WebDevelopment #Website #WebsiteNavigation

PSPinc What's New Newsletter Vol.56 "Why SSL and the SEO Effect"

Mar

25

Vol. 56

SSL is an acronym for Secure Socket Layer, which encrypts communication between a website and the browser. The encryption ensures that passwords, credit card numbers, birthdates, etc. that the user 'enters' cannot be stolen during the communication.

In addition to this, SSL has another major role to play, it authenticates the owner of the site.

For example, our company's domain name is PSPINC.COM. But there is no proof that PSPINC.COM is Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. To issue SSL, the website owner needs to be certified, a legitimate company can be identified by this level of certification.

If a website does not have a certificate or does not have SSL, not only will the page not show up in some browsers but in many cases, it will not show up on search engines like Google. Therefore, we recommend that you authenticate your website with SSL.

If you have any questions about obtaining SSL, please contact us at support@pspinc.com. You do not need to be our customer to contact us.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#SEO #SSL #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #website

Impact of Website SEO with Search Engines: Responsive Design

Mar

9

What is responsive design?

Responsive design is a web design approach used to create a site that adjusts smoothly to various screen sizes. Developers do several things such as size elements in relative units (%) and use media queries to apply different layouts and styles based on screen size. Using this approach their websites can automatically adapt to the browser space to ensure content consistency across devices.

Code on computer screen

Why is responsive design important?

The internet is an ever-changing environment. Mobile as a platform has officially overtaken desktop computers as the first choice of device for web browsing.

Remember, Google is and will always be user-centric, as society shifted to a more mobile-focused web browsing journey, they adapted. If you are moving toward a more mobile-optimized website, then you have the approval of Google, and your web search ranking will reflect this.

One of the main reasons that users may not stay on your website for an extended amount of time is because they are having a hard time navigating it. Consequently, the time a user spends on your page is used by Google to determine a site’s or page’s quality and value.

If you have a responsive website, users will have a much easier time navigating through your website and will have a good user experience overall.

Website on mobile devices

Is your website mobile-friendly?

The best way to find out is to open it up on your mobile device. Does everything scale well or does everything look tiny and hard to read? If it is the latter you could use a website refresh not just for search engines, but for your website visitors as well. You should deliver the best experience possible, regardless of the device your visitors are using. So don’t forget about your mobile users!

If you don’t know how best to get started, give us a call! At PSPinc, we have professional Designers and Developers who are knowledgeable about SEO and sophisticated web design! We would love to talk to you about it further! You can reach us by phone at 1-800-232-3989, by email at contact@pspinc.com, or find us online at PSPinc.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPinc Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

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

#PSPinc #ResponsiveDesign #WebDesign #WebDevelopment #Website

Impact of Website SEO with Search Engines: Page Speed

Feb

16

Last time we spoke about the impact of keywords on your website SEO. If you didn’t get a chance to read that article, we encourage you to go back and check it out.

Today we are going to discuss the role page speed plays in SEO. Often, people put less value on the page speed of their website compared with the content, keywords, and design. However, if your page loads really slow, it will affect your search ranking.

What’s going to happen if my page speed is slow?

Users are looking to get information immediately when they click a link. If the page takes too long to load, they will most likely leave your website. This will increase your “Bounce Rate”, Google may also grade your reputation as bad for lack of usability. Google research in 2018 showed that if your page takes more than 2 seconds to load, the “Bounce Rate” would increase by up to 32%.

How can I improve my page speed?

Image file compression

Large file sizes of images make websites load slowly and will cause a negative user experience. Image compression is the process of using compression algorithms to reduce the file size of an image file. There are a number of tools online for compressing images that you can find by searching for ‘online image compressing tools’. Professional programs like Adobe Photoshop are also more than capable of handling advanced image compression.

Browser caching

A web browser’s cache is what web browsers use to save data such as images that are needed to view your website. Saving this data allows the browser to load your website faster and more efficiently. When building a website if you define a longer cache for your assets that don’t change frequently, your web browser will store the information longer and further enhance your browser’s loading speed.

Lazy load images

Another solution is to delay loading images using JavaScript. Lazy loading images means you load images on your website asynchronously. After the above-the-fold content is fully loaded, the remaining images will only be loaded when they come into your browser’s viewport. This means that if users don’t scroll all of the ways down, images placed at the bottom of the page won’t be loaded. This lowers the time it takes for your page to initially load

Use fewer images and resource-heavy assets

The more images, videos, and 3rd party scripts/plugins you use, the longer it will take for your page to load. Try to have your website operate as leanly as possible. Using CSS to style text-based buttons instead of relying on images is an example of things you can do to make your site not only more accessible but run faster!

These are just a few tips for making your page load faster. A lot of these are best handled by professional Web Designers & Developers, so don’t be discouraged if these terms seem overly technical. At PSPinc, we have professional Designers and Developers who are knowledgeable of SEO and sophisticated web design! If you need help building a new website or updating an existing one, please let us know. We would love to talk to you about it further!

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

#PSPinc #PageSpeed #SEO #Website

Website Etiquette your Business Needs to Know

Feb

13

image source: pixabay.com

Last week we talked about the importance of having a company privacy policy visible to customers on your website. Today let’s discuss more etiquette to consider when it comes to your website:

1) Is your contact information easy for customers to find?

If you don’t have a customer service or info email on your homepage, have an online form for customers to fill out. It’s actually better to not list your email address on your homepage as spammers tend to grab those.

2) Does your website load quickly?

Do not load your website with too many images or videos. It won’t matter how pretty those images are if your website loads slowly, because people will not wait to see it. We are impatient beings and you can expect your bounce rate to skyrocket. Have a good balance of content and visual appeal without overdoing large files that slow down your load time.

3) Is it easy to navigate through the site?

Be kind to your visitors and make sure your navigation is easy to follow. You may know your business well but your visitors don’t, so be thoughtful when organizing your layout and navigation. It may be worth asking for some feedback from new customers to see how easy it was for them to navigate your site. Again, people have little tolerance and patience for getting lost online.

4) Have you tested your site?

The simplest way to make sure your website is user friendly is to test it with a focus group. Sometimes we’re “too close” to the product to understand how others experience it. Consider asking some outsiders (friends, family, business associates) to check your site and provide feedback so you can update accordingly.

If you would like a professional analysis of your website, contact us at PSPinc. We can do a free evaluation and give you some pointers for improvement. Contact us toll free at 1-800-232-3989.

#Blog #BusinessTips #ENnews #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Technology #WebDevelopment #Website #WebsiteTips

Happy Halloween

Oct

31

Beautiful team.

#blog #businesstips #ennews #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #smallbusiness #technology #webhosting #website #webtools

5 Frightening Web Design Mistakes

Oct

31

image source: pixabay.com

Happy Halloween! To honor this frightfully fun day, we thought it would be a good idea to continue our website tips by giving a list of frightening design mistakes you should avoid. Let’s begin:

1. Confusing message. If your customers can’t tell who you are and what you do within the first few seconds visiting your site, why would they stick around? Make it clear right away what you do and what you sell.

2. Too much text. Okay too much of anything is bad. You can have too much text, too much white space, too many images, too many fonts, too many colors. This is where templates come in handy. A template can guide you in the fonts and spacing; you just need to add some high-quality content and imagery.

3. Hidden contact info. Your email, phone, address, or a contact form should be easy to find and readily available to people. If not, you may lose their trust.

4. Not mobile-friendly. A responsive design is a must-have. Your website should be easily viewable on all devices. Don’t expect that people are only searching and viewing your website from a PC.

5. No privacy policy. People may not take the time to read it, but for many of them, it’s a comfort just to know you have a plan in place for keeping their data secure. Get a GDPR approved privacy policy on your site asap.

Hopefully you’ve come away this month with some great ideas for designing or refreshing your company’s website. If you’d like to talk to the professionals, give us a call at PSPinc about customizing a site to your needs. We are here to make sure you have a great experience and come away with a BOO-tiful website!

#Blog #BusinessTips #ENnews #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Technology #WebDesign #WebHosting #Website

Your Website: More Improvement Tips

Oct

24

image source: pixabay.com

All month long we’ve been giving tips on how to improve the look, feel and functionality of your website. The end goal is to create a site customers feel comfortable navigating.

If your business is brand new, this might be a good time to consider getting a professionally-designed logo. Logo design comes in several forms for several budgets, depending on the extent of what you need. You can hire a graphic designer to quickly create something, or you can hire a branding expert to not only design your logo, but really analyze your brand as whole.

Logo design isn’t just for startup companies. Perhaps your business has been around a long time and your logo could use an update. Just like images should be crystal clear and high quality, so should your logo.

The next thing to consider is website layout. We have templates you can choose from, which takes all the guesswork out of layout and fonts and white space and the things mentioned in our previous blog post. Customizing a template website is a great way to create a professional, organized website for your business. Learn more about WebdeXpress today.

Finally, people won’t stay on your website very long if they don’t think it’s secure. Make sure your website is secured by a Secure Socket Layer (SSL or TLS) certificate. A secure website with encryption technology is marked by a little lock icon in the URL. If the lock isn’t there, the URL line will advertise “Not secure,” and you can be sure to lose visitors really fast.

#Blog #BusinessTips #ENnews #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Technology #WebDesign #WebHosting #Website

DIY a Professional Website

Oct

3

In 2019 a professional website is easy to come by at just about any budget. Even if you don’t sell online and have no need for an e-commerce site, your brick and mortar store should still have an online presence – otherwise you may be selling yourself short. You may be missing out on exposure from potential customers who are searching online for a business like yours.

A website doesn’t have to be elaborate with many pages or functionalities. It can be a few simple pages with great imagery, information about your business, and contact information for how and where you can be reached.

Let’s say you own a small yoga studio. A website would serve as a place where people can learn about the different types of classes you offer with details about your schedule, rates, location, contact info, liability info, photos of your studio, info on what to wear or bring, and more. For people who find your website online, you’ve just answered a lot of questions for them before they ever stepped foot inside your building. Your website is your best opportunity for a great first impression.

At PSP, we have a smart program called Dreamersi, offering web and email hosting for just $250 a year. This plan includes:

- Free domain with hosting plan
- 1 Website
- 10 GB Web Space
- Free WebdeXpress Website Builder
- Easy WordPress Install
- Website Reporting
- SSL Certificate (add-on)
- Secure Hosting Environment
- 24/7 Monitoring
- 10 GB Email Space
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Online Webmail
- Website & Email Backup
- Privacy Protection (add-on)

We’ve made it easy to get your website up and running. You can choose to build it yourself, or if you prefer help, let’s talk about customization options. We’re here to get your business noticed online. Follow along this month as we continue to give tips on designing a smart website for your small business.

#Blog #BusinessTips #ENnews #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Technology #WebHosting #WebTools #Website

What is Responsive Web Design?

May

28

image source: pixabay.com

Responsive design is a technique used by web designers where the pages of a website “respond” and reconfigure to a mobile-friendly view on whatever device is being used. Not too long ago, designers had to create one website for desktop and a separate one for mobile. The mobile website was usually a watered-down version of the main site – but times have changed.

Even before Google announced mobile-first indexing, web designers were already transitioning to a single website that worked across all devices. They do this by using fluid and proportion-based grids that adjust their size by a percentage relative to the display size.

This type of web design has become the standard for how websites are built today. And this is because of the increase in smartphone and tablet users, which now make up over half of all website visitors.

One major issue that designers have to deal with when designing responsive websites is mouse vs. touch. A website displayed on a desktop is navigated using a mouse but mobile devices use our thumbs. Designers have to build a website that responds and adapts to the display size while still making the site easy to navigate.

According to a Pew study, 77% of Americans now own a smartphone, which is more than double the number of smartphone owners in 2011. If you track your website traffic, look at the devices that your website visitors are coming from. You’ll probably be surprised at the amount of mobile users. If you don’t have a responsive website you should consider building one to make the best use of it.

For more information about responsive web design watch our video below:

#Blog #BusinessTips #ENnews #PSPinc #ResponsiveWebsites #SmallBusiness #Technology #WebDesign #Website

PSPINC Official Company Blog

freespace

How to structure and organize your website navigation

Common mistakes people make

Too Many Pages

Too Few Pages

Bloated Top-level Navigation

Multi-level Dropdown Navigation

Tips for designing your navigation

PSPinc What's New Newsletter Vol.56 "Why SSL and the SEO Effect"

Impact of Website SEO with Search Engines: Responsive Design

What is responsive design?

Why is responsive design important?

Is your website mobile-friendly?

Impact of Website SEO with Search Engines: Page Speed

What’s going to happen if my page speed is slow?

How can I improve my page speed?

Image file compression

Browser caching

Lazy load images

Use fewer images and resource-heavy assets

Website Etiquette your Business Needs to Know

Happy Halloween

5 Frightening Web Design Mistakes

Your Website: More Improvement Tips

DIY a Professional Website

What is Responsive Web Design?

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bloguru friends

calendar

latest comments

hashtags

history

freespace

Sign up for our newsletter

Common mistakes people make

Too Many Pages

Too Few Pages

Bloated Top-level Navigation

Multi-level Dropdown Navigation

Tips for designing your navigation

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

What is responsive design?

Why is responsive design important?

Is your website mobile-friendly?

People Who Wowed This Post

What’s going to happen if my page speed is slow?

How can I improve my page speed?

Image file compression

Browser caching

Lazy load images

Use fewer images and resource-heavy assets

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

People Who Wowed This Post

introduction

bloguru friends

calendar

latest comments

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history