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Many business owners mistakenly think that they need to focus all their online marketing efforts on generating as much traffic to their website as possible. While having a lot of traffic is not necessarily a bad thing, how much better and more profitable would it be to convert more of that traffic into paying customers?

Here are three easy and proven ways that will help kick-start your website’s conversion power and turn more traffic into paying customers today.

1. Phone Number

Be sure that your phone number is visible on every page of your website. Your customers like to know that they are working with a company that is accessible. Having your phone number appear on every page of your website will give the impression that your company is accessible, trustworthy, and credible. It is also very important to make sure that the phone number is in text format, and not an image. This will ensure that your phone number is clickable for mobile users, enabling them to call you directly from your website on their mobile device.

2. Contact Forms

Giving users multiple contact options increases the likelihood they will convert, and in addition to providing a phone number, contact forms are essential. Make sure a contact form is on every page of your website or is at least one click away. Limit the amount of information that you require on your contact form to the absolute essentials. If you make it too difficult for your visitors to submit the form, they likely won’t. As a web design company in Tampa, we understand the significant impact that contact forms can have on your website conversions, which is why we incorporate contact forms into every one of our clients’ websites. By having your contact forms readily available to your visitors and by limiting the amount of information you require, you’ll start to see higher conversions in no time.

3. Calls to Action

When a visitor enters your website, what is the desired action you want them to take? Maybe it’s subscribing to a newsletter, or maybe you’d like your visitor to schedule a consultation. Regardless of what action you want a visitor to take, calls to action are very useful. Calls to action (CTAs) are essential for encouraging visitors to take action. Effective CTAs should be clear, concise, and compelling. They should also be clearly distinguished from the rest of the site’s content.

Now that you know 3 easy ways to increase your website conversions, start putting them into action.

Leverage Digital is a Tampa web design company. For a free consultation, please call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Flat design is a user-centric design style that has been around for quite some time, but has more recently started to make big waves in web design. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are among the many companies that have recently embraced this growing design trend. “Why,” you may ask? Because it works.

Flat Design: What Is It?

Flat design can be characterized as a minimalistic design style that focuses on color, form, function, and font by utilizing clean open space, crisp edges, and two dimensional graphics like the example above of Microsoft’s homepage.

Unlike skeuomorphism design, which uses complex design elements such as embossing, drop shadows, and textures to give off a more realistic appearance, flat design puts more emphasis on increasing usability rather than increasing aesthetic appeal. The theory behind this design style is that if a user is not distracted by all the design elements that are typically used in skeuomorphic designs, then the user will be better able to focus on what is important, the content.

Why Web Design is Going Flat

Great for Responsive Design

In today’s digital on-the-go age, more and more users are reaching for their mobile devices to search for products and services they find of interest. Responsive design allows businesses the ability to provide their users with a consistent user experience across the various devices used to perform these searches. Flat design is great for responsive design. Many of the best responsive design websites utilize flat design elements because this design style scales well to smaller screens and allows for faster page load speeds.

Easier to Use

When properly executed, a flat design website should be simple for users to utilize on both desktop and mobile devices. The limited use of design elements and removal of flashy embellishments, eliminates the unnecessary distractions that often cause frustration to users. Furthermore, the bold typography that is used within flat design is generally easier to read and the larger, less cluttered action buttons are more apparent. The shedding of the skeuomorphic design elements also enhance a website’s ability to be cross-browser compatible.

Encourages User Engagement

Content that is communicated in a simple and clear manner is more easily digested by a user. Hence, the effectiveness of flat design. The use of clean, bright, contrasting colors help to increase the visibility of buttons, highlight calls to action, and encourage user engagement. Additionally, because flat design websites tend to have fewer graphics and smaller image file sizes, they typically have faster page load speeds.

Is Flat Design Better Than Skeuomorphic Design?

The emergence of flat design as a trend shows that there has been a major shift towards user-friendly, minimalistic designs. At Leverage Digital, we have always espoused the importance of clean and user-centric designs. Though the winds have shifted in the world of web design, the important thing to keep in mind is that one design style is not necessarily inherently better than the other. They both have advantages and disadvantages, and so it depends on the needs of your customers and the goals of your business when deciding which design style is the best option for you.

Leverage Digital is a Tampa web design company. Give us a call today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form for more information on our web design services.

Your website is one of the most crucial elements of your marketing strategy. A poorly designed website can not only have a significant negative impact on your brand, it also has the potential to cost your business thousands of dollars in lost sales.

A well-designed website will be better equipped to provide your customers with a great user experience, which leads to increased conversions and ultimately increased sales.

When looking to design a website that will help increase your company’s bottom line, try to avoid these costly mistakes:

1. Ignoring Your Target Audience

One of the most important factors to take into consideration when designing your website is your target audience. Although your website should impress and help distinguish your brand from the competition, its main purpose is to speak to your customers. This is why it’s essential to take their needs into account throughout the entire web development process. When your website is designed with your customers in mind, it will provide them with a more enjoyable and valuable user experience.

2. Overdoing The Design

A cluttered or crowded design can do a major disservice to your website. Using too many design elements can be distracting and cause frustration when users are unable to easily find what they’re looking for. These types of designs can come off as unprofessional and disorganized, and can cause the user to embrace these same negative feelings towards your brand. When it comes to design elements for a website, a good rule of thumb is to use them in the same way you would spend money, which for most would be carefully and with purpose.

3. Missing Calls to Action

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are designed to prompt users to take a desired action. When properly designed and placed in optimal areas of a website, these actions help users navigate through a website and motivate them to continue down the conversion funnel until they ultimately become a paying customer. Business owners who feel they are not generating the desired results from their websites are often missing this fundamental component. When a website is missing CTAs, the business is missing out on a window of opportunity to convert visitors into customers.

4. Hiring the Wrong Web Design Company

Many businesses do not realize the importance of selecting a professional web design firm to handle their web development initiatives. This may be one of the most common and costly marketing mistakes a business can make. Selecting the right Tampa web design company can mean the difference between having a professional website that helps improve your brand and facilitate new business, or ending up with a poorly designed product that could cost you thousands of dollars and a great deal of time to fix. To get it right the first time and maximize your return on investment, choose a company that specializes in professional web design and also has a great track record.

5. Doing it Yourself

When it comes to having a professional website designed for your business, this task is better left to the professionals. It may seem enticing at first to save a little money upfront by doing it yourself. However, when considering the damage that a DIY website can cause to your brand and reputation, the intangible costs far outweigh the financial cost of hiring a professional Tampa web design company to deliver an effective website that improves your corporate image and attracts, rather than deters potential customers.

Leverage Digital is a web design company in Tampa, FL that specializes in designing professional websites. For more information, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Everyday, thousands of websites are compromised by malicious software (malware) that can jeopardize a company’s online integrity and security. Having a website infected with malware is not only a frustrating experience, but also a liability. Malware is commonly used by attackers to gain access to a website’s sensitive data and disrupt the operation of the business.

Malware attacks are not only a threat to the website owner, but they also pose a considerable risk to anyone who visits the site while it’s infected. Malware can infect your visitors’ computers or mobile devices, and steal their bank account information, credit card information, passwords, and other sensitive data.

“Malware can infect your visitors’ computers or mobile devices, and steal their bank account information, credit card information, passwords, and other sensitive data.”

In a 2013 Website Security Statistics Report by WhiteHat Security, it was found that 86% of the websites tested in their study had at least one serious vulnerability. In most cases, the number was far greater than that. A serious vulnerability is classified as one that could lead to a malware attacker having control over a site, user accounts, or sensitive data. The report also notes that 61% of the discovered vulnerabilities were resolved. However, it would take an average of 193 days for the vulnerability to be addressed.

In this amount of time, the damage is already done.

5 Ways Malware Attackers Can Compromise Your Website

There are many different vulnerabilities that a malware attacker can take advantage of to inject malicious code into your website. Here are five of the most common:

1. Password Choice Vulnerabilities (Brute Force Attacks): Over the years, many large scale password analysis studies have been conducted, and what they’ve found is a great majority of website owners use simple passwords such as “123456″ or “password.” These types of passwords are not difficult for experienced malware attackers to crack, and are an open invitation for malicious code.

2. FTP Connection Vulnerabilities: Many websites are often infected through a process known as password sniffing. This is where a silent Trojan or Rootkit, which has been unknowingly placed onto the website administrator’s device, is used to obtain the the username and password of the website. Malware attackers will then use the gathered information to access and infect the website with malicious code at a later time.

3. Website Vulnerabilities: There are several different vulnerabilities within a website itself that a malware attacker can use to inject malicious code. Some of these vulnerabilities include weaknesses in contact forms, login fields, comment fields, and newsletter subscription forms that enable the attacker to inject the malicious code through the form fields.

4. Server Vulnerabilities: Unbeknownst to website owners, many servers that are used to host websites have major security holes that malware attackers seek to manipulate to gain access to the files and code of websites on the server. These are some of the most dangerous types of intrusions due to the fact that if granted access, the malware attacker has the potential to wipe out an entire site.

5. Third Party Add-On Vulnerabilities: A growing trend among malware attackers is to use third party add-on (e.g., WordPress plugins) vulnerabilities to gain access to a website. To prevent this type of malware intrusion, before installing a new third party add-on, make sure that the add-on is reputable and regularly updated.

As a Tampa web design company that is highly experienced with malware prevention and removal, we recommend that if you suspect your website has been infected with malware to have an expert review your website for malicious code immediately. The longer malware remains on your website, the more damage it will do.

Leverage Digital is a web design company in Tampa. For more information regarding malware prevention and removal, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

5 Years of Product and Customer Data Gone

Is your website backed up regularly? Do you have a contingency plan in place if your website is infected with malware (malicious software) or hacked? If not, you’re playing with fire, and it is all but guaranteed that eventually your website will be attacked, resulting in potentially catastrophic data loss.

Recently, one of our clients who hosts an e-commerce store on GoDaddy contacted me to see if I could help figure out why their site was down. So, I looked into it, and discovered that their database had been completely wiped out. That’s over 1,000 products and 5 years of customer data gone, just like that, and they had not been backing up their database.

GoDaddy Will Have a Backup, Right?

I proceeded to contact GoDaddy, and was told that for $150 they could restore the database, and that it would take 7-10 days. That’s good news, but I wanted to know how this happened, so it could be prevented in the future. They couldn’t give me an answer. They just said nothing had been done on their end that would have caused removal of the data. Translation, “It’s not our problem.”

Upon further investigation, GoDaddy realized they actually did not have any backups of this database, and proceeded to remind me that the customer is responsible for maintaining all backups per their Terms of Service. Whoops! Now, the $150 GoDaddy restore was no longer an option.

The result? This client will now have to rebuild their e-commerce store from scratch.

While I’m extremely dissatisfied with GoDaddy’s lack of support regarding this issue (though the customer support reps I spoke with were very nice), this could have happened with any hosting provider. The only way our client could have prevented this was by maintaining regular backups.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is if your site is ever compromised, regardless of the reason, it will be your responsibility to fix it. Without backups, fixing may mean rebuilding. Your website is an investment, and performing regular backups is a cheap insurance policy.

If you haven’t backed your site up lately, I recommend starting now.

On June 27th, Google announced the new beta release of AdWords Review Extensions, which will now allow businesses to include a snippet of a testimonial or review from a third party right on their search ad. This new extension could be very beneficial to businesses looking to increase their credibility within their search ads.

Review Extensions Details

As shown in the provided image above, businesses will have the opportunity to submit either a direct quotation of the review or a summary of the main point of the review. The review snippet will be placed on the bottom of the search ad followed by the name of the source publication, which will be linked to the publication’s website. This is where the destination URL can be set to the page where the full review is showcased. Clicks on the this link will not be counted as chargeable by Google.

The review snippets will be limited to 67 characters, including the number of characters in the source publication name, and all review snippets must be of high-quality and from a reputable third party source.

All reviews must be pre-approved for use by the source publication and must comply with standard AdWords policies. To prevent abuse from spammers and questionable businesses, and to help ensure policy compliance, Google has put in place automated and human-based systems to review and validate all review extensions.

Leverage Digital Media is a Tampa PPC Company. Please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form for more information regarding our AdWords campaign management services.