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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.

eMarketer estimates in its latest forecast that Google continues to dominate the search advertising market with 74% of total U.S. search ad market share. In 2012, Google was reported earning an estimated $12.79 billion in ad revenues, and is expected to reach $14.39 billion in 2013.

Microsoft earned an estimated 660 million dollars in net U.S. search ad revenues in 2012 and is expected to reach 890 million dollars in 2013, accounting for 4.6% of total U.S. search ad revenues in 2013. Based on an assessment of Microsoft’s decreasing traffic acquisition costs (TAC), eMarketer originally estimated their earnings to reach $1.41 billion in 2012 and $1.84 billion in 2013, but new data shows that despite the decreases in TAC, according to eMarketer, initial costs of acquiring search traffic were far higher than expected. This new information led to the downward revision of Microsoft’s estimated ad revenues.

Yahoo! continues to take second place behind Google in U.S. search ad market share, and is expected to earn $1.27 billion this year, and account for 6.5% of total U.S. search ad revenues.

eMarketer estimates that advertisers will spend almost $19.49 billion on search marketing in 2013, a 12.4% increase over 2012.

Interested in search marketing? Leverage Digital Media is a professional SEO company in Tampa. Call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form to see how we can help your business.

In their 2nd Annual U.S. Mobile Path to Purchase Study, xAd and Telmetrics concluded that consumers are reaching for their smartphones and tablets earlier and more often in their search for local goods and services. They also found that key factors like local relevancy and promotions highly influenced consumers’ purchase decisions.

Mobile Used Early & Often

The study reports 45% of consumers that are searching for local products and services will reach for their mobile device first when starting a search, and 49% will use a desktop device. However, when it comes to the mobile user, 54% of all mobile users will look to an additional media source at some point in their purchasing process, while the remaining 46% will use their mobile device as their sole primary search tool.

Additionally, it was found that half of mobile users will use their device at the start of the search process with 1 out of 3 using their mobile device throughout the entire process.

Mobile Conversions Impacted by Device and Location

Local relevancy was a top motivator for consumer purchase selection, as 1 in 3 smartphone users and 1 in 4 tablet users utilized their devices to search specifically for contact information such as an address, phone number, or driving directions. The study also concluded that 60% of mobile users expect businesses to be within walking distance or a 5 mile driving radius.

Mobile users who participated in this study were found to have high purchase intent with 60% of smartphone users and 53% of tablet users completing purchases related to their mobile search. 74% of smartphone users completed transactions offline or in-store, while 54% of tablet related purchases were made online through a mobile device or PC, and 22% of mobile users completed transactions directly through their mobile device.

Leverage Digital Media is a SEO company in Tampa that specializes in mobile search and design. If you would like more information on how we can help you increase mobile traffic and conversions, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Since her arrival as Chief Executive Officer to Yahoo, Inc. almost a year ago, Marissa Mayer has been struggling to end their 10 year search deal with Microsoft, which started in 2010, for a more lucrative partnership with search giant and former employer Google, but Microsoft has no intentions of letting Yahoo out of their deal.

Under the terms of their contract, Yahoo is obligated to utilize Microsoft’s Bing search engine for search Yahoo Bing search dealresults on Yahoo sites. Yahoo and Microsoft also have a revenue guarantee which expired and was extended for an additional 12 months (U.S. only) on March 31, 2013.

This arrangement allocates 12% of the revenue received from Yahoo’s search advertisements to Microsoft. In return, Microsoft guarantees Yahoo a set amount of revenue for every search query made on a Yahoo site. Although Microsoft’s revenue guarantee is worth $12-$15 million a quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo’s revenue per search has been its worst since they partnered with Microsoft.

In February, Mayer said the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft was not delivering. “One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other,” Mayer said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.

In a recent regulatory filing, Yahoo disclosed their desire to terminate their arrangement with Microsoft, but will either have to wait until 2015 (the halfway mark of the contract), the sale of Bing to another company by Microsoft, or revenue-per-search dipping below their agreed threshold to make any moves.

If Yahoo and Google do eventually partner, this partnership could have a tremendous impact on search as we know it.

Leverage Digital Media is a Tampa SEO company. If you would like more information on search engine optimization, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.