3 Simple Ways Brick and Mortar Storefronts Can Expand Their Online Footprint

Business Advice, E-Commerce No Comment

Studies have shown that 90% of American businesses are family-owned or controlled. Mom-and-pop shops are vital to their communities and the economy. Amid COVID-19, small businesses are hard at work adapting and pivoting their services and offerings for customers.

One key area brick and mortar storefronts have been focused on is creating, or expanding, upon their online footprint. Not only does getting online help grow the sales and customer base of a small business, but it increases the company’s visibility now and into the future. Here are a few simple ways mom-and-pop shops can start establishing their online presence.

1. Create a website.

In 2019, it was reported that only 50% of small businesses have a website.

Why are only half of small businesses online? Starting a website may seem like a daunting task if you haven’t done it before. Mom-and-pop shop owners can start to feel overwhelmed thinking about what all should be included on their website and that they do not have enough time to focus on it. They may feel like they’re unable to do the job on their own and need to hire a coder or developer to assist with setting it up.

The good news is that putting together a small business website is not nearly as complicated or time consuming as it seems. Many companies offer website packages that provide small business owners with all the necessary tools. These tools may include website templates, which are optimized to view across all electronic devices and unlimited pages designed to showcase your services and offerings.

2. Start an e-newsletter.

Setting up an e-newsletter is a great way for brick and mortar storefronts to keep customers up-to-date about their businesses. Information found in e-newsletters may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Changes in hours of operations
  • Limited time offers and sales
  • News from within the company, including announcement of new leadership, relevant content like blog posts, and media placements
  • Job postings and hiring announcements
  • Positive customer reviews sourced through websites like Yelp
  • Social media handles to further stay connected and engaged together

There are a few ways you can start gathering subscribers for your company’s e-newsletter. Once you have launched your website, you may include a pop-up box on the home page that allows visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. You may also share a call to action (CTA) on your social media accounts, encouraging fans to subscribe for more news and updates.

3. Engage on social media.

Speaking of social media, let’s talk about any existing business pages and accounts.

Maybe you created a Facebook or Twitter handle for your small business, but have not been able to figure out what you’ll be posting to the platforms or how frequently you’ll be sharing content. Perhaps you wanted to make an Instagram account, but haven’t had the time to figure out what your strategy might be to grow your following and engage with fans.

Take a moment to review the social media platforms where you do have a presence. If you find that you are on platforms where your customers are not present, you may delete these accounts. Do not try to be everywhere at once. Stick to a core few social media accounts where you know your audience is present. Establish an editorial calendar of content you’d like to post to these pages. Engage with fans that have questions or feedback they’d like to offer up and make sure their voices are heard.

This unprecedented time too shall pass, and brick and mortar storefronts will emerge with even more verve and awareness since they strengthened their online presence. By creating a website, starting an e-newsletter, and staying engaged with fans on social media accounts, small businesses will be able to hit the ground running stronger than ever before.

 

Source: Business2Community

The importance of a logo design and 5 reasons why you need a good one

Business Advice, Web Design Tips No Comment

Every business needs a visual representation of who they are and what they are about. Logos not only pull the eye with their catchy designs, but they also can provide a quick glimpse into the company. Those without logos are not only less noticeable, but they also take the risk of not being remembered by future or passing customers which means even more so, less repeat business, and less loyalty. Knowing the importance of logo design and why you need one is the first step in starting and maintaining your business successfully. Here’s why…

Branding your business

One of the foremost reasons to design a logo is so that you can brand yourself and your business which, in the long run, will allow you to get your name out faster and provide customers with a visual subject to remember you by.

When branding and advertising, your logo is what you are going to use on business cards, websites, fliers, adverts, and everything in between. It is what will be considered the “profile picture” of your business and many people will refer to this image in their minds when looking for, or referring back to your company.

As it should be a unique image to your business to your name, logos direct attention to themselves and give first impressions as well as implanting themselves as memories for those who were impressed or even took the time to absorb it. The quality of design of course, can effect whether the impressions are good and whether the memories will stick with them or not.

Brand definition

A brand not only defines a company itself; it also tells a story. Brands use images inspired to represent themselves by letting their design choice tell their story. The choice of design ultimately decides what the logo is going to say. Smiles and friendly faces can signify friendly, customer service. Smooth lines and clear backgrounds can put off impressions of smooth operation and ease of use. Some designs use characters and the year they were established to show history and the sturdiness of their business. Logos are ultimately a visual representation of who a company is, and the choice lies within what type of message or story you want to tell with it.

Brand attention

Living in such a rapid-paced society, we are more likely to give our bursts of wayward attention to images instead of text or writing. Even in passing, it is easier to note a digital image than it is to absorb a foreign word or combination of words. If something seems too complicated to us or our eye, we are less likely to stop and pay attention to it. We move past it without giving it the energy we need to fully take it in.

By utilizing logos, we decrease the time it takes to grab someone’s attention as they bustle passed and it leaves them more likely to remember the encounter. In crowded marketplaces or trade shows, your logo allows the wandering eye to find your company and pique an interest as to what you are about. This can be used to your advantage to draw in potential customers who wanted to satisfy their curiosity or noticed your logo and had to see what it represented.

Uniqueness of your logo and brand

Colors, fonts, and overall graphic design choice will certainly be what causes your logo to succeed or fail. This is because certain colors are attractive and stand out, while others deter people and slip past the busy mind’s eye. If potential customers cannot read the font on your logo, it can cause confusion and those customers may decide to go where they feel more comfortable. Odd how the human brain can immediately decide if it likes something or not and whether it should be submitted to memory.

That being said, when you use a logo for branding, it becomes easier to tell your company apart from others – easily. Going beyond that, the brighter and more attractive the logo, the more likely you are to stand out against the rest. Not only will you become more recognizable, you will become more noticeable and the association will be made between your image and your company. The level of uniqueness heightens these abilities of your logo.

Logo image and security

Sure, there are two points listed here, but they go hand in hand with each other with how they affect companies. Logos do one major job, and that is scream ownership! When designs are solidified and the correct legal trademarks have been made, no one else can use your logo because it is simply – yours! Not only will this logo exude itself within any and all branding, but it will show that you are present and that you are established.

Giving off these impressions allow your company to show that there is a solid foundation beneath your business, and that you are successful and knowledgeable. In short, having a logo established gives off an air of professionalism that those without logos will miss, over and over again – simply because they seem unprofessional.

Lastly, the “profile picture” analogy can be applied here to help prevent scams and thefts to happen within your company, as well in general society. Having your logo present on delivery vehicles, emails, letters, and even business doors will provide a sense of security to customers which will help them return in the future.
Designing a logo should be the foremost importance when creating a company so that you can utilize it to work for you. It will not only speak for you, but it will bring your customers a sense of personalization and security while making you recognizable and unique. When thinking about the importance of a logo, consider these two questions: Can you name one major company without a logo? Would you use a company without one?

Four Web Design Tips To Convert Visitors Into Customers

E-Commerce, Web Design Tips No Comment

Every business needs to invest in improving online visibility because of consumer behavior. People leverage the power of smartphones and the internet to learn more about products and services, making them independent shoppers. And the rise of branded searches, or users looking for information about your company or products, means lost business opportunities without an effective digital presence.

Empowered by mobile, consumers are more curious, demanding and impatient than ever before.

Consumers In The Age Of Assistance

According to Google, there are three types of consumers today:

• The Curious Consumer: Buyers are now research-obsessed. They want to make sure every purchasing decision is well-informed to avoid regrets.

• The Demanding Consumer: People want to encounter digital touchpoints that are tailored for them, even if they don’t verbalize their requests.

• The Impatient Consumer: The rise of smartphones and internet connectivity has led to impatient buyers. Many shoppers do commercial research while on the go.

These traits influence consumers’ expectations of how they interact with your brand. As such, it’s your responsibility to provide a smooth, seamless customer experience, starting with your website.

I’ll walk you through several factors that can improve your website’s overall function and performance, optimizing your user experience and interface at the same time.

Web Design Factors To Prioritize

1. Clear Navigation 

Your website navigation structure should allow users to easily go to another page regardless of where they started. Not all visitors start on your homepage and follow a predictable path. They should be able to locate a specific product from the page they’re coming from.

Keep your visitors from feeling overwhelmed by breaking the navigation into groups of five to seven options. The small number of options keeps the user focused on their goal, helping them make prompt decisions.

Hick’s Law, a popular web design principle, says that the more choices you present to users, the longer it will take them to make a decision. The danger is that the visitor might lose interest in your disorganized site; they’ll end up clicking out.

However, Hick’s Law isn’t applicable to every part of your site. Some pages will contain more content than others, like product pages, for example. In this case, highlight the product, promo or option you want people to select to make them more visible.

Search function is another feature of clear navigation. A search bar follows the three-click rule, a design principle saying that users will quit your site if it requires too many clicks just to find what they need.

In my decade working in digital marketing, I can say with certainty that another website feature that accommodates the needs of the impatient consumer is loading speed.

2. Quick Loading Speed

Page speed is important for all viewing devices, but it has more weight for mobile. The 2019 Page Speed Report shows that slow loading times lower the chances of a shopper returning to your website. Twenty-two percent of mobile users admit to leaving slow-loading pages and 14% said these sites force them to visit a competitor’s. Google provides this free tool for diagnosing your site’s loading issues.

Page speed is also an SEO ranking factor. It boosts your website’s visibility in search engines. This helps you gain a better position for generating traffic, converting them into leads, then customers. 

Apart from loading speed and navigation, the layout of your website also affects your conversion rate. At first glance, your site should be simple and intuitive. This provides a comfortable reading experience for users, preventing them from clicking out of your page.

3. User-Friendly Layout 

The point of your layout is to make your content as readable as possible. If your site’s not readable enough, it won’t entice action from the visitor.

Digital users are always on the go, so they may not have time to read through your entire article or page.

According to UX Myths, people don’t read site content; they skim. Use this behavior to create a user-friendly layout.

The F-pattern is a common eye-scanning pattern among speed readers. People typically read the first part of your content to get an idea of what it’s about. After, they scan downward on the left side of the screen to look for any points of interest.

The F-pattern helps you create a layout with good visual hierarchy, resulting in easily scannable content. The key to nailing the F-pattern is by immediately establishing the purpose of the page in the first two paragraphs and using powerful, straight-to-the-point headers. Cover only one idea per paragraph and use bullet points whenever you can.

Break text-heavy pages with relevant images and an adequate amount of negative space.

Lastly, an easily spotted call-to-action button is necessary for all of your web pages. This prompts a response from the user that will lead them further into the buyer’s journey.

4. Strong, Clear Call-To-Action

Your call-to-action (CTA) button isn’t always transactional. You have to anticipate the needs of the reader to recommend relevant content. Your CTA may invite the reader to another blog post related to the one they just read, similar products they may find interesting, or downloadable files that may help their problem.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that the placement and color of the button are critical. Place it in a highly visible part of your layout. You can follow the rule of thirds to highlight important elements of the page, such as the CTA button.

Above all, prioritize clarity and ease of use when designing your website. Your landing pages must make it easy for the user to go from one page to another as their browsing intent changes. This way, your website facilitates their progression along the buyer’s journey, so you get to be with them every step of the way.

We’ve designed and developed websites for a lot of businesses worldwide, and the main conclusion is that a user-friendly website always generates leads and converts customers to increase your bottom-line revenue.

 

Source: Forbes.com

How to improve your Website Marketing?

SEO Tips, Web Design Tips No Comment

No matter what kind of company you run, make sure your advertising and website marketing is on point. This is particularly the case if you run a roofing company; competition is strife and there are a lot of other businesses running campaigns out there to try and attract new customers. Now, there are a lot of ways to advertise but the best ways are usually online- everyone uses the internet and if you can appeal to people out there, you’ll be well on the way to getting as many on board as possible. However, getting seen on the internet isn’t an easy process. There are a lot of other websites competing for top spots and that’s why you need to make sure your marketing and tactics are on point, but how do you do this? That’s why I’m here- here are the best ways to improve your website marketing if you’re a roofing company.

Go for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The first thing I’d recommend doing is working on your search engine optimization. SEO is one of the most important things when it comes to getting your website higher up on the search results lists and it more or less involves improving certain things to do with your site- working on keywords, making it more in line with search engine algorithms and other things like that. You could do this yourself and there are a lot of people out there who do it on their own for their own companies.

However, I believe that hiring an SEO company could be a worthwhile option for you as well. By doing this, you’re putting your SEO in the hands of professionals who will really know what they’re doing. They know all the tricks of the trade and by simply paying them a required fee, you’ll be in really good hands. There are a lot of good SEO companies for roofers out there but if you want to check out an example, go and have a look at http://www.roofingseogeeks.com 

Ensure website design is up to date

I’d also recommend making sure your website is up to scratch in terms of design. It’s really important that your website looks good when people are using it; if it looks messy and unorganized, visitors will be much more likely to click off it and visit other sites. By having a clean and organized website that’s user-friendly and easy to use, people will be much more likely to stay on it and hire you for any work they need done. Make sure your colors all match and aren’t too in the face of users, make sure all links are easy to click on and use and ensure any contact details are easy to find as well. This will ensure all users who visit your site will have a good time.

Advertise on social media platforms

Advertising your website on different social media platforms could also be really useful. This will allow people to see your website as an option; they’ll be much more likely to visit it and more people will know it exists. No publicity is bad publicity when it comes to website visitors and this is vital if you want to be a successful roofing company.

Source: Daily Host News

Plugin flaw puts over 200,000 WordPress sites at risk of attack

What's New, Wordpress No Comment

Over 200,000 WordPress sites have been warned they may have been exposed to a bug that allows hackers to take over the website easily.

The affected sites were all found to be running an unpatched open-source plugin that puts them at risk of attack.

This high severity cross-site request forgery (CSRF) bug has impacted a plugin called Code Snippets which is used to run PHP code snippets offering a graphical user interface that looks similar to the plugins menu.

Attacked

The bug, first tracked by security firm Wordfence, allowed attackers to inject a PHP code on behalf of the administrator and execute malicious codes remotely. It also allowed hackers to create new administrator accounts, extract sensitive data, and even infect site users.

Wordfence researchers pointed out that though the developers had followed all the security measures however, the import function in the plugin had a flaw that could be easily compromised.

The vulnerability has been fixed on 25th January, a couple of days later it was reported, with the latest release of the Code Snippet plugin now version 2.14.0. Any admins running an older version of the plugin have been told they must update to the patched version.

As per a WordPress plugin download data of the latest update, approximately 58,000 users have downloaded the updated plugin while over 140,000 users are still on the older version and are vulnerable to hack.

 

Source: TechRadar

How Passwords Get Hacked

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How many passwords do you use in a given day?

Everything on the internet requires a password. It can be tough to keep track of them all and keep coming up with strong passwords. For proof, listen to the grumblings in most office buildings on the day passwords are set to expire.

The disdain for passwords leads to a lot of bad password practices. This includes reusing passwords or keeping them basic. But steps to make passwords easier to remember also makes them easier for hackers to guess.

How Passwords Get Hacked

To hack a password, first an attacker will usually download a dictionary attack tool. This piece of code will attempt to login many times with a list of passwords. Hackers often publish passwords after a successful attack. As a result, it is easy to find lists of the most common passwords with a simple Google search.

The attacker will then load the dictionary attack tool with a list of passwords. The tool will attempt every password until finding a match. Now, the attacker can log in with administrator credentials and install a backdoor for future entry. With a backdoor in place, the hacker can begin installing additional malware and other malicious code that damages your online presence.

The speed and success of a password hack will vary depending on whether it is an offline attack or an online attack. An offline attack allows an attacker to leverage the full power of their device, which will vary depending on the attacker’s setup.

For example, offline password cracking could make up to 2 million attempts per second when leveraging the power of multiple GPUs. If the attacker has access to a botnet of infected machines, they can speed up the process by using the resources of those devices. A very simple password can be hacked this way in a matter of minutes.

An online attack is much slower. There are constraints set by the victim web server and the application (e.g WordPress) that can hinder the attempt rate. A common example of such a constraint is limiting the amount of password attempts. This will slow down the attack, but attackers won’t stop there.

Next, they will try techniques like credential stuffing. The hacker will find a more tailored password list created from passwords stolen from previous compromises. This is why using complex and unique passwords is key to protecting your website.

Best Password Practices

The best passwords will not have any obvious combination of numbers or letters. That means most easy-to-remember passwords with names, words, and dates won’t cut it. If you can read the password as a word or phrase, a hacker using automated tools will be able to guess it. A good password is much more complex.

To make a password more complex, you will want to make it longer. More characters gives a password a lower chance of being guessed in a dictionary attack. A mixture of lower- and uppercase letters, numbers, and characters is also recommended

Unfortunately, complex means a bit more than replacing the letter “a” with an “@” or an “!” in place of an “i.” Adding a couple random numbers won’t work either. Many people use these tricks and hackers are well aware of them. This hardening technique may buy you a couple extra seconds against a hacker, but they can still get in.

To get a completely secure password, it will also need to be completely unique. If the password was ever used, it may be in a list and more vulnerable to a dictionary attack or credential stuffing. The best passwords are going to look like a random string of characters, numbers, and symbols. Imagine a cat running across a keyboard as you go to type in your password. A secure password should look like that.

Passwords should never be reused on multiple accounts. This increases the chances of a hacker being able to gain further access with the same credentials.

Now you know the best way to make and protect your passwords. Yet, the biggest question on your mind is likely, “How am I supposed to come up with all these passwords, yet alone keep track of them all?”

Using Password Managers

The bad news is that you shouldn’t keep using things like your favorite’s pet’s name or quotes from Caddyshack as a password. But the good news is that making and remembering complex passwords is not difficult. In fact, it’s very easy to do with a password manager.

A password manager is a service that generates unique, complex passwords and saves them in a secure vault. You can then use a browser extension and mobile app to auto-fill usernames and passwords. It makes keeping your passwords secure much easier.

Most browsers and mobile operating systems offer built-in password managers. But it’s recommended to use a third-party manager like LastPass, KeePass, or Dashlane. The built-in browser managers lack many of the best features of more dedicated services.

It’s worth noting many password managers do cost money. While LastPass, KeePass, and Dashlane do offer free versions, they may not work for all users. But the paid accounts cost only a few dollars a month. That’s a small price to pay to get rid of the headache of worrying about passwords.

Conclusion

Hackers have been finding ways to crack or compromise passwords since the day they were invented. The only thing more constant about passwords is the struggle to create and remember them.

Good password practices don’t have to be a taxing chore. Password managers take the burden off of creating and storing unique and complex passwords. It is the easiest way to prevent hackers from guessing your credentials, but the password could still be stolen and used by an attacker using different methods like keyloggers or MiTM attacks. This is why nowadays it is recommended to use additional authentication measures like multi-factor authentication.

But cybersecurity doesn’t stop with good passwords. Hackers have a full arsenal of malicious weapons to gain access to websites. You may want to consider our Website Security Platform  for a more robust cybersecurity solution.

 

Source: Sucuri

7 Reasons Why You Need to Update Your Reputation Management Strategy in 2020

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The reputation management industry has come a long way since the BIA Kelsey Group predicted that it would become a $5 billion industry sector by 2016. Indeed, there are more review management solutions, sentiment analysis monitoring services, and agencies engaged in ORM than ever before!

However, I am not certain that I would call online reputation management a “mature” industry, yet. Search algorithms have become more sophisticated, making search engine optimization of positive content more challenging to supplant negative items in search. Social media platforms, responsive to criticisms for enabling astroturfing in politics, have tightened security such that it is more challenging for agencies to manage accounts on behalf of reputation clientele. Laws protecting major online companies from liabilities for assisting defamation victims continue to be entrenched. And, personal and private data has become more and more exposed despite some efforts to reduce the public’s exposure.

All of this has made reputations more vulnerable to serious damage and has made reputation management more difficult in terms of clean-up of issues or even proactive development.

But, there are some positive things happening, too, so things are not all doom-and-gloom. Consciousness about online harassment, bullying, extortion and sextortion are on the upswing. The FBI and the Department of Justice have taken more of an interest in helping victims in such situations, and local law enforcement agencies have been increasing their capabilities for assisting in such situations. (See the California Attorney General’s Cyber Exploitation resource, for example.)

So, I have a few predictions for what may be in store for online reputations in 2020 — prepare yourself and prepare your company for what is one of the most important aspects of personal and corporate identity.

2020 predictions for online reputation management

1. SEO will continue to become more difficult for improving and controlling online reputations. My prediction 14 years ago that the practice of SEO might become eclipsed by user-centered design has largely come true. Most respectable SEO consultants now incorporate usability factors and user experience into large portions of their analysis and recommendations, in addition to search-oriented technical elements. Simple methods and tricks for manipulating search engines to rank webpages higher have largely been replaced by solid, mainstream marketing practices combined with a user-centered design focus and solid technical website construction. Further, the advent of search engines’ machine learning processing has made website ranking determinations far more holistic in nature — making it hard to tell what factors are ones that tip the decision as to whether one page outranks another or not. Ironically, aspects of reputation are now search ranking factors, so SEO practitioners need to pay attention to reputational elements as part of holistic optimization efforts.

2. Social media profiles will continue to grow in importance for one’s online identity. Not only do well-developed and actively-maintained social media profiles tend to rank advantageously in search engine results, but users seek them out for individuals and companies when exploring online identities that are new to them. For individuals, simply hiding one’s social media profiles does not really cut it anymore when potential employers and business partners are seeking information. And, consumers deeply desire access via social media profiles to communicate directly to companies — neglecting a company’s social media presence can result in increased consumer frustration, and result in more negative online reviews and ratings.

3. Laws will continue to favor large internet companies, protecting them from liability for content produced by third parties that may appear on their platforms. Silicon Valley lobbyists continue to hold sway in Washington and in state legislatures, keeping laws very friendly towards the large internet companies, resulting in keeping them largely non-liable for helping individuals and organizations remove false and defamatory information online. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted in 1996 specifically to save internet companies on costs, while the U.S. legislature knew it would result in collateral damage for small companies and individuals. Arguably, it is time for Section 230 immunity to be changed, but there has been little movement to do anything that would substantially help people. While you might believe that our European counterparts have it better due to their “right to be forgotten” laws, this online “wild west” free-for-all that is maintained in the U.S. negatively impacts anyone in the EU that does business with America because their right to be forgotten is limited to searches conducted within their countries — people in the U.S. can still see contents in search that is no longer relevant or false about them.

4. Business review monitoring will become easier and less costly for companies. There are now multiple companies that provide some degree of review monitoring services across multiple review sites and for multiple business locations. What was once a difficult and costly effort for major chain store companies is now far easier to do from a central office. The increasing number of providers of these services is also starting to enable lower costs as competition in the marketplace produces more options.

5. Public relations and crisis communications will rise as even more important strategic components for online reputation, as opposed to strategies of only ignoring-or-displacing of negative items online. Public relations has been a solid discipline since before the internet, of course, but companies and individuals are again recognizing its value now after many modern companies attempted to skate by without professional staff or external support for public communications. Many have tried a do-it-yourself approach to this, and most fail miserably when trying to position themselves and to respond to public relations crises. Responding with integrity and conveying genuine concern can make all the difference between rapid or eventual reputation recovery in the public’s consciousness, or continuing with a damaged and tarnished reputation that hampers one’s performance in nearly any arena.

6. Professional online reputation management costs will drop within reach of more individuals and small companies. Let’s face it: professional online reputation management has largely been only a service available to individuals and organizations with larger amounts of resources. But, the increasing number of companies operating in the reputation industry is increasing competition, which will result in lower prices for consumers, and the flexibility and functionality available through internet technologies continue to develop, simplifying and making more efficient various aspects of online reputation management services. These factors will drive costs downward. Lawsuits remain one useful and effective option for some types of defamation, trademark infringement and online harassment, but that option remains costly and will be slower to change without further reforms of laws related to online reputation and less costly access to legal relief. Still, while litigation continues to have some major cost barriers, a lot of relief can be obtained more rapidly and cheaper through a combination of SEO, social media management, public relations, crisis communications and strategic internet content development.

7. Proactive online reputation management becomes more important than ever. As the internet became the go-to source for information about everything, one’s internet reputation became more important than ever. That trend has only increased over time, and one can declare 2020 as truly the moment when one’s internet reputation now outweighs nearly every other information source. As such, proactive online reputation management is now vital, and a core piece of best practices for marketing — with a weak and vulnerable online reputation, one is a sitting duck for any crisis, any bad review, and any crank with an axe to grind. Financial analysts are paying more attention to online reputation, and will increasingly check out whether companies are making efforts to manage their identities online in order to proactively protect themselves from any negative event. Do we even need to mention that HR departments check one’s reputation online before making hiring decisions, and people look up individuals for social reasons as well — including for dating, as well as for other social interactions?

As a sort of “bonus” prediction, the #MeToo Movement blew up in a massive way in 2019 — one can easily predict that this trend will continue to grow, and there seems little to stifle it. In the sense that bad behavior deserves to be called out, and that people should feel empowered to speak out against harassment and abuse, the #MeToo movement is a good thing. In this information age and time of growing, ubiquitous surveillance, it is harder to hide bad behavior, and people’s own actions will out them, more and more. So, expect the awareness created through the #MeToo movement to empower many people to speak out and publicize moments when they are mistreated, and these reports will affect individuals and institutions that are called-out. As people are aware of this societal shift, also expect organizations to become increasingly diligent about improving their policies for dealing with such claims, and responding to the reputational damage fallout. We already see this when companies rapidly suspend those accused, pending investigations, and fire those found to be in noncompliance with corporate policies.

Following reputation management best practices, one can build a robust online reputation and recover from past reputation damage. Focus on making 2020 your best reputation year, ever.

 

Source: Search Engine Land

How to Protect Your Organization Against Targeted Phishing Attacks

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Phishing emails are one of the most devious and deceptive means of cyberattack. Often sneaking past automated filters, such emails use social engineering to look real and legitimate enough to trick unsuspecting users into revealing sensitive information.

Beyond automated security tools, there are more people-centric strategies that businesses should adopt to protect themselves against phishing attacks, as described in the 2020 State of the Phish report released Wednesday by the security firm Proofpoint.

Based on a survey of working adults and IT professionals as well as other factors, Proofpoint’s report defines phishing as any type of socially engineered emails. The intent could be to deploy malware, direct users to dangerous websites, or collect sensitive credentials.

About 60% of the respondents said their organization faced fewer or about the same number of phishing attacks last year compared with 2018. That may seem like positive news. However, the trend is one that Proofpoint said it’s seen for a while.

Specifically, it means that cybercriminals are focusing on quality over quantity by launching more targeted, personalized attacks instead of just bulk campaigns.

Some 55% of the respondents dealt with at least one successful phishing attack in 2019. Around 54% of those hit by an attack suffered data loss, 49% saw credentials or accounts compromised, 49% were infected by ransomware, 35% were victims of some type of malware infection, and 34% suffered some type of financial loss or wire transfer fraud.

impacts-of-successful-phishing-attacks-proofpoint.jpg
Proofpoint

Organizations measure the costs of phishing attacks in a number of ways. The most common side effect was downtime hours for users, cited by more than half of the respondents. Other costs included remediation time for security teams, damage to reputation, business impacts due to loss of intellectual property, direct monetary losses, and compliance issues or fines.

how-organizations-measure-the-cost-of-phishing-proofpoint.jpg
Proofpoint

The ultimate goal of many phishing emails is ransomware. Some 33% of the organizations surveyed for the report were infected with ransomware in 2019 and opted to pay the ransom. Another 32% were infected but did not pay.

Among those that did pay the ransom, 22% never regained access to their data, 2% acquiesced to follow-up ransom demands and got back their data, but 7% were hit with additional ransom demands and never recovered their data.

Looking at attacks by a specific method of social engineering, 88% of organizations faced spear phishing attacks, 86% faced business email compromise (BEC), 86% social media-based attacks, 84% smishing (SMS/text phishing), 83% vishing (voice phishing), and 81% malicious USB drops.

To help your organization better defend itself against targeted phishing attacks, Proofpoint offers the following tips:

Commit to building a culture of security

If you want to truly make a change—meaning a mindset and behavior shift that has a positive, day-to-day impact on your organization—you must commit to bringing cybersecurity to the forefront.

Remember that anyone in your organization can be a target of a phishing scam and that anyone in your organization can help or hurt your security posture.

Everyone in your organization should know how they can be more cyber-secure. A broad, companywide security awareness training program will help you do that.

Some 78% of the organizations surveyed for the report said they found a reduction in their phishing susceptibility due to their security awareness training.

Answer the three Ws

You may be familiar with the “five Ws and H” that guide journalists, researchers, and investigators: who, what, where, when, why and how.

At a minimum, answer these three first: 1) Who in my organization is being targeted by attackers? The answer is not as simple as looking at the top tiers of your org chart; 2) What types of attacks are they facing? Knowing the lures and traps attackers are using can help you better position your defenses; and 3) How can I minimize risk if these attacks get through? The answer is to use the information you’ve gathered to deliver the right training to the right people at the right time.

This exercise helps you defend against your most pressing and timely threats. Assessing vulnerabilities at a more granular level and matching those up against your threat intelligence will let you pinpoint where perfect storms are brewing.

Make time for agility

When we get busy, we may want to take a “set it and forget it” approach to cybersecurity. That’s understandable. But it doesn’t work in an era of constantly shifting attack techniques and evolving threats.

Building a security culture takes continued effort and attention. Plan for regular training and reinforcement but be responsive to changes in the threat landscape (and your organization).

Attackers’ targets change over time so the firm recommends identifying the employees most actively targeted by cyberattacks on a monthly, if not weekly, basis.

By pairing granular analysis with organization-wide training, the people being targeted will have a cybersecurity foundation you can build on with additional, targeted training.

Understanding general phishing trends is important. Having benchmarks to measure your users against them is valuable. But other organizations’ data isn’t as important as your organization’s data. You must understand your own threat climate in order to change things in your environment.

“Effective security awareness training must focus on the issues and behaviors that matter most to an organization’s mission,” Joe Ferrara, senior vice president and general manager of Security Awareness Training for Proofpoint, said in a statement.

“We recommend taking a people-centric approach to cybersecurity by blending organization-wide awareness training initiatives with targeted, threat-driven education. The goal is to empower users to recognize and report attacks.”

Proofpoint’s data was based on survey results from 3,500 working adults and 600 IT security professionals from the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and Spain. Information also was derived from 50 million simulated phishing attacks sent by Proofpoint customers over 12 months and nine million suspicious emails reported by the end users of the company’s customers.

 

Source: Tech Republic

Shopify Offering Startup Loans to Merchants – No Sales or Credit Checks Required

Business Advice, E-Commerce, What's New No Comment

Shopify is looking to spur entrepreneurship and boost its merchant count by removing a fundamental barrier to launching a business: startup capital.

The Ottawa-based e-commerce giant announced an expansion of its Shopify Capital program Tuesday that will see the company provide initial loans of $200 to qualifying applicants looking to test out entrepreneurship.

In its most recent earnings report last fall, Shopify highlighted how its existing Shopify Capital program issued $141 million in merchant cash advances and loans in the third quarter of 2019, an increase of 85 per cent year-over-year. Until now, the program’s financing terms have typically been tied to a business’s sales history on the platform.

These early-stage loans, on the other hand, can be approved without any sales or a credit check. In a release, the company positioned the idea as an alternative to dipping into savings, borrowing from friends and family or racking up credit card debt.

Kaz Nejatian, vice-president of Shopify’s financial solutions division, wrote on Twitter that the new program was aimed at entrepreneurs struggling to get started with a business idea, such as recently landed immigrants who haven’t built up a financial foundation yet or a founder targeting non-traditional industries.

The move to ease the on-boarding of new users comes amid a broader push to continue growing the number of merchants using Shopify’s platform.

Though the company passed a sizeable milestone with its one-millionth user in 2019, the company’s year-to-year growth in merchant base has showed signs of slowing in recent years. This has pushed Shopify to increase expansion efforts outside its core North American market; CFO Amy Shapero said during the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call that it was seeing its most rapid growth in international markets.

Shopify itself has been having a strong start to 2020 with its shares hitting new highs on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges. The firm’s shares on the TSX were trading at $576.25 on Tuesday, an increase of nearly nine per cent since the start of the year.

Source: Ottawa Business Journal

The Most Important Web Development Trends in 2020

Developers, Web Design Tips No Comment

Web development is in the middle of a transformational period. Customers are finally beginning to perform the majority of their online browsing on mobile devices and are quickly shifting from traditional written searches to voice searches.

These trends have major consequences and companies that rely on websites and search engine results, such as retail businesses, professional services, and JavaScript software development firms, will need to focus on more than just SEO as these changes are implemented.

This article will help executives and project managers in the web development industry prepare for upcoming changes in web development and SEO over the next several years.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is no longer a science fiction trope. The revolutionary technology is finally beginning to come into its own. It is impacting the quality of care that medical patients receive, transforming data analysis and business analytics, and making futuristic technologies like self-driving cars a reality.

In addition, AI is also transforming the internet search and web development industry. Google, along with other search engines, is using AI to improve the quality of their search results.

The company launched its AI initiative in 2015 with RankBrain. Google uses a combination of traditional machine learning and deep neural networks to create an AI search bot that can learn from past search results and click-through rates to improve its capabilities.

Marketers and web developers that rely on SEO to drive traffic to their website will need to turn their attention from keyword-heavy websites to producing high-quality, long-form content that provides useful information and resonates with readers. This will only become more important as Google’s AI makes keywords less important over the next several years, opening the door for the rest of the search engines to follow.

Featured Snippets

Another major trend impacting the entire web development industry is Google’s new focus on producing featured snippets in their search results. In the past, Google simply took a search term and returned the top 10 website results on the first search result page.

Today, Google often takes key bits of information, or snippets, from the most popular websites and includes this information in the search results above the most popular websites. This means that customers do not have to click links to gather basic information.

While this change has been very useful for customers, it has reduced internet traffic for websites since customers no longer need to load a webpage to get that basic data.

Businesses can improve their chances of landing a spot as a featured snippet by producing high-quality content that is clearly organized. However, there is little that companies can do to replace those click-throughs so overall website traffic will likely continue to fall.

Mobile Traffic

Over the past decade, customers have started using mobile devices to access the internet at increasingly high levels–with research finding that an estimated 58% of website visits are completed on a mobile device today.

In addition, a total of 56% of search engine queries are completed on a smartphone.

For web development and JavaScript outsourcing firms, this means that every website they work on must be optimized for mobile devices. They can accomplish this by removing interstitials, or content such as full-page popups, a faulty layout, or other features which negatively impact the mobile user experience.

In addition, Google now penalizes companies that include email-list popups on their homepage, an annoying feature that customers have long complained about.

Businesses should pay special attention to their mobile layout and should consider using progressive web apps (PWAs) to automatically optimize their mobile sites for Google.

Voice Search Results

Since the release of Siri in 2011, mobile search has become more and more important. Today, that voice recognition market is worth an incredible $600 million. Experts also predict that more than 50% of all searches will be performed by voice by 2020.

Businesses can optimize their websites for voice search and prepare for this new reality by changing the way they look at keywords. Traditionally, customers who search Google using their keyboard will create stilted, computer-like phrases as their search terms.

However, customers who use voice search tend to speak in the type of regular, everyday language that they use to communicate with friends. Companies can improve their voice search results by transitioning to more casual keywords and speech on their websites.

Cybersecurity

Data privacy continues to be one of the most important priorities for businesses of all sizes and in all industries. Research has found that cybersecurity is the number one “external concern” for American CEOs.

Its importance will only increase over the next several years as recent cybersecurity trends continue to develop. The number of these data breaches is increasing every year and the cost to global businesses will only increase as well. In fact, the total cost of cyberattacks is expected to exceed $6 trillion by 2021.

Internal investments in cybersecurity have risen by 141% from 2010 to 2018 and this trend will likely accelerate over the next decade. This is a major reason why global investments in information security are expected to top $124 billion in 2019.

The rise of 5G wireless networks and the associated internet of things will also increase the risk of cybersecurity attacks because of the massive number of devices expected to come online over the next decade.

Web development teams and offshore JavaScript firms should pay special attention to data privacy during upcoming web development projects. Malicious actors will continue to use more and more sophisticated attacks to breach websites and steal invaluable consumer information, like social security numbers, banking information, and more.

Looking Forward

In the future, technical experts may look at 2020 as a banner year. Google’s use of featured snippets and PWAs are already changing change the format and style of websites. On the other hand, mobile traffic and voice search results are finally overtaking their predecessors as the two main ways that people access information.

Cutting-edge AI is also being used to improve the quality of search results, produce faster results, and better connect customers with the services they need. Finally, data privacy will continue to be one of the most important concerns for business leaders and web development managers alike.

Source: TechBullion