Premium Addons Thought Leadership Interview

Premium Addons was developed by Leap13, a company whose mission is to provide tools that make web design more profitable. 

They started as a digital marketing agency that wanted to transition into the WordPress space and set out on a journey to improve their skills in 2013. They claim their success was a leap of faith which is reflected in their startup’s name. 

In this interview with Rimoun Saad, the CEO of Leap 13, we discuss how Premium Addons came to be, their latest widgets, and their plans for the future. 

Please provide a brief background about Premium Addons.

Back in 2017, we at Leap13 were looking for a new page builder to adopt for our next WordPress theme. At this time we were assessing 7 different builders and trying to expect which one will be the next master of the league. Luckily, we were able to see the potential that the Elementor Website Builder holds and decided to pivot our theme development plans and focus on developing an add-ons pack for Elementor instead. We were focusing on helping the web designers with a wide range of widgets and add-ons that inspire them to build creative and complex layouts with no coding required. Premium Addons for Elementor plugin was released in January 2018, and from day one it was well-received by the Elementor community which helped us to evolve and continuously improve the plugin to become one of the most important Elementor companions. 

What impact has Covid-19, and the past 2 years, had on your business and workflows?

The pandemic had its negative impact on the whole world for sure. We at Leap13 had to shift the whole team to work remotely for everybody’s safety. Our workflow went smooth with this abrupt transition as we have had the systems and the procedures ready for such a shift already. Not only did that help us to keep the workflow, but also we managed to recruit and increase our team during the pandemic. 

How has 2021 been for you so far?

2021 is considered to be one of our most productive years so far, especially for Premium Addons plugin. Our main focus for 2021 was the plugin’s code and performance improvements and we can say that we have almost rebuilt the plugin’s core to achieve better performance. In 2021 we also started revising all older widgets that have been built 2-3 years ago to enhance them with many improvements and new features. We are still having great plans for the rest of the year. 

Would you mind telling us more about the new widgets that you recently launched?

We recently launched a WooCommerce product listing widget and Animated Blob Generator section addon.  We also added many amazing global features and options like:

• Floating effects with multiple animation options.
• We also made section add-ons work on columns too: Now users can use Animated Gradient, Particles, Parallax, and Ken Burns in both Elementor sections and Columns.
• Advanced Border Radius: Users can now apply advanced border radius values on any widget easily.
• Elements Equal Height: Gives the ability to make adjacent elements inside Elementor to have the same height.

Do you have any exciting new features on the horizon?

Our pipeline is always full of new widgets and features. Currently, We’re developing WooCommerce widgets that are always a popular demand by our users as well as extending a few of the ones Elementor recently released

We will also release display Conditions and advanced Floating Effects features soon with many new options and customization features.  Some widgets like Vertical scroll and tabs will get big updates soon as well. 

What’s your process for selecting widgets to develop next?

We are always looking for new ways to help web designers create better-looking websites with new and creative ideas. We are also considering whatever makes web creator’s life easier. Finally, we do our best to always innovate and add value not just copy something that already exists. This is our criteria when we decide what to develop and what to ignore. 

For inspiration and new ideas, mainly come from both our design team and our user community as both always give great feedback to our dev team to continuously improve the plugin. 

What does your freemium offer entail?

We always feel grateful to the WordPress community as it gave us the chance to grow our business and evolve globally. So we decided to give the community back and release Premium Addons plugin to be our first freemium product with a decent free plugin that offers WordPress users 24 completely free of charge premium widgets. 

The most popular free widgets we have are the Blog widget, vertical scroll widget, video box, and media gallery. 

Which one of your widgets/extensions do you feel has been a game-changer, and why?

Well, the Horizontal Scroll widget will come on the top of the list. This widget was released in March 2020 and it was a big hit as it is the first widget that enables WordPress users to build complete interactive horizontally scrolled web pages without custom coding. 

Next on the list will be the social proof widgets: Facebook reviews, Google Reviews, Trustpilot Reviews, and Yelp Reviews. They’re all used a lot by our users to display 3rd party business reviews on their websites. Those widgets helped users gain more websites visitors’ trust and increase sales. 

Finally, integrating Lottie Animations on almost all our widgets gave our users the ability to use Lottie Animations instead of images/icons wherever they want. That was also well received by our users. 

Please share some numbers with us. How many active installs do you have? How many widgets & extensions do you currently offer? How many customers do you have?

Premium Addons is very close to reaching 500K active installs and it has been downloaded more than 11 million times. PA now includes 53 widgets, 7 section addons, and 10 global features. It also comes with 400+ premium Elementor sections templates. 

Do you have a Premium Addons community?

Premium Addons has an active Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremiumAddons
We’re also present on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Leap13themes
And our community forums: https://my.leap13.com/forums/forum/premium-addons-for-elementor-plugin-community- support/ 

What are the top trends you predict for 2022?

Both 2020 and 2021 gave a very hard lesson to businesses that has no online presence. On the other hand, the world had witnessed the massive growth of e-commerce and all other e-services during the pandemic, which was a big motive for others to follow that road. That is very good news for web designers/developers who will be able to flourish for many years to come. 

The other important trend is automation. So far web design industry didn’t fully leverage automation and artificial intelligence but I can clearly see that this will happen in the near future. 

How do you envision yourself at the end of 2021?

As I mentioned earlier we are planning to release the long-awaited WooCommerce widgets this year along with some global features that we are sure Elementor users will love. 

What piece of advice do you have for web creators?

The web design industry has been attractive to many individuals who are aiming for a good profit and flexible work conditions but at last, not all newcomers will be able to survive the competition. As a web creator, you have to understand that this industry requires you to:

1. Keep yourself up to date as things change very fast. 
2. Pay attention to details and seek perfection as your work will be public on the internet.
3. Be humble, accept criticism and learn from it. as an angry customer sometimes is your best teacher. 

Wrapping Up

Premium Addons has exciting features for Elementor users, regardless of their experience level. 

If you’re looking to do more with your website, Premium Addons offers advanced and unique Elementor Widgets, Section Add-ons, and Global Features, as well as 350+ ready-to-use Elementor Section Templates. 

Give the freemium version a try to get a taste of what Premium Addons has to offer, and check out the premium packages when you’re ready to upgrade.

If you have an Elementor Addon of your own, sign up here to stay informed about the latest product developments.