iPhone App of the Week – My Fitness Pal

iphone app my fitness pal

With Christmas just around the corner we thought an iPhone app that will help you lose those Christmas kilos would be invaluable (and free!). My Fitness Pal is an incredibly easy to use app. Every time you eat you update the app with the food you consumed. They have a massive database to search so entering in the items is a breeze. The calorie count goes up until you reach your target amount of calories for the day and then it warns you to consume no more.

We love this app for its simplicity and functionality.

The app is also available for Android. The Blackberry version is coming soon. Visit the website for more details and let us know what you think.

Flash animation, video and games on your iPhone

Every iPhone and iPad user out there is well aware that these mobile devices have no support for Flash. Flash is the basis of most web video platforms on the web and many interactive websites and games. Apple does not support Flash due to a feud between themselves and Adobe, the developers of Flash. That’s another story, however.

iPhone users will be happy with the news that Skyfire are working to solve this problem for you. The only thing is, Apple still have to approve it which could be the rock this particular development perishes on. We will wait to see how this works out, but it looks good so far.

If you have any iPhone developments to share with us, please contact us.

This is a first look at the Skyfire 2.0 Mobile Browser for iPhone which will be shortly submitted to Apple for their potential approval. This is not the final version that will be released to the public, just a quick demo of the mobile browser running on iOS4. Skyfire is known for its ability to bring Flash videos to mobile platforms.

Reduce your website bounce rate – Part 1

website bounce rate

In your weekly analytics reports you will see figure called “bounce rate”. Firstly, what is your website bounce rate?

Bounce Rate

It’s a very important parameter to see how sticky your content is. When new visitors come accross your website, there are two alternatives: 1) they just quickly scan your content to see if he finds something interesting then leave or 2) they click on other links to read more and browse other sections of your website/blog. The former visitors "bounced" while the latter brought to your site more than one pageview. The more visitors behave like the latter, the lower is your bounce rate (better).

Now let us take a look at how we can reduce your bounce rate i.e. get it moving in the right direction.

Use your stats to make decisions

Optimisation can only be achieved with data informed decisions. A lot of people assume that their clients will use their website in the same way they do. Big mistake! Look at your analytics stats. They never lie, ever. If your bounce rate is high, people do not like your content enough to continue reading your website. Make your content brief, relevant and interesting. Don't be afraid to experiment and see what happens. You can always switch it back.

Prioritize & Optimize

You should take a look and find your top five performing pages "“ high traffic volume and low bounce rate. Now compare these to the worst performing pages. Make an educated decision as to why the top performing pages are better. Usually it is very obvious! Make some changes and see how those changes manifest in your analytics stats in the following weeks.

Start putting these two into action and stay tuned for more top tips next week!

Using YouTube web video to promote your website

YouTube web videos

YouTube really is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to web video and promtoing your business. Most people think YouTube is full of scratchy home videos of people doing stupid things to hurt themselves for our entertainment…. and to a large extent it is. However, the following stats cannot be ignored. YouTube reached a number of “billion” milestones recently. Here they are -

Lady Gaga is the first to reach a billion views for her videos on YouTube
The promoted videos section reached half a billion
1 billion subscriptions now exist on YouTube

We realise web video is not relevant for everyone, but if your business has training, instructional or corporate videos in existence, don’t lock them away in your DVD drawer gathering dust. Upload your footage to YouTube and potentially broadcast to literally billions of people.

Nutwork produce awesome corporate and training videos. If you have a need one produced, please contact us and we will help you out.

The 3 cornerstones of website SEO

People often ask us how to get their website ranking well in search engines. With so many websites out there what exactly can you do to rank your website above all the rest? At a high level it’s actually pretty simple as you can see from the diagram below.

Three Cornerstones of website SEO

Technical Issues

This is the most complicated aspect of SEO. Nutwork includes tonnes of great code with your website to help you rank very highly. We don’t want to bore you with the details here, but suffice to say, if the technical aspects of your website fail you, ranking well in the search engines will be a near impossibility. If you are that way inclined, we would be happy to answer any questions you might have on this front "“ contact us.

Content

This is the bit you have the most control over. With a content management system you can easily add new content to your website. Writing unique and relevant content is the way forward here. If you simply copy and paste from someone else's website or write about subjects that are not related to your business then don't expect to rank well. Keeping your content up to date is extremely important. You should plan to add one or two new piece of content to your website every week. Yes, every week!

Trust

The search engines need to know that other users "trust" your website. The way they decide this, is they look at how many websites link to yours using your keywords. Imagine you have a website with ten other websites linking to you, Google will think "10 people trust this website". On the other hand, if you have 10,000 people linking to your website, Google will think "10,000 people trust this website". All other things being equal, the second site in this example will rank better.

So that's a basic round up of the issues you need to consider before you can get your website ranking well in Google. Put them into practice today! If you want some more information please contact us.