Most people have well over 30 apps on their phone or smart device. These include social media apps, retailer reward apps, games and food delivery apps. But with so many apps on our handheld devices that have access to a lot of our personal data and track our own browsing logarithms who’s controlling who? Many apps will send you notifications, these are called ‘push notifications’ and they ping up on your device from time to time alerting you of an offer or an update on something within the app. As well as this some will also send you emails and SMS messages to notify you.  Many devices also show red badge icons next to the apps on your home screen alerting you to open up the app for the notification. With so many alerts, often containing targeted advertising it can sometimes make us feel a little hassled and overwhelmed. However, there is something that you can do if these notifications are starting to bother you.... Read More »

There is an app for everything now and more and more we are being encouraged to down apps to help us with different aspects of our lives. There are a growing number of apps available to download that purport to help us to keep fit and lose weight but how can these apps actually help us and are the websites behind these apps making money out of our desire to be healthier? For many people losing weight is a difficult challenge and so having an app where you can search for the calorific content of a particular food and record it is useful. Many of these apps require you to submit your details in terms of height, weight and gender initially then they will often recommend a daily calorie requirement for you if you want to lose weight. This can be quite motivating for users of the app as they feel that someone is taking control for them and helping them on their weight-loss journey.... Read More »

Google provide a number of free tools for business owners and marketing agencies to use to help them improve their website, analyse statistics, create adverts and report changes. These tools include Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adwords. Many of the functions available within these tools are immensely important to helping you to improve your site and in turn get more traffic / sales. Google’s Webmaster Tools is a free bit of software which you can link to any sites that you own / manage. There are a few ways in which you can verify your access making it really straight forward.  Once added to your secure control panel you can submit sites maps, track searches, have an overview of rankings and find out any issues that Google may have found when it crawled your site. These issues may include pages that are not loading, pages that are redirecting to another site or pages that do not display on a mobile device or take... Read More »

As gyms and sports centres have been closed for so long due to the current restrictions on daily life it is not surprising that many people have turned to the internet to look for ways to keep fit and lose weight. There are lots of applications available to help and support people on their journey towards a healthier lifestyle but how successful are they at motivating their users? The apps that are probably going to be the most effective are those that regularly message the user with prompts for example to either take exercise or drink water. It is this frequent communication that makes the user remember to continue with whatever plan they are following. Some of the fitness websites and apps require a subscription fee and provide a more personalised programme for the health-conscious individual. There are often motivational podcasts that can be accessed, and even online chats made available with a trained fitness expert giving users the opportunity to ask questions about their... Read More »

WordPress is an off the shelf content management system. It allows you to build a website from a very basic template that already comes pre-installed with it or buy your own theme to upload and amend. The beauty of WordPress is that there are literally thousands of themes out there for you to choose from so you will often find one that is very similar to what you want. It also has a great backend system that is very user friendly an easy to use. WordPress release updates to the code of the CMS system so that you do not have to worry about doing it yourself. You can install plug-ins which are essentially bolt on bits of code that provide different functionality such as scrolling header images or contact forms etc. The options really are endless with WordPress which is why so many programmers choose to use it. If you need a very bespoke website and CMS then you may decide to build your... Read More »