Magento is a very solid eCommerce platform; we love it here at One Result. With the ability to fully customise the layout, the high level security that comes with it, its flexibility for growth, in built shopping analytics and the vast amount of plugins that is available on Magento Connect, Magento has ruled the kingdom of eCommerce. But what is Magento Go?

A standard Magento shop is stored on your own server, however with Magento Go, it is stored on their own server, which means you don’t have to worry about hosting. It is perfect for smaller businesses who want to focus on the products and not worry about maintaining a business and a website.

The benefits with Magento Go is it usability. The admin section works the exact same way as a standard installation. Which is great because if a project needs to be passed around between developers, it is very easy to jump into it. Another great thing about Magento Go is the fact that it automatically updates itself with the latest version and it will never break your site when it upgrades.

Another great thing about Magento Go is the themes that come with it. Every Magento theme can be customised through the CSS editor in the Admin section, thus turning a simple theme into something that is truly unique to your store. (To access this, log into the admin section of your Magento Go website and it is under Design/Theme Editor)

In conclusion, Magento Go is a great little alternate if don’t want to go through with a full Magento installation. Its always expanding in features but it is quite limited in what it can do.

If you are looking for an eCommerce solution but not sure if you should go for Magneto Go or a full Magneto installation, feel free to give us a ring and we would be happy to help you out.

With the new Google Analytics there are oodles of new reports and features that are going to help you get the most out of your data.  At the moment you can still switch between the ‘old’ version of analytics and the new, but this function is going to be phased out over the next couple of months, so it makes sense to start getting used to it now. After getting over the shock of everything being in slightly different place and finally locating the settings (it’s accessible from every screen via the cog logo that Google uses in other products – sometimes the things that are right under your nose are hardest to see!) I am pleased to report that the new features are so good that it is easy to prefer the new look.

One of the best new features is also possibly the simplest – that is – SEO reports in Analytics.  This can be accessed under the Traffic Sources report on the left hand side, helpfully enough under Search Engine Optimisation:

In order to set this up, you simply need to edit the profile of the website you are interested in from within Webmaster Tools, linking it up to the Analytics account / profile you are interested in.  Be aware    that you can only link it to one profile, and linking to that profile automatically removes the data from any other Webmaster Tools accounts.

From here you can access reports on queries, landing pages and geographical location.  SEOMoz has done an excellent rundown of the uses and limitations of the landing page and geographical reports. I am not going to go into detail about these too much here, except to say that if you could segment these reports by search query they would be a whole lot more useful! Check out the post for more info.

The area that interests me most is the search query section.  I have always used Webmaster Tools to see if there are errors on site that Google is struggling with, but in my opinion, the best feature was always the search query reports, both for keyword research and Google snippet optimisation.

The new SEO reports in Analytics now show you where your site is appearing for the actual search queries that people are typing in- by giving you the number of impressions your site has received. Very similar to search query reports in Adwords, this is really interesting as it can vary from the data found in places like the Keyword Tool, and other keyword suggestion applications.  Using this data you can (and should!) identify high volume keywords that you are ranking for but not in the top positions, then adjust your on page and link building strategy to capture the positions you really want.

You can also see search queries that Google thinks you are relevant for, which are completely accidental, and adjust your content if necessary. After all, if people land on your site and realize it is irrelevant, it is going to raise the dreaded bounce rate – and nobody wants that.  This view on ‘accidental rankings’ has been useful for me in the past, as it has helped to illustrate to clients the importance of keeping blog posts relevant and following best practices on SEO. Many clients are amazed to learn that the post they wrote about a magazine article they liked, but had nothing to do with their business, is now sending traffic their way.

As touched on above, the estimated CTR in the reports can be used to optimise meta titles and descriptions. In Adwords, you are accustomed to being able to quickly tweak the paid search results and you need to constantly test to boost the CTR and increase your quality score. You should view organic search results in the same way. Although the results are slower to come in and slightly less reliable, they do give an indication of trends. The more attractive and unique your meta title and description, the more likely people are going to choose to click through.

There you have it, another set of information which you can use to hone your SEO campaigns with – I hope you enjoy exploring it as much as I have.

This post is from SEO, PPC and Analytics girl – Lizstraws. If you are interested in gaining some more Analytics insight on your website or improving your SEO in Birmingham or the UK, get in touch!

What was the brief…

Working Transitions Infinity Service provides outplacement solutions to help employees find a new job following redunancy. Producing a professional CV is just one step to getting a new job but something that many people struggle with. Mobile apps are now mainstream and people regularly look to them for help with all sorts of issues – so why not with help getting a new job? It was envisioned that people would be able to work on their CV and job hunting skills on the bus, train or whilst waiting in a queue!

The client came to One Result to develop an app to produce professional looking CVs and give job seekers vital tips to get them their ideal position. The iPhone is the market leader in apps and the ideal platform for building a top notch CV builder app.

What did we do…

One Result created a native iPhone app which combines friendly advice and an easy to use CV builder.

The polished app is split into two sections. Job tips provides top ten lists of high impact suggestions for career planning, job finding, making applications, interview techniques and new job tactics. Upbeat spoken audio tracks accompany the on screen advice and feature heavily in the CV builder part of the app. The CV builder gets users to build up their CV step by step focusing on emphasizing skills and experience. Once complete a Word document and a PDF for sending to recruiters is just a click away.

The Happy Ending…

Infinity CV Builder has just launched in the UK App Store, and a localised US version is available in the US App Store. With a tough job market on both sides of the Atlantic the apps will be sure to help people when they need it most.

What was the brief…

The client came to us with a vision of transforming traditional football coaching techniques. Coaches, even in premiership teams, mostly rely on traditional pen and paper techniques to construct plays representing the movement of players and the ball. The iPad offers an ideal 21st century alternative, combining the immediacy of pen and paper with the power of a tablet computer.

Our client wanted a solution where plays can be quickly created and then edited, polished and even shared with the players. In short, a top tier solution for top tier teams.

What did we do…

We developed a native iPad app aimed at professional football coaches for use both on and off the pitch. The application allows coaches to create plays on full sized, half sized and custom sized pitches. Once a pitch has been chosen the coach is free to place balls, players, cones, goals and draw lines representing different types of movement. Full undo and redo support means that mistakes are quickly corrected.

Unlike pen and paper the 24/7 Coach app can provide exact measurement of distances on the pitch to aid in strategising and construction of the perfect play.

In addition to football 24/7 Coach also includes pitches and graphics for the game of futsal – an indoor 5 aside football variant.

Once a play has been constructed coaches can share the play via email and Facebook. The play, including notes, can also be printed to an AirPrint compatible printer.

All of the plays are available for viewing and editing on the iPad, and can be duplicated for easy modification of basic plays.

The Happy Ending…

The app is providing an excellent centre piece for our client’s business and many ground breaking enhancements are planned for future versions. 24/7 Coach is available now on the App Store and is expected to be a great success.

Thought I would cover the basics of online marketing in this post.  In particular, what I would like to talk about is researching the market for the product or service that your clients provide. You need to make sure this research work is done before you begin any kind of online marketing; otherwise you may not be reaching your target audience. Research, Research, Research!

If your competitors are providing a similar product then, depending on who they are, it will be hard to gain a position in the search engine results pages above them, but not impossible. Online Marketing is an amalgamation of many different techniques including user and SEO friendly Web Design, SEO and PPC which when implemented correctly will support your online marketing campaign very nicely and give you the edge over your competitors.

A professional and reliable online marketing company will ensure that even if you only get e.g. 100 visitors a week, they will be relevant web traffic. If traffic that comes to your website is not relevant, how and why would they buy your products and how are you going to complete your business goals?

Web design is a vital part of online marketing. If your website looks like example (a), you are asking users to overcome several obstacles, which means that your business needs to overcome the obstacles too. Would you bother to click enter? There are lots of competing messages, the next step is not clear. There is no need to have an introduction page on any website, that requires you to click enter.

However, example (b) – with the right strategy – can drive relevant traffic and keep it there to convert onto sales. It may not be the most adventurous website, but there are clearly defined areas for the user to explore, including a familiar layout and navigation bar at the top of the site. Example (a) will provide you with a high bounce rate – demonstrating that your visitors are not finding what they want on your website and leaving. A good Online Marketing Campaign – bring you an increase in your web traffic, keep traffic on site and aim to boost sales and revenue. If your online marketing is not in line with your other business goals and strategy, you need to ask why.

Example (a)

Example (b)

This post is from Adrian on the SEO team.

One of the great things about being an iOS developer is getting to use some really cool Mac software. In this blog post I’m going to give you a quick overview of some of my favourite Mac apps.

Here at One Result we have lots of projects all going on simultaneously. Keeping track of all the actions that need to be completed is a challenge. OmniFocus is an excellent personal task manager. Everything that I do at work has an associated action in OmniFocus. When I’m blocked on a task, maybe waiting for a client to sign off on a sprint or the for the designers to produce some fantastic artwork, I simply tell OmniFocus that the project is paused. Every morning we have a scrum to communicate what we did yesterday and the state of the projects we are working on. OmniFocus can instantly tell me exactly what I did and when it was completed.

The iPhone and iPad are very visual devices. One Result has a team working on artwork for all of the apps we produce. However there are occasions where I need to play with some graphics. Photoshop can be far too overpowering when all I want to do is to crop and image or resize it. Acorn is my go to image editor of choice. It’s simple and really quick to do most of what I need to get done when it comes to messing about with images.

Leading on from Acorn is the powerful Automator which comes with Mac OS X. iPhone apps should have two sets of graphics – one for older iPhones such as the 3GS and a set for the iPhone 4 and 4S Retina displays. With Automator you can resize hundreds of assets for different display densities in seconds. A huge time saver.

I’m a big fan of structured information. When I’m not writing notes in Markdown I use another OmniGroup product – OmniOutliner. This application allows you to keep notes in an outline format. In addition it has some hugely powerful features such as adding columns, setting data types and summarising information. When working out timings for projects I will often start by bringing up a detailed specification in OmniOutliner and entering times in a 2nd column. OmniOutliner is clever enough to know that a working day is 8 hours long and that there are 40 working hours in the week. This allows me to quickly see how many hours, days and weeks a feature or project will take. Much nicer than using a spreadsheet (developers are often very reluctant spreadsheet users!)

Despite Xcode being very good for editing Objective-C code (the language that iOS apps are written in) I prefer MacVim for editing other types of text. ViM has a very long and distinguished pedigree and is based on the Vi editor which started life in the mid 1970s. For anyone who hasn’t used a Vi based editor it can look very strange – you can’t even start typing until you have gone into Insert mode by pressing ‘i’, and to save you press Escape following by :w! However for those of us who are UNIX aficionados ViM and MacVim are amazingly productive tools when playing with text.

Finally I’m going to mention a tool which has proved invaluable when working with databases held on remote servers. One Result is a one stop shop for mobile development. As well as apps we are just as happy creating web services. Many of the apps I have worked on are backed by a web services. Sequel Pro is a free piece of software which allows me to remotely view the databases managed by the web services. You can try something in an app, such as registering for a new account or sending a message to another user, then use Sequel Pro to check the database has been correctly updated by the web service. Much nicer than messing with the MySQL command line in an SSH session!

There are many more pieces of software that I use on a daily basis. The above are just a few of the more prominent ones. If you want to check them out for yourself, be sure to click the link on each name.

This post is by our iOS developer Matthew, who keeps ahead of the game when it comes to iOS. If you are interested in iPhone app development, give us a call today. Why not check out one of Matt’s other recent posts?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a range of disorders that affect a wide range of people . To assist development in a range of skills, there are several devices and systems can be used, including iPad apps. The skills that often need to be developed are:

• Social skills
• Fine motor skills
• Language and communication skills
• Sensory skills
• Stress reduction

Until relatively recently (post-millennium), most assistive systems have been low-tech; often relying on laminated paper and large decks of cards. These systems can work very well because they are tactile, graphical, simple and relatively inexpensive. However, they are very limited in their scope and make constructing complicated sentences very cumbersome.

Many existing technological solutions are prohibitively expensive and rely on resistive touch screens that are clunky and slow. Some of them require pointing devices (again, very clunky). Many of them are the old-generation Windows Tablets that are bulky, but still have a short battery life. These devices are also very difficult to administer since installing applications and configuring them is a slow and painful process. However, the potential for interactivity and extensability is undeniable. Sentence structures can be formed graphically and text-to-speech or animation augments static pictures.

The iPad has been hailed as an alternative since it has all the benefits of the hi-tech, without many of the dowsides that these existing, clunky solutions have. It has been promoted both by Apple PR and many reputable organisations. In addition, a solid body of research supports the assertions made by these organisations.

The State Of Assistive Applications

It would be fair to say that there are two different backgrounds of developers producing iPad Applications to assist users with ASDs; existing suppliers of assistive devices and systems who are new to the iOS platform and new independent iOS developers who have seen a potential market for ASD assistive applications

In the first case it would appear that the authority and quality of the non-technical systems that the of the creators of these applications is without question. However the quality of the iOS applications that they have produced is not exemplary.

One of the most popular communications aids in the US is Proloquo2Go, which is based on a similar assistive software package for Mac OS X. The buttons for each of the components are graphical, friendly and large. However, navigation around the application is hamstrung by small buttons that appear to be out of place and far to small for individuals who may have poor fine motor skills. It seems that the graphical style is somewhere in between a fully customised look-and-feel and a poorly skinned native App. The cost of the application is clearly very expensive at $189.99 USD. This is not to say that this software is effective or incredibly assistive for those who are accustomed to it, we believe that there is so much more available to users with special needs. We should not accept poor UX because that is the status quo.

There are are additional applications that vary in cost and functionality, however the UI and UX of these applications are lacking in one way or another

• iCommunicate has very small images and appears to have design issues related to scaling images. It is also very expensive for what it does offer.
• GRACE is a mid-range priced PECS based system
• iConverse is PECS based system at a reasonable price and with a much cleaner and clearer user interface than any of the others on the App Store.

The cost of these applications is also very steep and although the cost of these applications may be paid for or subsidised by State healthcare and healthcare insurance, this is not always the case. The budgets of parents/guardians for children with ASD can already be stretched, so this additional burden can be considered to be unnecessary. While some may say that this is understandable because this is a niche product, they may be overlooking the fact that there is a large population parents who have children with ASDs

The Potential

This quotation from App Store Review says it all:

“Still hands down the best app for transitioning to touch technology from a laminated PECS system. This app is a bargain, my last laminator cost $80 alone! Well done!”

This is the norm rather than the exception for a $37.99 app. If we look at other categories of apps within the iOS App Store alone, competition has driven down costs and increased excellence. It has been proved time and time again, that there is a real market for world-class Applications with a much higher level of consideration for design. We should have much higher expectations and demands for this category of assistive applications. The iPad has opened the door for apps with engagement through animation, visual and audio feedback. This should be enabled through simple, thoughtful and elegant applications. If any group of people needs this at more aggressive pricing, its parents and carers of individuals with special needs.

The needs of parents, carers and individuals with special needs are often overlooked. Its time for the makers of Assistive Applications to raise the bar.

This post was from one of our passionate iPad app developers – Lawrence. If you are interested in an Android app or Application for Apple devices, why not give OneResult a call?  Check out our recent app for Channel Five’s “Gadget Show” – Around the World in 80 Days.

I mean no disrespect to SEO-ers in the subtitle of this post. It is, in fact, more of an affectionate term. I use SEO and PPC together myself and this is where I got the idea for this post from. There have been a few different posts on this topic floating around the blogosphere recently, so I thought it best to add my two-pennies worth. There are a number of PPC traits that can help you to reap benefits in the search engine optimization game.

1. Use Your Advertising Space Wisely

When you are working in PPC, you are constantly kept to tight limits in the numbers of words you can use. You are not allowed to use more than 25 characters in the headline and 35 characters in each of the two lines of copy and the display URL. In contrast, you have 70 characters to play with in the SEO title and between 130 and 160 characters in the meta description. Keep sentences short and pithy to grab users attention, inform them but keep them intrigued enough to click through to your site.

2. Test Different Calls to Action & Hints

Your title and meta description is prime location to sell your site. Depending on what industry you are working in, users are going to respond better to different calls to action, so trial a few. You can use the estimated CTR metrics in Webmaster Tools to judge whether people are clicking through to the site and analyze the performance of different landing pages to see whether people spend more time on site or convert more. Think about testing “Learn More”, “Discounted for a Short Time Only”, “Buy Yours Today” and other tempting phrases to see which your audience responds to better.

3. Always be Testing

If there’s one thing that a PPC-er knows, it’s to test, test and test again and see what gets better results. When you are personally responsible for money being spent on every single click, you want to be sure that you are choosing your words wisely. You must give away enough information to make sure that the people clicking through are qualified for the action you want them to take, instead of indiscriminately using every tactic you can think of to get them onto the site, otherwise they won’t convert. Things to try testing: exclamation marks, questions, capitalization, sales-y calls to action, use of prices in, different benefits, facts, figures and more.

4. Target the most valuable terms

It can be tempting in SEO to go for the search terms that have the highest volume. But it doesn’t matter how high the volume is if you only get visits from users who bounce, or browse the site but do not convert. PPC can be an excellent keyword research tool. Ads and keywords are optimized according to click through rate, quality score and conversion rate in Adwords, so try to use the words that succeed here for SEO. Or, if you are not running Adwords, use Analytics goal tracking to make sure you can see which terms sent enquiries and build content and links for these terms. Do not be afraid to stop targeting terms that you perceived to be “money terms” if they are not actually bringing in any conversions.

There you have it. SEO and PPC together can be a very complementary mix. Adapting your approach to SEO with PPC techniques in mind can help you get more from your online marketing campaigns.
This post was written by Liz on the PPC team. If you would like to integrate your SEO and PPC, give OneResult a call today.

The Toyella app for iPad has been designed and developed to match the beautiful toys sold by Toyella. We wanted from day one to have an app which mirrors the brand values of Toyella. The app we came up with provides an excellent way for parents to browse and discover all the toys they wished they’d had as a child, right in time for Christmas.

The app starts by displaying the latest toys. A simple, intuitive, carousel allows parents to quickly view Toyella’s entire product range. The great thing about a good iPad app is the natural interface between user and tablet device.

Parents are likely to quickly come across many toys they want for their children. Multiple high resolution gorgeous photographs are available for each toy with the tap of a finger. A simple pinch gesture allows you to zoom and pan on the photos. It this type of interaction that just isn’t possible with a website. It brings the customer and product that much closer.

Toys can be favourited for easy access later on. That is what this app is all about – giving the customer what they need in order to have a satisyfying shopping experience. There will likely be many parents who stumble upon this app in the App Store without ever having heard of Toyella. Social media is built right into the app allowing parents to share toys with their friends via Facebook, Twitter and Email. From the point of view of a company such as Toyella this is ideal. Having an app on Apple’s App Store brings huge benefits in bringing your brand to a wider market.

This app brings what it means to be a child to life as a shopping experience – a simple, direct, fun and visually engaging app. Check it out in the App Store today.

If you are looking to bring your brand into the mobile world of iPhone, iPad and Android devices, why not give our iPad development team in Birmingham a call today?

Staying inspired is a pretty important part of digital design. In an industry that moves quicker than almost any other, being able to quickly call to mind a selection of visuals to kickstart creative research is something we take fore granted. In a matter of minutes, using sites like fffound and dribbble, we can gain decent head start – saving valuable design time for later on. There are some great web design tools out there to aid the creative process, it’s just knowing where to look. You quickly learn that getting the best use out of your time is vital for web design.

Recently I’ve been using Gimme Bar to catalogue sites, text, graphics and videos, for reference later on. Hidden behind this simple bookmarklet is a range of powerful tools including tagging and sharing, making it easy to find what you seem to remember seeing earlier, but have no clue where you might have saved it. Another awesome tool that has a double thumbs up from me is stellar.io from Jason Kottke. It collects the favourites of you and your friends from twitter, youtube, vimeo and flickr and aggregates them into one stream of awesome – the point being it filters out useless tweets about breakfast and annoying nyancat videos, leaving you with just the gold to enjoy at your leisure.

Staying productive and efficient is just as important as staying inspired. Nothing kills creative flow like those niggly little tasks that simply will not die, but there are web design tools that can make them easier for you. I’ve been using Wunderlist for about 6 months now and am loving it. Being able to sync my to-do lists across devices and share with others, for free, is awesome. Another great time saver for me has been ifttt (if this then that) – a great tool that literally does stuff so you don’t have to. Things like ‘every time I’m tagged in a photo on Facebook, put a copy in my Dropbox’, or ‘if tomorrow looks like rain, email me first thing so I don’t forget my jacket’. In a matter of minutes I had all my web and social apps talking to one another and happily doing a bunch of tasks automagically, so I didn’t need to.

I’m aware everyone has that ‘thing’ that works for them, but if one or more of these apps saves you even a few minutes, then they’re worth checking out, right?

Other time saving web design tools, from this month’s toolkit:

http://del.icio.us -  Online bookmarks -Keep up with emerging trends on the web.
http://ifttt.com - ”If this then that”  -Get your web apps doing stuff for you
http://mlkshk.com -Image sharing and discovery
http://www.colourlovers.com – Colour palette inspiration and sharing
http://www.imgspark.com – Image sharing and discovery
http://vi.sualize.us- Image sharing and discovery
http://snip.it – Online bookmarks from the web
http://utopic.me – Visual bookmarks
http://welovetypography.com – Typography inspiration and discovery

If you have any other tools you like to use, please feel free to share in the comments below.

This post is from the inspirational Stevo on the OneResult web design birmingham team. Look no further for a team that can give your brand the image you are looking for.