Category Archives: Web Development

UI Designer / Developer

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Description:

OmniSpear, Inc. is currently seeking creative individuals eager to join our team of talented web professionals. Working in a business-to-business environment, you will be responsible for creatively transforming internal and external concepts into workable designs.

To be considered you must submit samples of your work with your resume. This is a fulltime position at our Miamisburg, Ohio office (located near the I-75 Austin Pike Interchange). You must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Relocation will not be included.

Send all inquiries to careers AT omnispear.com

Requirements:

  • 2 to 5 years of experience designing for web based platforms, interactive design, or similar
  • Associates degree or higher in interactive design, multimedia design, or related field with applicable experience
  • Excellent visual design skills, including an eye for typography, icon design, composition, and use of color
  • Practical experience in development of HTML/CSS, JavaScript, graphics creation with Adobe Creative Suite
  • Experience working in an agile environment
  • Solid understanding of effective UI patterns and best practices
  • Knowledge of design research and usability testing methods
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Responsibilities:

  • 50% Designing websites and web based applications
  • 50% Implementing designs in cooperation with developers
  • Work closely with sales, engineering, and various stakeholders to design intuitive, and functional user experiences
  • Translate concepts and ideas into workable designs
  • Develop and maintain mockups, visual assets, wireframes, prototypes

Bonus:

  • Development experience in PHP, Java, Ruby, etc
  • Experience using source control such as Git

Perks:

  • Insurance
  • IRA Plan with matching
  • Unlimited beverages
  • Casual work environment

Company Description:

Founded in 2001, OmniSpear, Inc. services clients in Dayton, Cincinnati, and beyond. We focus on helping our clients improve their processes, infrastructure, and appearance through our extensive knowledge of technology. Joining OmniSpear means you will get to work in an open and agile environment that supports creativity and new ideas.

What is Responsive Web Design?

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Responsive web design or RWD is a web design method that automatically adapts the rendering of a web page according to the screen size or orientation of the device (tablet, desktop, netbook, smartphone, etc.). Adaptation is done by changing images size and text layout after detection of the device or screen size. Responsive design has evolved from being a strong trend to become a reality of the web today. In a world that has been conquered by mobile devices over the past two decades, no one now understands a website that cannot be viewed on different screen resolutions, or at the very least the minimum provided on smartphones and tablets.

Responsive web design guarantees a good user experience and allows costs reduction by avoiding the creation of multiple web or mobile pages. Here are some great examples:

Starbucks
When Starbucks marketers began to realize that many of their customers were accessing their website via mobile devices, they wasted no time in developing a responsive site. The website is now easy to navigate no matter how you access it and the sophisticated design perfectly embraces the Starbucks signature look.

Disney

Kids love Disney and parents love keeping their kids busy with smartphones and tablets. It only seems natural that a website dedicated to the entertainment of children and parents should be easily accessed on handheld devices. This site is great because the big pictures and video aren’t sacrificed when the page is scaled down.

Responsive Sausage Dog

Just for fun!

Top 5 Reasons You’re Invisible on Google

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It’s incredibly frustrating to put all the time and energy that you have into starting a local small business only to find out that no one can even find you on Google. Before you throw in the towel and start investing your hard earned money on pay per click (PPC), here’s a tip on affordable SEO for small business; Investigate if these are some reasons you’re not ranking and fix them.

1. Under Optimizing Your Website

There are some simple things Google looks for on your site. Find out what your main goal is for your business, find your keywords and implement them in good content. Google will see that you may be useful for someone looking up those key words and rank you higher for them. Avoid a lot of flash, images with content you want read, or dynamic pages because Google can’t physically see them. Make sure your main content is in text so that a search engine robot can actually use it.

2. Over Optimizing Your Website

Now that you’ve found your keywords there are a few things to avoid. One of the biggest concerns is keyword stuffing. Your keywords should be in good content and fit with the page. If you’re putting every keyword you can find into every title, description, and alt tag you have on your page you’re doing more harm than good. Keep it short and direct.

3. Not Enough Incoming Links

The more links that lead to you from other websites the higher your rank will be; your keywords should come from good, relevant content as well as pages that already have a high rank. Many websites were hurt by Google’s new Panda Update because of keyword spamming, spammy link building strategies, and links from unnatural or irrelevant content. Avoid these practices like the plague.

4. No Longevity

The longer your content has been around, the longer your links have stayed alive, and the less your main page changes dramatically the better. Basically, don’t go around changing your title, href’s or alt tags every other day or any other major structure of your website and you’ll be golden. You wouldn’t change the underlying structure and direction of your house everyday; don’t do it on your website either.

5. Not Enough Fresh Content

Yes you shouldn’t make any major changes to your existing content, but you should have new and relevant content for Google to index. Google re-indexes your site regularly so you should try to add at least 1-2 fresh pieces of relevant content a week. The more fresh your site, the better. Most websites do this by creating a blog on their domain which is probably the easiest way to add content that people can share which of course makes more links back to you. This is what makes WordPress and other blogging platforms so great for SEO.

Original Author: Masters of SEO

10 Questions to Ask When Hiring a Web Design Company

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Choosing a website design firm is a very important decision for today’s entrepreneur, so before signing on the dotted line with a web design company, you should research the company thoroughly and get answers to several questions. Here are 10 questions you should ask…

1. May I see your portfolio?

They’re expecting this, and will usually be happy to provide you with examples of the sites they have designed for clients. Many will provide you with references, and you should check up on them. Ask long-term clients if they continue to be satisfied with their web design.

2. How long have you been in business?

Website design isn’t exactly an ancient art, but there are firms that have been around for a decade or more. While that’s not a guarantee of quality, competition is strong enough that web design firms that have been around for several years are probably doing things right.

3. Do you offer web hosting?

Many website design firms offer web hosting, and having your design firm provide hosting as well is something worth consideration. Sometimes package deals with both design and hosting are more cost effective. If a company does provide hosting, make sure their hosting packages meet your needs as far as tech support, number of email accounts, and general customer service.

4. What kind of tech support do you offer, and for how long?

Expect your designer to fix any coding or layout issues discovered within the first 90 days without charge. They will charge for additional coding or site development, however. After that initial period, find out what they offer in terms of maintenance and web development for the long term.

5. Can you develop a version of my site for mobile devices?

Mobile versions of sites are becoming more of an expected service now that so many people stay connected through smart phones and tablets. Find out if a mobile site is part of their basic design package, or if it costs extra.

6. Will I own the images, content, and code when you’re done?

You want to buy website design, not rent it. It is generally better to hire a firm that will build your site and deliver it to you as a complete package when it’s done, rather than one that locks you into an ongoing hosting contract that you may not want. When they’re done, you should own the domain name and hosting account. You should also have access to your hosting account, server, and back end administration. If you want to transfer to another host, your designer should provide you with both the design and programming code so you can do so.

7. What content management system do you use?

The content management system, or CMS, lets an administrator (you) update and manage your site without having to access source code. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are three popular ones. If a firm wants you to use their custom-made CMS, be aware that this can limit you in the future by making you dependent on the company to manage changes to your site.

8. Do your designs conform to W3C standards?

W3C standards are highly recommended industry standard practices, and your design firm should conform to these. Your designer should know how to test for browser compatibility, and should know how to check for errors and validate your site before it goes live.

9. Is SEO a consideration in the design process?

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a consideration in every phase of web development. After all, even the most beautiful website isn’t worth much to you if nobody finds it. Even if you’re not starting out with a big SEO push, a site designed with SEO in mind will be easier to market down the line than one in which SEO is ignored during the design phase.

10. How do you price your services?

Not every company has the same web design needs, and budgets vary greatly. If you run a small nonprofit and are considering a website design firm that mostly designs for Fortune 500 companies, make sure they understand your particular needs as a small business. Most firms offer a handful of design packages based on budget and technical needs, so make sure you choose a firm that takes each individual client into account in terms of business size, budget, and industry.

Source: Resource Nation, 2012

Top 10 Tips for Data Warehouse Developers

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We’ve posted a few things here that we hope you find useful for anyone currently working within Data Warehousing, business analytics or both. This is a great list that brings together a few tips for anyone developing a Data Warehouse.

1. The ETL Process:
Will be on the critical path of your project.
Can take 80% of your project time. This can mean you do not have enough time to build applications against the data.

2. Source data:
You are going to find hidden problems in the systems feeding the data warehouse.
You will often turn up the need for data not being captured by existing systems.
Data errors come in 4 ‘types’: Incomplete — Incorrect — Incomprehensible — Inconsistent.

3. Operational support:
Data warehouses are high-maintenance systems. Reorganisations, product introductions, new pricing schemes, new customers, changes in production systems, etc. are going to affect the warehouse.
Be prepared to support beginning users immediately and at any time especially when data is not yet central to business culture.

4. Technical:
Overhead can eat up great amounts of disk space.
“There’s all night / weekend to load the database” have been famous last words of many a warehouse developer.

5. Responsibility:
From day one, establish that warehousing is a joint user/builder project.
From day one, establish that maintaining data quality will be an ongoing joint user/builder responsibility.

6. Security:
End-user data access via your warehouse requires trade-offs with data security. You can’t apply your transaction-processing system mindset

7. Your business data consumers:
Will develop conflicting business rules.
Will understand the “same” word differently.
Will perform the “same” calculation differently.

8. Politics:
For reasons of politics or overwork the feeder system programmer often can take a while to give you access to the data. Establishing ownership & stewardship of data (quality) will require education and diplomacy.

9. Business Value:
If you provide a system that is fast and technically elegant but adds little value or has suspect data, you will probably lose your customer. The nature of data warehouse developments is often “I’ll know what I want when I see it.”Data warehousing best flourishes when done with an entrepreneurial orientation rather than with a reactive orientation. Traditional projects start with requirements and end with data. Data warehousing projects start with data and end with requirements. Feeder system owners will fear that implementing a data warehouse will limit the flexibility (or political power) that they have previously enjoyed in a single system environment. Ignore this at your peril.

10. Results (a nice problem to have)
After end users receive query and reporting tools and see the value of the data, requests for data-scientist-assisted reports may increase rather than decrease, contrary to your ROI forecast.

Originally authored by ‘The Enterprise Advocate blog’ by Alex Matthews 01/04/2012
http://www.enterprise-advocate.com/2012/04/top-10-tips-for-data-warehouse-developers/

Top Five SEO Myths

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Top 5 SEO MythsSEO Myth 1 – The more times you repeat the keyword within the page, the higher it will rank
Over-optimizing the webpage and cramming the page with keywords will only result in your website being penalized by search engines.
Consider adding 1-2 relevant keywords in the first and last paragraph, but ensure that the content still flows and reads nicely.

SEO Myth 2 – Hidden links or keywords at the bottom of the page helps your website rank for that keyword
This is considered spamming by most search engines and will result in your website being penalized. If your website has hidden links or keywords, it’s a good idea to stop this and delete it from your website immediately.

SEO Myth 3 – Write content once and forget about it
Continually updating your pages with new content, removing any outdated information (such as old products you no longer stock or past events), shows a search engine spider that you regularly maintain your website and the content is fresh and up-to-date. This encourages the spiders to visit your website and index the new content. Stale content may signal to a search engine spider that the content is outdated or no longer relevant.

SEO Myth 4 – The more links you have coming to your website, the better
Inbound links are good, but the key message to take away from this is: quality is better than quantity. Having thousands of low quality links to your website will do nothing for your website ranking. In fact, your website may be penalized for having spammy links from low quality or ‘shady’ websites or directories, for example, gambling sites.
Focus on obtaining links from websites that are relevant to your business, industry or products and services.

SEO Myth 5 – SEO is a one time job
I wish it were that simple, but it’s unlikely that your website will rank on the first page of search engine results and stay there without any further optimization. Your competitors will be continually working to improve their ranking and it’s only natural that if they move up in search engine results, other websites will move down search engine results to accommodate this change.
If you wish to keep your website at the top of search engine results, you will need to continually optimize the website. For example, some search engine optimization activities your business could undertake include regular link building to quality websites, uploading fresh and unique content on a regular basis, fixing any broken links on the site, deleting out-of-date content, ensuring that your website loads quickly, or including an alt text for images.

If you would like help with search engine optimization for your business website, please feel free to contact us today.

Hard at Work or Hardly Working?

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Dustin The D-TrainDustin The “D-Train” Filip hard at work this Friday afternoon jamming to Lionel Richie’s top selling 1983 album – Can’t Slow Down. Dustin along with his sidekick Milo Cyrus are huge fans of pop, R&B and especially soul music.

Top 4 Strategic SEO Trends to Watch for in 2013

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Last year saw another whirlwind of changes and developments in search technology, with 65 updates to Google’s algorithm in August and September alone. Developing sites that perform well consumes so much energy that it can be easy to get caught up in the tactical day-to-day changes each time search engines do something new. Here’s some overall SEO Trends for 2013:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-4-strategic-seo-trends-to-watch-for-in-2013/60194/

Is Your Existing Website Mobile Friendly?

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On average, 25% of all web traffic is originating from smartphones, primarily Android and Apple’s iOS devices. Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store and want to start selling on the Web, or you’re ready to start a new online business, a mobile-friendly website is not optional anymore, it’s a must-have. More and more consumers shop using their smartphones or tablets so you need to make your website look and behave mobile friendly.

Have you checked how your website looks like on a smartphone or a tablet? Just because your site loads on a smartphone doesn’t mean that it’s mobile-friendly. Here are a few clues to what your mobile-ready website should be capable of.

  • Verify that the phone number of your website is mobile friendly (i.e. clickable). Is contact information easy to find?
  • You have to be able to read what’s on the screen without having to pinch and zoom.
  • Your fingers should be able to easily click the right link. Wasting the visitor’s time is not something you wish to do.
  • Images should appear properly. Small images are annoying. On the other hand, very large images will take forever to load.
  • Your links and buttons should be ”thumb friendly”. If a person is not able to immediately click the right button in order to go forward, he will abandon the whole process.
  • The cart should be visible to anyone entering the website. If the cart or it’s contents are not clear, the visitor will move on to the next website that can provide that.

If your website doesn’t provide these features, your customers will simply spend their money somewhere else.

Web Development Internship

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Positions Available: 2

Wage/Salary:
Varies based on experience of Candidate

Description:
OmniSpear, Inc. located in Dayton is looking for a part-time Web Development Intern. Duties will include creating and maintaining projects of a variety of sizes and languages. Duties may also include basic technical support, and troubleshooting. The amount of hours may vary, but will average 20-25 hours/week.

Candidates must meet or exceed our listed requirements to be considered for this position.

Technical Requirements:
Experience with one or more languages including PHP, Java, C++, SQL, JavaScript, C#

Non-Technical Requirements:
Must have or be actively pursuing a degree from a 4 year institution
Meet or exceed a 2.5 GPA
Availability to work at our Miamisburg, Ohio office

Other Considerations:
Experience with a version control system such as GIT or SVN.
Experience with other programming languages.

Application Instructions:
Email resumes to careers@omnispear.com for consideration. Please include your name and the position in the subject of the email.