Nerdy Newsletter: November, 2015

Client Highlight: King Family Farm

King Family Farm officially began in 2002, though the founders have been involved in agriculture their entire lives. Both JB & Charlene have ancestors from southeastern Ohio who were involved in agriculture, some since the 1800s, so their roots run deeply. Still, they felt the effects of a fluctuating market. Through innovation, however, they persevered and became successful. As their business continued to grow, they contacted Extra Nerds to modernize their website, including the addition of e-commerce capabilities. We're so glad to see a local business grow and succeed and we're proud to be a part of it in our own small way.

Meet a Nerd

Nick Bauer, our Design Nerd, has over 13 years of experience in the design field ranging on work for small businesses to work on billion dollar brands for Procter & Gamble. He is a ‘Jack of All Trades’ Designer who works in various medias on and off the computer. Nick has a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from Miami University and lives just north of Cincinnati with his wife and daughter, where he sits as a board member on the City of Sculpture for Hamilton, Ohio.

When he's not working hard being a Nerd, he's creating metal sculptures or furniture and playing indoor soccer. It's great to have such a talented and diverse designer on our team!

Become a Nerd

Extra Nerds is always looking for folks to add to our team. Do you have interest in becoming a part-time developer with a background in .NET and SQL Server? Our preference is for someone with knowledge of MVC, Entity Framework, and WebAPI. Javascript and CSS experience is a plus. Check out our website and if you're interested in joining our team then give Sid McFarland a call at 740-249-2200.

Extra Rewards

Be sure to take advantage of the Extra Nerds Referral Program. For every person or company you refer to Extra Nerds, you receive 1 FREE hour of development from one of our specialists. Not a bad deal, right? Spread the love!

Nerdy Newsletter: July, 2015

Client Highlight: Nice & Neat

Extra Nerds has worked with Nice & Neat on several projects and we appreciate their confidence in our work. For over 12 years, our client has been locally owned and operated in Athens, Ohio. During that time, they have developed a long-standing reputation built on their reliable service. They've made it their mission to make our community clean and healthy, one job at a time. And we like to lend a hand by keeping their website updated and offering technical support as it's needed. Our local, smaller clients are just as important to us as our larger, national clients. It's important for companies, as they grow, to remember their roots and we value the ongoing relationship we have with Nice & Neat.

Meet a Nerd

Angel Arnaudov, one of our .NET Nerds, has over 7 years of .NET / SQL experience, working almost exclusively with the Microsoft  technologies. He graduated from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Bitola, Macedonia from the department of Applied Computer Science and has vast international experience working for companies in both Europe and the United States.

Angel is constantly learning and working to stay current in the industry, lately investing significant amounts of time on several applications such as AngularJS, Knockout JS, and MongoDB as well as keeping up with .Net applications. He also has a great deal of knowledge of HTML, CSS, Jquery, and Bootstrap.

When not being a Nerd, Angel enjoys reading, cooking new dishes, and spending time with family and friends, as well as being a dedicated marathon runner. He has completed several full- and half-marathons and two triathlons! His personal lifetime goal is to complete 50 full-marathons.  We wish him luck with that, not that he needs it and we consider ourselves lucky to have such a knowledgeable, diverse, and driven self-professed geek on our team!

Industry News

Web Design Trends of 2015
An interesting question showed up on Quora recently. What will be the biggest web design trends in 2015? At Extra Nerds, we like to monitor these kinds of discussions not only because we are nerds, but also because it's important for us to stay on top of what's changing in the world of web design and development. And, we figured you might be interested too since, if you're reading this blog entry right now, you may be interested in making sure your website is on the bleeding edge. The rest of this post can be read here.

What's the 'F' Pattern and Why Does your Website Need it?
Let's face it. You have about 3 seconds to impress your website visitors before they get distracted by those cute little kittens over on YouTube. For your website to be successful, you need to capture their attention right away. More importantly, you need to keep their attention long enough to convey your message, pique their curiosity, and perhaps even convert them into a paying customer via a successful call to action. It's a tall order. Thankfully, the folks over at The Next Web have summarized some pretty interested research for us on eye movement and how users quickly scan your website content. An unsurprising pattern has emerged called the "The F pattern". To learn more on this topic, check out one of our earlier blog posts.

The Understated Importance of Monitoring your Website.
Having a website is not a "set it and forget it" endeavor. These days, with dynamic content, hackers, social media links, and rapidly changing technology and competition, it's important to constantly monitor your website to make sure it's at peak performance and delivering content your visitors find useful. Ultimately, you want to convert website visitors into paying customers, and so it's vital that your website is available, loads quickly, and is serving useful, directed content to your visitors as intuitively as possible. You can find the rest of this post here if you'd like to keep reading.

Become a Nerd

Extra Nerds is always looking for folks to add to our team. Do you have interest in becoming a part-time developer with a background in .NET and SQL Server? Our preference is for someone with knowledge of MVC, Entity Framework, and WebAPI. Javascript and CSS experience is a plus. Check out our website and if you're interested in joining our team then give Sid McFarland a call at 740-249-2200.

Extra Rewards

Be sure to take advantage of the Extra Nerds Referral Program. For every person or company you refer to Extra Nerds, you receive 1 FREE hour of development from one of our specialists. Not a bad deal, right? Spread the love!