As today marks the final day our Ten Year Celebration week, we would like to thank everyone for their participation in our celebration!  We hope you had a chance to check out our special edition video blogs; if you haven’t yet, you can watch them here!

 Our “Ten for Ten” contest winners were: @hollywoodvidFMA, Denise Halford, @jdhoss, @CobberPRClub, and @palegreenstar.  These individuals each won a $10 Visa gift card and Vicki Daniel and @michacha101 also each won a $10 Visa gift card for being chosen at random from all of our great Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/onsharp) followers and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/onsharp) fans.

 We would also like to thank those who sent us kind words of congratulations and continued support.  As a business, we are honored to be a part of the Fargo-Moorhead community and your business, professional, and personal relationships are important to us.

On behalf of everyone at Onsharp, thank you for the last ten years, and here’s to many more!

Sincerely,

Joe, Tami, Matt, Abby, Samantha, Laura, Jon, Scott, Cory, and Tony

 

In this short video blog, President and Co-founder of Onsharp, Joe Sandin, gives his most valuable advice to anybody looking to start a business, currently in business, or wondering what some of the keys to successful business could be. Joe’s biggest tip is one he has found has truly made the difference in Onsharp’s last 10 years of success. Watch it now to see what the big tip is!

In this video blog, President and Co-founder of Onsharp, Joe Sandin, reflects on how Onsharp got started 10 years ago by 2 college interns with a passion for web-based solutions.  Joe also comments on how Onsharp has come to be the company it is today, as well as his vision for the next 10 years of growth and success for the company.  Check it out to see where Onsharp has been, where Onsharp is now, and where Onsharp is going.

 

 

Onsharp, a professional web consulting firm in Fargo, is celebrating its 10^th year of business this month.  Located at 474 45^th Street South in Fargo, Onsharp was founded in July of 2000.

The company was started by two college interns, Joe Sandin and Matt Hardy, who shared a passion for the web and yearned to share that passion with businesses in order to help them reach their full potential and remain competitive in a dynamic business setting.  Through the several local and nationwide projects Sandin and Hardy received, they realized the full potential and power the web held as a communication tool, channel for sales, and more.  Sandin moved the company to Fargo, ND in 2003, and since then Onsharp has expanded its service offerings, skilled team of professionals, and its client base.

Onsharp continues to grow with an energetic and passionate determination to help businesses create web-based solutions.  The core values of innovation, an unparalleled customer experience, and measurable results are behind every project and interaction with Onsharp, and the company has both an experienced staff as well as a proven process model to ensure growth and success for their clients. Onsharp now offers six core services: web strategy, web design, web development, web marketing, web optimization, and web hosting.  Onsharp also offers a hosted service, SmartPay, which provides web-based billing and payment integration for businesses to help them save time, money, and the environment.

“The key to our success at Onsharp has always been and will continue to be our talented and energetic team,” comments Sandin.  “Without their collective expertise and passion for what we do, the results that we have brought to our clients would not be possible. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of the Onsharp team members that have worked so hard in pursuit of our vision of driving success. I would also like to thank all of our clients, past and present, who we have been fortunate to serve.  We are extremely grateful for your business and we look forward to long-lasting partnerships with all of you for many years to come.”

At Onsharp, the overarching vision is simple: Drive Success. Whether it be for clients, employees, their families, or the community, Onsharp strives to create success in the lives of all people, businesses, and communities it serves.  Offering a full array of services, Onsharp is here to ensure your business is making the most of the web to leverage measurable results.  For more information about Onsharp or SmartPay, please visit www.onsharp.com, www.gosmartpay.com, or call toll-free at 1.866.ONSHARP.

 

At Onsharp, we are continuously working to provide our clients with the most innovative solutions for their business while offering them an unparalleled customer experience.   That’s why our talented team of developers recently made enhancements to SmartPay to make it an even better overall experience for all involved.
As we let you know in a blog a few weeks ago, SmartPay is now PCI Compliant.  On top of that important update, SmartPay is now even more feature-rich than before.  These new and improved features include:

• Expanded help documentation for all types of users answers questions immediately
• Easier navigation on payments report makes daily and weekly reporting faster
• Load a custom invoice format as a default invoice template for enhanced customization
• More search and reporting options give merchants the information they need to help their customers
• Import line items for further customized invoices
• Easy reference of refunds provides a meaningful payment history
• Printer-friendly receipts make record-keeping and customer service easier
• Entering manual payments is quicker with the new bulk entry option
• And more!

To learn more about SmartPay’s new and improved features, check out the rest of our website.  If you still haven’t learned as much as you’d like about SmartPay, take a short and sweet virtual tour here.

Questions about these new features or what exactly they mean? Contact us right now, or leave us a comment to let us know what you think about the improved system.

 

Onsharp is always looking for great information to share with our followers. “Web Design Trends for 2010” is one of the more interesting and well done presentations I’ve seen all year. In the presentation, Tijs Vrolix does a wonderful job describing five “Don’ts” for web design this year. With permission, I am sharing those “Don’ts” with you today: 

 

1. Forget about Smiling Business People

We’ve all seen them. From financial websites to consulting firms, so just say no. 

2. Puzzles 

We get it. The “missing piece to the puzzle”. 

3. Globes

A globe is meant to depict a “worldliness” and describe geographic availability. Can’t it be done another way? 

4. Gears

Yes. Onsharp is guilty of using gears. The major problem: in the real world, they wouldn’t actually function. 

5. Light bulbs

Representing ideas and innovation with a light bulb is a little… unimaginative. 

So maybe our additional comments to Tijs’s five “don’ts” are a little harsh, but there is one running theme throughout those five “don’ts”— Lack of originality. Your site should grab peoples’ attentions and be unique. Admit it. You’ve seen those five images on nearly every business site you’ve visited. 

Tijs suggests: Simplicity, invisible complexity, Big (text, headers, footers, call to action), arty, and the bigger picture. 

 

Onsharp’s design services can help you avoid the “don’ts” to produce a well designed and highly functioning site to enable your business to reach your 2010 goals. 

Click here to begin designing with Onsharp

Click here for Tijs’s Presentation