Recipe for Killing your e-Business

Desjardins, the largest financial institution in the province of Quebec, has a division selling Internet payment solutions. They just started a blog and asked me to contribute. The list of my posts will be at my profile page.

My first post there is the real story of an online entrepreneur who took a number of bad decisions that reduced drastically his chances to succeed. Read on for "The Recipe for Killing Your e-Business" and make sure you do not repeat the same mistakes.

Merry Holidays and have a profitable 2011.

Animation on the Homepage

In the bad old days of website design, you had to go through a splash page to reach the homepage. It was a wonderful opportunity for artistic directors to shine. However, users hated it. Eventually, website decision makers saw the light and splash pages have completely disappeared except in history books and ad agency websites.

The new plague is large image rotation on homepages. These take up more than half a laptop screen and rotate every few seconds. They are the new way for artistic directors to win awards. Unfortunately, they often reduce usability and contribute very little toward website objectives.

Website Homepage Design

Everyone agrees on the importance of the website homepage. But did you know that designing the homepage is a lot like coaching the Montreal Canadian hockey team. Both have all their tiniest decisions scrutinized by the fans, the media and the owners. All these “stakeholders” want more of this, less of that, while having never managed a hockey team or designed a single web page.

Website Value Map

This post was a first draft and has been replaced by: "Website Financial Value Map".

3 Actions to Take When Launching your Redesigned Website

When a website is redesigned, the page addresses (URLs) usually change. This causes a lot of “Page not found” errors, also known as 404 errors. It also causes a lot of frustration amongst those attempting to reach your website.

To recover these visitors and keep a smile on their faces, 3 simple actions should be taken. Most web agencies know them. The best agencies implement them. Do you know in which group your agency belongs?

Fixed-price Contracts for Website Development

You need a new website. You have a maximum budget for its development. Should you find a vendor that will build it for a fixed price? The short answer is no most of the time. This post will explain why.

5 Questions on Website Integration With Social Networks

You have probably seen newer websites with buttons inviting you to "Share" or "Like" or things like that. Is this something that should be included into your website? The following 5 questions will hopefully shed some light on the matter.

Website Strategy - What do you Find in There?

To develop your website, your agency must first establish your strategy. Why? How do they do that? What will it look like? This article will attempt to answer these questions.

Web Site Strategy and Organizational Strategy

It is often said that the web site strategy is derived from the organizational strategy. But what about this social media thingy, Facebook, Twitter and what not?

Photoshop Compositions in Web Site Proposals

Sometimes, organizations seeking proposals for the development of their web site will receive an offer that includes a Photoshop composition (comp in graphical lingo). This is done to give the potential customer an idea of what the site will look like and it is an opportunity to demonstrate the talent of the vendor.

Welcome to my English Blog

Welcome to my English blog where I will be writing about best practices for profitable web development. My primary target reader will be those responsible for the development and evolution of their web presence. A secondary target will consist of web strategy and design professionals with whom I will be sharing ideas.

The look of the site is a bit bold, to me at least, but I will start like that and adjust it in a few months. I prefer to invest my time initially in building content.

Don't be shy. Let me know what you think of the articles and the look and feel.