Minimising Risk in Outsourced Projects
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a third party to do work on the behalf of the client that they have neither the skills or resources to perform in-house. It is usually more cost effective to...
View ArticleLate and Over Budget – Why IT Projects Fail
It is a fact – IT project failure rates are among the highest across all industries. This should not scare anyone away from embarking on large scale IT projects, but it is important to understand why...
View ArticleEffective Time Management in Practice
Effective Time Management (or ETM) is a technique for getting more done in the same amount of time by efficiently partitioning the available time so that one is always getting the most out of the day....
View ArticleDesign Patterns for Software Engineering
Design patterns are a relatively new concept in software engineering, and have their origins in civil engineering. Essentially they are a blueprint for solving a specific problem, allowing the benefits...
View ArticleCrisis Management in IT Projects
The truth is that crises happen in IT projects. Due to the young nature of the industry, the chances are higher that a project will encounter some form of crisis during its course. It might be a small...
View ArticleChoosing between Fixed Price and Time & Materials
When commissioning a third party to perform some bespoke development or design work, they will typically quote on the basis of a fixed price, or 'time and materials'. Choosing between the two can have...
View ArticleJumping on the Web 2.0 Bandwagon
The advent and subsequent acquisition, by Google, of You Tube in 2006 brought the new web paradigm, otherwise known as Web 2.0 to the fore. This was further reinforced when Time magazine made the web...
View ArticleThe Ecommerce Jump Start Checklist
Entry into the world of ecommerce requires that the site owner has there components planned....
View ArticleChoosing the Best Ecommerce Framework
Choosing the best ecommerce framework for the needs of an up and coming web storefront is more than just a question of ticking boxes in a checklist. There are three categories of evaluation points....
View ArticleAccepting Payments on your Web Site
In order to be able to sell from your website, you need to be able to accept payments. This might sound both obvious and reasonable enough; once you begin to scratch below the surface, however, some...
View ArticleFormulating a Successful Traffic Campaign
The lifeblood of an ecommerce venture is traffic. Without visitors, no sales will be made, advertisers will not pay for their slot, and just maintaining the site will cost more than the revenue being...
View ArticleAttracting Traffic to your Web Site
An ecommerce web site will not make any sales unless it attracts visitors. While this might sound obvious, it is surprising how many web site creators ignore the fact that attracting visitors is part...
View ArticleThe Three Pillars of Site Creation
When building a web site, owners often fail to pay sufficient attention to one or more of the three main principles for web site success. These are....
View ArticleEffective Email Newsletters
An email newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with existing customers, as well as being a vehicle for generating revenue. At its most simple, it is a block of text, with some pointers to updated...
View ArticleDesign for IT - GUI, Web and Flash
Information Technology uses graphic design in many different ways : from hardware design (with luminaries such as Apple), through to interface design, such as those in-game heads-up displays found in...
View ArticleA Non-Designers Guide to Graphic Design
Graphic design is the art of taking a concept and turning it into an aesthetically pleasing real world incarnation. This is, of course, not just restricted to web site design, but is applied to...
View Article
