Inspiration Behind This Post: Compilation And Explanation March 2018 – May 2019

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What Happened?

Between Uropygial Gland: What is it? and up to Webpages: Laurentian Wireless, they all originally had an “Inspiration Behind This Post” section. From Webpages: Red Maple Greater Toronto Area Home Renovation Group and onward I stopped putting it in. Now, I have decided to remove it from all of my writings. Why? As time went on, it began to look increasingly unprofessional in my eyes. This was especially true for articles. I was originally going to officially launch my services back in January or February this year, with the latest being March. I then put it off to take a little more time to properly finish the remaining parts of the portfolio project. Also, to get a few additional blog posts done.

With me planning to finally launch my services this month, I need the website to reflect the professionalism my brand touts. Having that section in articles, webpages, and other categories, detracts from the nature of the post. Maybe some might disagree, and think that it was a nice, unique touch. Either way, I have now decided to compile them all into this post from the first to the latest published on May 03, 2019. For the ones that did not have any, I will create it here. For all posts published after May 03, 2019, I will not post their inspirational sections here, but probably within another compilation. No guarantee, though. For now, enjoy my source of motivation for 40+ writings.

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: Welcome to Millennium Creek!

Ah, this was my very first post on the website. The creek had been silent and lifeless for two years, before it started flowing with life. How things have changed between then and now! I posted this as a sign of interest towards developing the website, but was not exactly sure when do it. This leads right up to the next post: Rediscovering its Purpose

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: Rediscovering its Purpose

This post was created as an affirmation to turning Millennium Creek into a professional website focused on various types of write-ups. It goes into detail about why I came back to it, what I planned to do it, and more.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Uropygial Gland: What is it?

I have been aware of the basic functions of a bird’s oil gland for quite some time. However, I have not really thought much about this subtle gland. This has changed when I had handled a budgerigar some time this year (2018), and noticed that its gland looked odd for a small bird. This then prompted me to go and learn more about this seemingly simple orifice. I wanted to learn more about the function, appearance, and diseases of the uropygial gland.

Inspiration Behind This Article: 2018 All-electric Cars Canada

For this blog entry, my motivation stems from my love for vehicles, particularly all-electric ones. Electric car offerings are truly getting more exciting, as we go further into the future.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Alto Clef: Does it Have Any Real Use?

As anyone would be able to tell from the way I went into such passionate detail with parts of this post, I am really into band instruments. So much, that it was only natural that I would create this post as part of the Millennium Creek restoration effort for this week. Why the alto clef? It is an underrated clef that it grossly misunderstood.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Will America Eventually Ban All Chinese Smartphones?

I wanted to do a post on smartphones, but could not decide what exactly I wanted to write about. The latest flagship available? iOS?  LG’s plummeting smartphone sales? I then thought about Huawei and ZTE with the legal troubles they are going through. I thought that this would make an excellent, interesting, informative, provocative subject matter to discuss. Do I personally think that the United States will eventually ban all Chinese smartphones? If by ban, we are talking about a total ban as in no importation, forbidding sales, and blocking them off from American cellular towers, then no.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Racism in Canada 2018: Getting Better or Worse?

This week, I knew that I wanted to do a post on racism/multiculturalism on Friday. In fact, I had that determined before I even knew which topics I precisely wanted to cover for the previous blog posts. Racism is a serious issue that must not be ignored and swept under a rug. It is a problem that prohibits prosperity and safety. We must acknowledge that it exists, talk about it, and seek to eradicate it whenever we can. Canada may fare better than many other places in the world, but there is still much work and improvement that needs to be done.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Keystroke logging

Cybersecurity is not a glamorous topic, but is very important. I felt that this article deserved to be resurfaced, since it contains enough valuable information in a manageable format.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Encrypting Your Smartphone’s MicroSD Card

Despite being originally written in 2016, microSD card slots are still a valuable component in phones that support them. This article contains a lot of valuable information, majority of which is still relevant in 2018. For this reason, it deserved to be polished, reformatted and uploaded onto Millennium Creek, giving it a far better chance to flow and get the views it deserves.

Inspiration Behind This Article: China Dress: Simply a Dress or More Than That?

Keziah Daum. Who is that you may ask? Perhaps you are well informed about this story already, but maybe not. Keziah is a regular 18-year-old, American citizen from Woods Cross High School, Utah, United States of America. She is a Caucasian person that decided to wear a qipao for her 2018 prom. Why? She personally thought it would be a beautiful, unique dress to wear for the special event. Unfortunately, after posting photographs on social media, a Twitter user tweeted, “My culture is NOT your ****amn prom dress” Now based on what you already might know, or what you have recently read from this blog post: are there any restrictions for foreigners wearing a qipao? No, none at all. There is a reason why YesStyle, Modern Qipao, and Chinese Clothing Online ship to plenty of non-Asian countries. Even Amazon. This story has since caused a debate on whether or not, it was really cultural appropriation. Most have sensibly agreed that it was not. Even though the criticism was uncalled for, this story inspired me to research and learn more about what I simply always called the “China dress“.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Starbucks Anti-bias Training Day

I did not have plans to write such a blog post today. But when the headlines came up about Starbuck’s official anti-bias training taking place across over 8,000 American outlets, it inspired me to do another blog post on racism. Though the incident was very unfortunate and should have never happened, the story, follow-ups behind it, and all the media surrounding it, have been very interesting. It has sparked a lot of debate over the lingering presence of racial profiling, especially towards Black people.

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: Fiat Chrysler Automotobiles: June 2018 Discussion

When I heard that Fiat Chrysler was announcing a new five-year plan on June 1st, I knew that I was definitely going to do a blog post on it. I wanted to take a look at what was said, the rumors, and of course my opinions on this. The latter, not-so-surprisingly, ended up being the longest section of this entry. Which Fiat Chrysler brand is your favourite? How do you feel about their new five-year plan? The departure of Sergio Marchionne in April 2019? Comment down below and share your thoughts.

Inspiration Behind This Article: The Tokay Gecko

This post was originally supposed to be my unpublished 200-worded piece “Are Tokay Geckos Too Violent For Beginners?” But it did not happen. The original piece was not complete garbage, but was also not up to Millennium Creek standards and quality. I figured that if I were going to put up an information piece on tokay geckos, that I should expand it and include much more useful information. Why tokay geckos in particular? I wanted to do an article on an exotic animal of the sort. The tokay gecko’s stunning colours and feisty personality made it a good choice.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Indigenous Peoples of Canada

A little bit back, I created a rough notepad titled “Millennium Creek Upcoming Topics May-June 2018” There, I brainstormed a list of topics and types of writings I wanted to do over the summer. It has since been moved to a word file titled, “Ultimate Millennium Creek Writing Plan For June-July-August 2018” On this word file, I have laid out all the posts and different types of writing styles I plan to do. Since I had the topic of Indigenous Canadians in the notepad for some time, I decided to go with it. Writing about Indigenous Canadians has been an interesting, eye-opening, refresher about the people I live among. The people that have inhabited this country long before foreign settlers from other continents have arrived.

Inspiration Behind This Article: Health Benefits of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

As mentioned in the previous post, a summer plan was created for the types of writings and topics I wanted to do. While it did not explicitly state which topics or types of writing I was going to do, extra virgin olive oil was one that was planned for quite some time. Why this topic? I was searching around the Internet one day, and stumbled across a post that went into the lengthy health benefits of extra virgin olive oil. I then decided that I definitely wanted to do my own post on this topic. I wanted to add my take on it, and include information and tidbits that the others have failed to mention.

Inspiration Behind This Article: What is SaaS?

While I have been seeing the term “SaaS” for quite some time, it was not until more recently that I would do something more about it. I decided to add it to my writing plan of future topics. Now here it is on the Internet. Writing and researching it has given me a much better understanding of what it is, and more awareness of the companies that use or offer it. It probably should not come as a surprise, that I do prefer one-time purchases over subscription models when it comes onto computer software. I can see why businesses go with SaaS for the benefits discussed earlier. For me, one-time purchases suit my needs. What about you? Do you prefer subscription models or one-time purchases?

Inspiration Behind This Article: The Difference Between Nationality Versus Ethnicity

Aside from it being a planned summer article, I wanted to do this post to clarify the difference of these terms. There are many articles on the Internet that either have them mixed up, or written entirely inaccurately. This is not to say that mine is the best, and only one worth of reading. It is not. But, at the same time, it was thoughtfully and factually put together to give it credibility and quality. Found this article helpful, informative or interesting? Drop a comment below or share it with your friends and relatives.

Inspiration Behind This Critique: Royal Bank of Canada Website Critique

A continuation of the plan summer plan to put up various categories of writings on Millennium Creek. If you read the beginning of this critique, you will know that Canadian Tire and Havelaar Canada will be appearing on Millennium Creek to join RBC as part of the portfolio for non-endorsed website critiques.

Inspiration Behind This Critique: Canadian Tire Website Critique

This write-up is the second out of the three non-endorsed website critiques, being done for a portfolio project. Why did I choose Canadian Tire of all online retailers? Well, there were a lot of other online retailers that I could have went with. For the second critique, I wanted to choose an online retail that was based in Canada, that also has a physical store. For those two reasons, it should be no surprise that Canadian Tire was one of the first places that came to mind, so I went with it. Readers, what are your impressions of these critiques so far? Comment and share your thoughts.

Inspiration Behind This Critique: Havelaar Canada Website Critique

This write-up is the third and final out of the three non-endorsed website critiques, being done for a portfolio project. If you have read my previous articles pertained to automobiles, then my inspiration behind this post should be very clear: my love all-electric cars. As such, I originally thought about doing a critique for Tesla. But then, I thought that the Tesla already has enough press and attention surrounding them, so I thought about doing Jaguar. Now Jaguar may only have one all-electric vehicle in the lineup, but the company as whole was attractive enough to make me consider it. I was then torn between Tesla and Jaguar. I then decided to do neither of those two, and went with the lesser known, Canada-based, Havelaar Canada. Turned out to be a good choice. If it does make it to production, I hope there will be a 4-door crew cab option.

Inspiration Behind This Essay: Is It Acceptable For Women To Breastfeed In Public? Yes

Upon finishing the articles and website critiques for the Summer Project, now Autumn Portfolio 2018 Project, the next part of it is argumentative essays. Seeing as though I had already done this particular topic originally on May 30, 2016, I figured that it made lots of sense to upload it as the first choice for this part of the project. For the argumentative essays I cover in this project, I do plan to cover both “For” and “Against” *insert topic*. I plan to do three topics, bringing it to six essays, or six sides depending on how you look at it. For those of you that hated doing argumentative essay in school, you would probably think this is madness. Truth is, as long as the subject matter is not complex, and you understand the format of argumentative essays, they are actually quite easy to do. Or am I just saying that because I am an experienced writer? Either way, drop a comment on this topic and let me know what you think of public nursing.

Inspiration Behind This Essay: Is it acceptable for women to breastfeed in public? No

This essay serves as the voice against public nursing. For the side that supports public nursing, click here. Now that both sides of this subject matter have been explored, I am almost certain that you must be wondering how do I, Millennium Creek, feel about women breastfeeding in public? Well, it should not come as a surprise, but it surprises me that this is even a debate in the first place. As far as I am concerned, I do not know of any mother that would flagrantly expose their entire chest with the intention of creating shock and disgust. Virtually nobody would want to put themselves and their child in unnecessary danger. A mother nursing her infant should be treated as casually as somebody drinking from a water bottle to satisfy their thirst.

Inspiration Behind This Essay: Should Canadians Be Required To Know Both French And English Upon High School Graduation? Yes

I honestly do not remember why I chose this as one of the subjects I wanted to cover for the essays part of the portfolio. I do remember going through lists of good topics to do for an argumentative essay. I do not recall specifically seeing anything titled “Should Canadians Be Required to Know Both French and English Upon High School Graduation?” I believe that I did run into something that had to do with language and bilingualism. From there, I decided to go with this one. Do you also agree that Canadians should know both languages by the time they graduate? Type your comments and let me know.

Inspiration Behind This Essay: Should Canadians Be Required To Know Both French And English Upon High School Graduation? No

This essay serves as the voice that is against forced bilingualism on high school students. For the voice that supports it, click here. Do you agree with the points in this essay? I strongly suspect that most people would side with this voice, but I might be wrong? Let me know by leaving a comment. “Should Bilingualism Be A Graduation Requirement In Canada?” Perhaps would have been a nicer sounding title for these essays.

Inspiration Behind This Essay: Is Technology Limiting Creativity? Yes

This is the 3rd and final topic for the argumentative essay part of the portfolio project of 2018. I came around to choosing this topic by browsing a list of good essay topics. Why this one in particular? Though you may very well know at this point that I am into electronics, it is also because of how interesting and thought-provocative it is. In fact, I honestly feared that I would not know how to go about writing this. Thankfully, it came through and I managed to get this side of the topic done. Do you agree that technology is limiting creativity? Comment and let me know.

Inspiration Behind This Essay: Is Technology Limiting Creativity? No

Now that the “No” voice of this essay topic is complete, this marks the completion of the essay part of my 2018 portfolio project. As explained on the “Yes” voice, my inspiration behind choosing this topic for an argument, was the result of two things:

1. Browsing through a list of topics to do for an argumentative essay
2. My love for technology

With that said, it is obvious that I believe technology is not limiting creativity. The problem is people themselves not knowing how to be creative, and where to draw their sources of inspiration. My own website, Millennium Creek, is a good example of creativity that would not have been possible without the appropriate technology in place. Do you also agree that technology is not limiting creativity? Or have you sided with the “Yes” voice? Comment and let me know. While some people would love a world without smartphones, computers and televisions, our lives would be significantly harder in too many ways.

Inspiration Behind This Creative Piece: Speech: Let It Become A Legal Requirement To Label Genetically Modified Organisms In Canada

I do not think I have ever written any speech of the sort before. Whether it be intended for school, work or business. The idea of writing a speech definitely brought feelings of uncertainty, but I still did not cancel the idea. The completion of this speech marks the first write-up of the Creative Writing part of my portfolio part. Why a speech? Why this topic? As to why I would want a speech, it is because I thought it would be a valuable, challenging write-up to have in my portfolio. As for my topic of choice, I simply searched around for good speech topics. Interestingly, what happens to be a good topic for persuasive essays, also happens to be an excellent topic for speeches. For that reason, it is no wonder I have seen some people go as far to call speeches “spoken essays”. What do you think? How do you feel about this topic? Comment and let me know.

Inspiration Behind This Creative Piece: Beautiful Blue Creek (Haiku)

A Haiku was originally going to be the first write-up for the Creative Writing part of my portfolio project. Instead, I opted to write a speech first, making this the 2nd writing in the category. Why a Haiku? The last time I have written a Haiku probably dates back to elementary school. Yes, that is indeed a frighteningly long time!

Much of the content on Millennium Creek tends to be articles or writings that often tip 1,000 words. Doing a short Haiku on creeks, felt refreshing and very different. I am quite a fan of the simplicity and beauty of Haiku. I may create more of them in 2019. For now, I will proceed to working on the next creative piece.

For those of you that absolutely love Haiku, I recommend you have a look at Basho: The Complete Haiku, On Haiku, and maybe this mug? Have you ever written a Haiku? Perhaps you frequently write Haiku? Comment and let me know.

Inspiration Behind This Creative Piece: Walk of the Wilderness

Is this a story? Or is it a poem? A poetic story? Those are the questions that frequently came up in my mind while I was writing this. Truth be told, this is supposed to be a “long poem”. It probably might not look like it to some, but that was the intention. It is neither a fictional or non-fiction story. Now because poetry admittedly is not my specialty, there may be some debates on how good it is, or how you might personally disagree with my classification of it this work. Walk of the Wilderness marks the 3rd creation of the Creative Writing part of my portfolio project. It was supposed to be the 2nd, but if you already read the “Inspirational” section of my Haiku, you will have the answer to why it is not.

So aside from creating this as a “look what I can do” sort of thing, you must be wondering about what the actual inspiration of this particular poem is, right? It happened when I tasked myself with the objective to complete a third Creative Writing piece. It was originally going to be a write-up of one of my real dreams. I could not decide which dream to write about. I did not want to waste too much time on it, because 2018 was coming to an end very soon. I wanted to get the Creative Writings done before Christmas. I then decided to just write one massive, story-like poem about a brief dream belonging to no one, themed around walking through the wilderness. I did not plan, nor even look at other poems for inspiration. I just threw myself in front of the keyboard, brainstormed the title, and wrote whatever came to my mind.

As anyone can tell, it is advisable to plan and get inspiration when writing poetry. It makes it more organized and refined. Or at least I think so. Well, I suppose writing whatever floats up also has its perks, too. Particularly, if you are trying to really flex that originality muscle. What did you think about this long poem? Think it does not deserved to be called such? Feels more like a story?

Inspiration Behind This Creative Piece: What Love is This?

This long piece falls into the same category of my previous Walk of the Wilderness, classifying as a long poem. If you view it as a series of short poetic stories, I will not blame you for seeing it that way. Now that aside, What Love Is This? is the 4th and final creation of the Creative Writing part of my portfolio project. What you will not know about this write-up, is the fact that it was not supposed to even come into being. In fact, I was originally going to stop the Creative Writing portfolio after writing #3. But suddenly, I felt a strong desire to create just one more long poem, before calling it complete. I am quite glad I did.

Why love? I figured that if I was going to write poems, that I had to do at least one love theme. Sounds like such a cliché thing to do, but the urge was strong. Very strong. Like Walk of the Wilderness, What Love Is This? was written in the same manner: placed myself in front of the keyboard, brainstormed a little, and just let my fingers do the rest. As a result, you may either find the poem adorable or creative, or very uncool.

Inspiration Behind The Product Descriptions From an Old Portfolio

I was originally going to start the 2019 portfolio project with the following writing categories: Blog posts and copywriting. I then had a change of heart and revised it to be product descriptions and copywriting, while making the blog posts optional. The reason is because I am going to be officially selling my services in the coming weeks. Likely in February, but possibly March. While my services have already been available for some time, I have never posted them officially and openly on social media.

Back in 2018, I completed articles, website critiques, argumentative essays, creative pieces, and the occasional blog post. Blog posts are nice and all, but they have not been a focus on Millennium Creek. I believe that getting product descriptions and copywriting into my portfolio sooner, would make it look far more attractive than common, regular blogs posts.

Seeing as though  I had already completed a write-up of original descriptions a few years ago, it made sense to tidy them up, and publish them as the first for this category. And yes, I am aware that writing product descriptions is a form of copywriting. By “copywriting” I have web pages in mind for the next category.

Inspiration Behind The 2019 Product Descriptions: Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and iPhone XS Max Accessories

The completion of this makes it the 2nd write-up of the Product Descriptions part of the portfolio project. The 1st was Product Descriptions From an Old Portfolio. Creating these names and descriptions from scratch was no easy task. I took a look at Google Maps and other products to get an idea for names and certain technical details. Even then, it still took some work. Nevertheless, completing this gave me some valuable experience and insight about product copy.

Why the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and iPhone XS Max? Those two are among the most recognizable high-end devices in the world, making them a sensible choice to write portfolio descriptions for. Of course, there are many other fantastic devices out there. Some of which you can argue are even better. And finally, I would love to know what your top three picks would be if these products were real. Comment down below.

Inspiration Behind The 2019 Product Descriptions: Kaskawulsh Men’s Fashion

Fashion is a big deal because you have to wear clothes. You have to protect your body from the elements of the outdoors. And most obviously, you do not want to violate laws of indecency. Some people care greatly about looking stylish. Others value comfort, while some prefer to just buy whatever is affordable and necessary. The world of fashion is truly, very broad. I could have done men’s luxury fashion, women’s fashion, children’s fashion, ethnic fashion, and many more. For this portfolio piece, I decided to go with an imaginary, upscale brand that is not too expensive for the masses, but is not very cheap either.

Which of these products would you buy if they were real? Comment down below and share your interests.

Inspiration Behind The 2019 Product Descriptions: Cielistellati Fine Musical Instruments

My love for musical instruments. That is the driving reason behind choosing this as the 4th and final subject for the Product Descriptions category of the portfolio project. Woodwinds, brass, orchestral strings, percussion, keyboards — they all have their unique strengths and voices. If Cielistellati instruments were real, and money were no barrier, which of these instruments would you buy? I have a deep feeling that 95% of population would pick piano or violin. Prove me wrong by commenting on what your choice would be. Even if it is piano and violin, there is certainly nothing wrong with that. Both are beautiful when played by musicians who have been trained properly.

For those of you who are Italian, or at least understand the language, Cielistellati comes from the Italian words “cieli stellati” meaning starry skies. Your eyes would indeed be starry with the craftsmanship and sound quality of these instruments, if they were real.

Inspiration Behind The Webpages Of Laurentian Wireless

Every website obviously has webpages. Does every website have good pages? Unfortunately, they do not. I wanted to have a knack at writing webpages. I went ahead to test my webpage content writing skills with this category of the portfolio project. The reason why I chose a wireless carrier, will not be a surprise to any readers who have read most of my write-ups. (Love for smartphones and other electronics!)

Now finally, if Laurentian Wireless were a real company, would you subscribe to them? Or would you prefer to stick to Telus, Koodo, Rogers, Fido, Bell, Virgin Mobile or Freedom Mobile? Comment down below and let me know. I would also like to know what you think of this write-up. Should I have included certain details within pages that I missed? Your constructive feedback is very important to me.

Inspiration Behind The Webpages Red Maple Greater Toronto Area Home Renovation Group

Red Maple Greater Toronto Area Home Renovation Group (Red Maple GTA HRG) is the second write-up within the webpages category of the portfolio project. We all need a good, clean, peaceful house to dwell in. Therefore, this makes home renovation an extremely big industry. So big, that it was only natural that I would include it as one of the 5 webpage topics to go with. And because I am based in Ontario, I chose to go with an Ontarian-themed, imaginary example company.

Inspiration Behind The Webpages Of Wonder Food of 6 Worlds Restaurant

Wonder Food of 6 Worlds Restaurant (WF6WR) is the third write-up within the webpages category of the portfolio project. Not only is the hospitality and tourism industry interesting, it is a huge sector of commerce. When coming up with an imaginary example company, I knew I wanted to include a restaurant, but was not too sure of which theme to go with. Thinking of all the ethnic restaurants around me, I decided to go with a unique, multi-ethnic theme. A little challenging, but I like how it turned out.

Inspiration Behind The Webpages Of Seaforth Serpents

Seaforth Serpents is the fourth write-up within the webpages category of the portfolio project. People love their pets, particularly cats and dogs. While cats and dogs are popular and all, I wanted to go with something a little more niche for the 4th write-up of this area: reptiles, particularly snakes. I originally expected this piece to be quick and easy to type, but it proved me wrong. Animal shop websites actually have a lot of important text that needs to be on their webpages, or you risk numerous complications. Still, I personally love reptiles, so writing this was not uninteresting.

Inspiration Behind The Webpages Of Thunder Things Automotive Group

Thunder Things Automotive Group (TTAG) is the fifth and final write-up within the webpages category of the portfolio project. As mentioned in earlier automotive writings, I love all-electric vehicles, making this a very alluring choice to go with. TTAG may be an imaginary example company, but I really would like to see Canada create its own home-grown brand soon.

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: “Maseromeo” What If Maserati And Alfa Romeo Merged Into One Brand?

As mentioned within the first paragraph of this post, this was originally intended to be a blog post written shortly after completing Fiat Chrysler Automobiles: June 2018 Discussion. Why did I still bother with it? Because it was too interesting of a discussion to throw off. Both Maserati and Alfa Romeo are internationally recognized brands that can stir up a variety of emotions.

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: The Truth About Alfa Romeo’s Logo Surprised Me Greatly

My inspiration for this blog post is summed up perfectly within the first paragraph of this post: stumbled across an image with text about the logo, thus leading to me creating an entry all about it.

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: Do I Believe There Is Life On Other Planets?

Without a doubt, the other celestial bodies around us are extremely fascinating. Some believe there is, or was life at some point on them. Others, such as myself, believe they never had or will ever be capable of supporting life. As such, I wanted to create a blog post entirely dedicated to this, and why they cannot support life.

Inspiration Behind This Blog Post: Remote Work Is Not Nonsense; It Is The Way

This blog post may very well be the most passionate-driven entry posted on Millennium Creek. Being someone who believes strongly in remote work, I felt as though I was called to do this when I saw someone write remote work off as nonsense on Twitter. Within the post, I go into plenty of detail about what remote work is and is not.

Feeling Inspired?

This was a ton of text to go through, but I do hope that you managed to read it all. And most importantly, I hope it left you feeling inspired to take some action of the sort. Whether it be reading the write-ups they link to, or creating a write-up inspired from them.

Canadian Tire Website Critique

Disclosure: Millennium River is an independent website that uses hyperlinks. Some of these links are affiliate links. When you click and purchase a product(s) through these links, I may earn a commission on qualifying sales. This is done at no extra expense to you. You may also support this website via PayPal. Unless it is clearly stated, the content is not sponsored.

Additional Notice

This full website critique was not endorsed by Canadian Tire in any way. It was solely done for a portfolio project, with the other two being Royal Bank of Canada and Havelaar Canada (coming soon). If you are reading this and want a full critique of your website that will look just like this, you will need to message me. From there the cost, details, and other bits will be discussed. For the sake of this critique, I will be writing it towards Stephen Wetmore as if he were a buyer, who had purchased the full website critique service from Millennium Creek.

First Impressions

I entered your website from the main English URL http://www.canadiantire.ca/en.html The first thing I noticed from the top of my screen is your Canadian Tire logo, a big search bar, the catalogue, log in, and so forth. Below all of this is where you have your advertisements for the latest sales and goods. Further below that are many links to pages for things like your social media, About Us and more. Judging from this page alone, I like the way the website looks, and how its very focused on the ease of navigation. But is it really as good as it looks? The only way to find out is by critiquing your website through my usual areas of critique.

Navigation

After scrolling through several pages to look for lag and instability, I did not run into those problems. I clicked on Automotive, Tools & Hardware, Home & Essentials, and plenty of others to see how consistent it is throughout. Consistency, and ease of navigation are clearly some of the biggest strengths on your website. Pages loaded quickly, scrolling was not disabled, nor does it behave unpredictably. Your symbols, icons, photos and graphics intended for navigation, appear to work as intended. Speaking of icons, your Canadian Tire logo takes users right back to the home page, similarly to another website I critiqued. Unlike that website, your logo, as well as the search bar, is almost always present. Almost everywhere I went, they were atop the screen. Now while some might argue that it takes up screen estate, which it does, it is very minimal. With this in place, it makes it impossible to get lost on the website. Searching for whatever you want is also a breeze because of this.

Opening tabs was easy, and there were no pop-ups related to spam, scam or bribery. My verdict on navigation? Excellent, thanks to the speed, consistency and presence of things.

Content

When judging the content and value of your website, there were a number of things I considered: the first was relevancy. I see that your website is the online version of your physical retail store. Therefore, all the departments that exist in the physical store, must be present on the online version. Were they? Yes, they were thankfully present. Seeing that your store has the option for purchase and pickup, it would have been such a horrible lie and inconvenience not to. Hovering my mouse over the departments revealed all the other sub-departments of each category. Home & Essentials, Storage & Organization and then Storage Bins is an example of this. Because your website boasts more than 100,000 items, checking the visuals and accuracy for each and every one of them, is not feasible. But based on the items that I did check, they appear to be visually accurate. I did not see a picture of strawberries, when I was looking at vacuums, for instance.

Because the website is very large, screening all texts for grammatical and spelling errors, would be a painstaking process. To get the general idea of how good your website’s grammar is, I decided to look at your About Us page, alongside a few others. After all, that is one of the most important pages. Had it been littered with slang and poorly constructed sentences, it would probably send customers somewhere else.

No third party advertisements were present. Not that they are bad, but I always check for this to make sure that they are not too big, too numerous, whether they have sound or not, and if they are a security risk. Speaking of security, did I find any security flaws during my time here? How do customers know if they can really feel safe shopping through your online retailer? Firstly, it helps that your store is a large, nationally recognized retailer in Canada. Secondly, I noticed that you not only have a Privacy Policy on the website, but also a Privacy Charter. I also attempted to sign-on as if I had an account, and the green lock appeared confirming the certificate of the website.

When was this website last updated? Even though it looks modern and fresh, I have not been able to find a “last updated on xxxx” or “1922 – 2018” anywhere on the main page of the website. Despite this, my final verdict for the content of this website is very good. It is very content rich, accurate, secure and serves its purpose as a general retail online store.

User Acknowledgement, Satisfaction and Contact

Being a business that sells products, this means that you obviously deal extensively  with customers. Do you really have good acknowledgement, satisfaction and contact on your website, though? Towards the bottom of the website there is a Support section present. Underneath this section Customer Service, Order Status, Returns, Product Recalls, Safety Data Sheets, and Canadian Tire Flyer Delivery can be found with further information of each specific category of support. Clicking on Customer Service reveals Contact Us with the details on which numbers or address to use.

You also have most of your social media accounts present on the website, save for your Instagram which is notably missing. Considering the sheer popularity of this platform, I highly recommend putting up the icon for it. You have a big following, the coveted verified logo, and over 1,000 posts, making it seem even stranger why it is not present. Judging from the presence of all the areas you have dedicated to customer support, your user acknowledgement and contact looks very solid. As for how good your offline service is, that is something that I will not go into, because this review is focused on your online shop. If I must touch on it briefly, the results suggest high variability depending on which website consumers are reading the reviews from. Some will feature mostly positive reviews, while others are more negative.

My verdict? Your user acknowledgment, satisfaction and contact look areas look good.

Findability

Being a retail company with a long history in Canada, your name is highly recognizable in the country. Is the same true for search engines, though? To find out, I searched “Canadian Tire” in Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL. I should also make a disclaimer that I accessed these search engines from the Opera browser. This is in case anyone finds some things missing or present, that I did not notice.

Google Search

Results came up easily and plentifully. Your profiles, Google Maps of nearby locations, and even similar companies appeared in the side bar.

Bing

Similarly to Google Search, results were plentiful and a map was present. A notable difference was the lack of social media and related companies.

Yahoo Search

Results to the main page and other parts of the website came up easily and plentifully. Unlike the other two which had a map, and/or profiles, this search engine shows the stock for your company instead. An interesting touch.

Ask

Unlike Google, Bing and Yahoo which had the very first result linking to your main page, Ask has a link to the Wikipedia article on Canadian Tire as the first result. Not a serious problem, because the main page appears within the first page. This search engine is set up to be question-and-answer geared after all.

Aol.

Very similar to Yahoo Search in that it did not show any maps or profiles. Instead, it had the results and stock information. The stock appears first, however.

Final Verdict For Search Engines

Across all five of these search engines, your website was extremely easy to find. Specifically, I such stress that the link to the main page of your website was accessible in the first or second results of all of them.

Browser Compatibility

For this part of the critique, I browsed some pages in three desktop browsers, and one mobile browser on iOS 11.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome often touts itself on how fast it is, especially when it comes onto media playback. Thankfully, it did live up to those claims based on my experience with it. The pages loaded quickly, as did any videos and maps on your website.

Microsoft Edge

This browsers boasts about how resource and power efficient it is, especially when compared to Google Chrome. While I did not perform any tests to confirm power efficiency, I did test your website’s pages in it. I clicked moderately, and rapidly across pages to see if it would freeze or bog down. For the most part, its speeds are comparable to Google Chrome. The video playback is unfortunately behind in performance.

Opera Browser

Opera is the browser I have been using the most since 2017. As such, I have spent most of my time on your website with it. The speed of the pages loading, was fast and reliable. Video playback was also phenomenal.

Safari

Opening and navigating pages through your website within this browser was responsive. It was not quite as fast as the desktop browsers, but still capable. iOS users using this browser should have no problems shopping through it. Their speed might vary depending on how old their device is. Mine was a 2015 year phone for reference. The 2017 and 2018 models should be even faster.

Final Verdict For Browsers

All of the browsers here tested, did well, with Google Chrome and Opera being the fastest. I have no idea whether your website was optimized for these two, or if it is just my computer and network speeds. Either way, users cannot go wrong with the mainstream browsers that are being regularly updated.

My Final Thoughts and Summary

Mister Wetmore, it is now time for the part of this critique where I must draw a final conclusion for your website. It should come as no surprise that I think your website is well designed. It is secure, has plenty of pages dedicated to customer support, loads fast, and finding products is very easy. Continue to keep your website up to par, if you wish for customers to not only shop in-store, but also online.

Royal Bank of Canada Website Critique

Disclosure: Millennium River is an independent website that uses hyperlinks. Some of these links are affiliate links. When you click and purchase a product(s) through these links, I may earn a commission on qualifying sales. This is done at no extra expense to you. You may also support this website via PayPal. Unless it is clearly stated, the content is not sponsored.

Notice

This full website critique was not endorsed the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in any way. It was solely done for a portfolio project, with the other two being Canadian Tire and Havelaar Canada. This critique was originally written on May 05, 2016. Though it still carries the original story from 2016, it has been polished and reworked in some areas to meet the personal standards of Millennium Creek in 2018.

If you are reading this, and want a full review of your website that will look just like this, you will need to message me. From there the cost, details, and other bits will be discussed. Finally, for the sake of this critique, I will be writing it towards David McKay as if he were a buyer, who had purchased one of my services.

First Impressions

Upon entering the website from the http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/personal.html URL, I can say that your website looks tidy, organized and modern. The blue, yellow and white colour scheme is proudly reflected all over the page. The logo, banking sections and finance related tools, make it very clear that this website is all about financial services. Judging from this page alone, I can say that my impressions for this website are very good so far. I hope that I will be able to say the same thing, once I am finished browsing through the other areas of your website.

Navigation

After browsing through many pages of RBC, I can say that the website feels consistent with what it was designed for. It does not take too many clicks to reach a certain area, scrolling is not automatically disabled, nor is it wonky. Your symbols, icons, photos and graphics intended for navigation, work as they should. There is no site map present from the front page of the personal banking area serving Canadian customers. There is a You are in:___ bar at the top of the page to let you know which main area of the website you are in. It does not display the exact section of the website, however. For example: when I click on bank accounts and go to savings accounts, it will not show savings accounts, but will display personal bankings instead. Thankfully, a single click on the RBC logo located near the top left corner of the screen is all it takes to get back to the main banking area of the website. Some of the areas, such as business banking, do not have the You are in: ___ present. Instead, they display a sitemap.

There are some areas, such as the portion for Caribbean customers, that do not have either readily available. I did notice a search box and advanced search options, which can help them reach areas they might be looking for faster. The toggle that allows them to switch between various Caribbean countries is convenient. The language switching option present for Canadian consumers is unavailable for them. This means that they can only explore the website in English, despite the other languages spoken in the Caribbean.

As strange as it feels to mention this, I am pleased to report that I can close tabs or navigate from any portion of your website without getting stopped by messages such as, “Are you sure you want to leave?” or “Wait! Open a TFSA with us within the next 48 hours and receive $1000!” I do not think most websites designed with professionalism in mind would have such pop-ups. Or at least, they certainly should not. It is very irritating for visitors.

Content

When judging the content and value of your website, there are a number of things I considered: the first was relevancy. Your website is about banking and finances, and all the areas reflected this. Tax-free savings accounts, chequing accounts, travel credit cards, U.S.A banking, and several others are notably present. I also looked around the website for typos and grammar errors, and it seems like they are virtually non-existent. For a website this large, it is impressive. I can imagine the effort and diligence it must have taken to get the spelling and grammar impeccable. Products and images here are also properly laid out. An example is with mortgages: when I hovered over mortgages on the first page, a dropdown menu of things pertaining to mortgages appeared. The same thing happens when I click or hover over other topics such as advice, bank accounts, locators and all the other listed services or products.

I did not notice any third party advertisements on the website’s pages, which is excellent. I understand that some website owners use them for a source of income. However, they can be very distracting, annoying, cause pages to load slowly, or freeze depending on the number of them present and running. I did not notice any “last updated on xxxx” on your website’s pages. I did notice that you have a Media Newsroom area where all the news and updates go. I also noticed the Royal Bank of Canada Website, © 1995-2016 at the bottom of the page that lets people know the website is still in operation. PDF files were not too easy for me to find, though I managed to find some in the Personal Banking & Savings Accounts and Newsletters areas.

I did not see any security certificates or badges shown on the main page. Not that they necessarily make a website more secure or legitimate. I did notice an informative Privacy & Security section that mentions how you keep your customers safe. I also attempted to log in as if I were a customer, and the green lock (along with https: turning green) appeared. This proves that the connection to the website is secured. A very great peace of mind for customers, as it would be dangerous to manage sensitive financial information on an insecure server.

User Acknowledgement, Satisfaction and Contact

Given that your website deals extensively with customer service, it is important to look at how well RBC identifies and helps its customers. The first thing that I should mention, is that there is a Contact Us link present. One would assume that this a no-brainer that all websites would have. Sadly, I have been to websites where it was either absent or hard to find. Glad that is not the case with yours. I also see that the Canadian portion has a ribbon at the bottom of the website, linking customers to your website’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn page. This is a great way to allow people to further connect, watch, follow, keep updated, or comment on RBC. The same ribbon also has a search/ask bar with a toggle that displays the top ten frequently asked questions. And finally, I can see that the advice section offers an extensive amount of resources to help people deal with business advice, home ownership, investments and more to show what RBC can do to help people.

Findability

Finding your website was very easy, since the name is searched frequently and is widely recognized on North American servers. Figuring out what the main URL to the website is was a bit of a mystery at first. It seems like it will vary depending on what location the severs detect, which had me initially think that the main link is http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/personal.html when it is really supposed to be http://www.rbc.com/canada.html? I will not consider this a flaw, because of the way your website was designed to bring up results based on location, or even the search engines people use. Speaking of search engines and results, I tested the word “RBC” in the search engines of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and AOL to see what would come up on the first page. Google, Yahoo and Bing had plenty of direct results, while Ask’s advertisement-cluttered front page did show links to your website, but made it harder to reach. AOL fared well like the others, though it interestingly assumed I was accessing RBC from an American location.

Browser Compatibility

For this part of the critique, I browsed some pages in a few desktop and BlackBerry 10 browsers to get a feel for the user interface and fluidity of your website.

Google Chrome

Chrome is the main browser I personally use on a day-to-day basis. It has also been the main browser I used to browse your website. It is very smooth and the pages usually load rapidly. Videos and flash content also worked very well in this browser.

Microsoft Edge

Browsing and opening pages in Edge was a smooth, quick-loading experience. Videos and PDF files worked well for the most part, but there was a short quiz that crashed halfway through. Despite that, I would not consider my RBC experience with Edge bad, but it is not as good as Google Chrome. Nevertheless, It is still fast and can safely get financial transactions done.

Default BlackBerry 10 Browser

The mobile version focuses on products, services, contact and branches. These areas loaded quickly, and I did not face much issues jumping from section to section. That said, I prefer the full experience of the desktop version. It feels less cramped and fonts do not become tiny and require excessive zooming. This problem is exacerbated when the mobile version switches to desktop mode. Now I should answer an important question you would probably ask: Would I ever bank with your company from my browser, if I were a customer? Probably not very often, unless I had to make an important transaction on the road. The reason for this is almost entirely due to my personal preference of banking on my computer’s much larger screen.

Evolution Browser (Third Party Mobile Browser)

Like the default BlackBerry 10 browser, the mobile front page looks the same. Unfortunately, I do not have much good things to say about my experience with this browser. It was jumpy, failed to load certain pages, and would not even let me switch to desktop mode from the website. It also did not let me find branch locations, in comparison to the default browser, which did display the locations. The problems that occurred are largely the developer’s fault in this scenario. But, it is still important to mention third party browsing experiences since many people will sometimes use them instead of their default mobile browsers. Both of the BlackBerry 10 mobile browsers prompted me to download the mobile application. I clicked on it to take a look, but was sent to a version that is no longer available. There is a newer version in BlackBerry World that goes by the title RBC Mobile For BlackBerry 10, but because this is a web critique, as opposed to an application critique, I have not tested it. However, there were a lot of users saying that the application is grossly outdated, missing features, and that it needs be on par with the version for Android and iOS. I do not know how legitimate these claims are. If they are true, I recommend that the developer responsible for the mobile application of your website, updates or creates a modern, refreshed application built for BlackBerry OS 10.3 and newer.

My Final Thoughts and Summary

Now that I have had a solid amount of time to go over your website and critique in various areas, I can finally come to a conclusion: well done! Mister McKay, your website is solid and was truly designed with high degrees of professionalism and security in mind. I do not know how much time was dedicated into putting together such a large, polished website. What I do know is that the effort shows. Continue to keep up the good work and high quality standards, if you wish to remain successful and competitive with other banking rivals.