HotBanan, based in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, powers Corporate Web sites, Intranets, Extranets and Micro Marketing Sites for more than 200 companies worldwide in more than 14 languages. Designed for non-technical users, Hot Banana uses ColdFusion to create what the company calls "an easy-to-use, full-fledged Web Content Management system able to manage a Web site's content creation and publishing process."

Company CEO Krista Lariviere recently asnwered some of our questions about the company in this exclusive interview.

CFDJ:  What was the vision behind the founding of the company, and has it  changed any?

Krista Lariviere: When we started Hot Banana in 1999, we set out to create a Web Content Management solution that would be very easy-to-use, search engine friendly and focused on marketing.

Over time, Hot Banana’s marketing user adoption became so strong, that our clients began asking us to add and integrate more marketing solutions into Hot Banana. We added email marketing, RSS feeds, SEO tools, Web analytics, press release distribution, blogs and eNewsletters. All these extra marketing features and functions evolved into what we now call our Active Marketing Solution which complements our Web Content Management Suite.

Our Active Marketing Web Content Management Suite works together as a Web publishing platform from which our clients can pro-actively launch eMarketing campaigns. As the Web site is now at the center of all marketing activities, both offline and online, getting the maximum value out of the Web site means that it has to be fully optimized. And this is where Hot Banana is currently focused – Marketing Web Content Management and Web site optimization.

CFDJ: What problems are you focused on solving for your customers today?

KL: This question directly links to our vision. We’re focused on solving the Web Content Management issues within marketing departments, usually around the optimization of the Web site and how to get the most out of it. And because we work with marketers, we’re striving to make Web Content Management Software easier-to-use, and to make Web sites easier to update, manage, track, measure, optimize and perform.

Hot Banana is also focused on providing a technology solution to bring together multiple eMarketing ‘siloed’ technologies, such as content management, email marketing and Web analytics into one, single, easy-to-use eMarketing platform.

Ultimately Hot Banana is about helping clients with their Web site performance, optimization for search engine visibility, marketing campaigns, analytics tracking and the entire sales lead acquisition and conversion process.