A bridge too far?

May 6, 2005November 5, 2010 Richard Boardman

Shoe-horned in between engagements, we finally got one Mareeba task completed this week, the selection and publication of a new bridge for the header of the web site.

The design agency we used for the original site came up with a beautiful image of the sun setting behind the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the rather too identifiable (as it turned out) Opera House. Over which was written our strap line – ‘the independent consultancy that bridges the gap between technology and success’. All very well done we thought. What we hadn’t considered of course, was that anyone searching the web for a CRM consultant, was, rather reasonably, going to conclude we were based in Sydney, New South Wales, rather than Amersham, Buckinghamshire – and quickly move on to the next site.

On the surface locating a new bridge shouldn’t have posed a Herculean task, but it proved rather more time consuming than I expected. We had four simple criteria 1. it had to fit with the existing colour scheme. 2. that it was a British bridge, or at least geographically neutral. 3. that we could acquire the image without demolishing the marketing budget, 4. that the image worked in the thin letter box style strip the header occupied.

A tour of the mainstream image libraries proved frustrating. After investing a significant time identifying potential images and decrypting the labyrinthine complexity of the associated licensing arrangements, I finally determined that sourcing an image that way was going to cost twice as much as it has cost to design and develop our web site in the first place.

Plan B, was to take a picture myself. One well-meaning suggestion was that the river Misbourne, which flows round the back of the offices, might prove suitable material. Given, that it would take a less than Olympian effort to hurdle the Misbourne even at its widest point, and the penalty for falling short would likely be no more than slightly moistened footwear, I concluded it wouldn’t prove a real show-case for what we perceived as the rather broader expanse between ‘technology and success’.

An operation to photograph bridges along the Thames valley was in the advanced planning stages, when we were pointed to http://www.stockbyte.com/, from whom we were able to source at a very reasonable price, the current image. Andy, our web developer, was a little concerned that the selected photograph of the Forth Rail Bridge wasn’t as geographically neutral as it could be, until I pointed out that a fair proportion of our client base resided within its twenty mile radius.

I liked the Stockbyte approach, as well as their pricing. Their help-desk was patiently informative when I phoned to pose a series of questions that were thoroughly and clearly documented on their web-site, had I taken the trouble to look properly. I particularly liked the email that followed sign up on the site, from their CEO Jerry Kennelly which concluded with the line – ‘Our product experts are always available to help you – or if you want to share something with the guy who started the company, drop me an email (I will reply personally – but not always instantly).’ Nice touch.

Anyway the bridge change may not have been our most strategic move to date but I’m a great believer that lots of small improvements are conducive to great results. We’ll see!