Happy Birthday to you....

I was reading earlier this week that BBC.co.uk was celebrating it's tenth birthday.

In the same week I was asked to knock up a site for someone, who will remain nameless. They wanted it yesterday and they wanted it to look great and be the best in it's field, attracting people from all over the world so that they could go out and sell advertising on the site based on it's great traffic. Their budget? .... well lets not discuss budgets it gets embarrasing.

As I read on through the BBC article one of the first things it said was: "Actually, it is nearer twelve years since BBC News decided on an internet presence, but it took almost two to launch News Online. The Corporation doesn't do much in a hurry, which is probably a good thing when there are big sums of public money at stake." This took me back to the good old days of the internet, when things where done properly. Sites where planned, sketched out, and designed first, it took several months to get through those stages alone and the build often took a further several months on top. Even then success could not be guaranteed.

I remember building the halfpriceorless.com website on behalf of the TJmorris group, it was a great website designed by Parker Design and to be built by me and a colleague Ian Oldbury, who now earns significantly more than me!! (How did that happen? Maybe there's a blog entry of it's own I can devote to that later!!)

The halfpriceorless website was laid out as shopping aisles that scrolled across your browser left to right and worked a treat. It took us months to get it right but when we did we where all delighted with the results. It looked good, worked well, had quirky characters and did what it said on the tin, sold branded goods for half of their retail price or less.

It all initially went well, there was a lovely big launch with the media where Joe Morris made a big speech about the process we'd been through, their vision for the companies future on the web and a nice chunk of the speech about me! How I had helped and worked my rookie little arse off getting the site developed. I thought it was the pinnacle of my career and at the time there is no doubt that it was.

In the weeks that followed traffic flowed well to the site, all of the UK's internet magazines featured the site with glowing reviews and the pats on my back where starting to hurt a little.

I was gutted some months later when TJmorris announced they where closing the site. A reason for which I never got to know, although Joe Morris was always very friendly and offered me glowing references!!

The site even won a Visa award for coming runner up in the Best Value website losing out to some small time site www.easyjet.co.uk !!!!

That whole project was run well by good people, broke the mould for websites of the time and cost TJmorris a fair few pennies, but it didn't last as has the mighty BBC.

Ok the BBC has massive public funding which enables it to stay at the forefront of technology and skillsets but I can’t help noticing lately how even they are starting to lag behind sites like Sky or even ITV. ITV are attempting to go more local and it’s getting a good response. The BBC have had local content for years but sometimes you can be ahead of your time, as was the Halfpriceorless site.

So happy birthday BBC and congratulations on what you’ve built and achieved over the years, but keep a look over your shoulder for the other big boys. They’re coming to get you.

Out of interest I just did a google search for halfpriceorless and it brought up lots of reviews from across sites like Ciao and Dooyoo etc and the lowest rating I’ve seen yet is 4/5. Gutted!