The first of June 2012 marked the official 10th birthday of NB Communication.
More specifically, it marked 10 years to the day since David Nicol and Magnus Bray (NB's founding partners) got the keys to their first office space, a small unit in the Shetland Business Innovation Centre. The Innovation Centre is no more - the building is now occupied by Train Shetland - but NB Communication is still here, and going from strength to strength.
Looking back over some of our business plans from the time. it is interesting to see that our overall approach today is still based on the same fundamental principles. Here's an extract from one of our very first business plans ...
"We will offer advice and assistance to companies or organisations that are seeking to develop a successful web presence. Clients could be bodies with existing, but inefficient, web sites that are in need of improvement, or bodies in the first stages of considering a web site.
The advice we have to offer is in several areas that are very often overlooked by web site owners, either because they have insufficient time to educate themselves about them, or because they are unaware of them in the first place.
Examples of the topics we will cover are:
- strategic planning (why have a site at all?, role of site within the organisation, domain names, target audience, scale of project, etc)
- site design (visual appeal, information architecture, site navigation and general usability)
- promotion (search engine strategy, site linking, on-line and off-line promotional strategies)"
Pretty much all of this still applies today. In short, our overall passion is to help people make their businesses and organisations better - much better - by making proper and effective use of the Internet. It's what we know about and are good at, and we love helping our customers to succeed.
Of course, many of our original plans has to change quite radically. For example, back in 2002 we said ...
"It should be noted that we do not have web-authoring skills, and will not offer a site development service. We consider our role to be intermediaries between site owners and web-authors. We shall ask the questions that are often overlooked in the common owner-author relationship, the answers to which will be to the benefit of both. We will provide expertise in areas that are vital to the success of a web venture, but which are often neglected."
We very quickly realised that our customers wanted us to handle everything required to get their website built, not just the initial planning. As a result, we evolved from a "website architecture consultancy" to a "website design/development agency" very soon after starting up, and we've been providing a 'full' service ever since, to hundreds of clients from every industry and sector, and of all sizes.
Looking back over the last decade, NB's Managing Director David Nicol said "It's all been very enjoyable so far (at least the vast majority of the time), and it's been a genuine privilege to work for so many fantastic customers along the way. Now that I've half figured out what I'm doing I think the next 10 years should be pretty exciting. Anyway, huge thanks to everyone who has helped and supported me, and the company, in any way over the last decade. It is very much appreciated, so cheers to you all!"