A Short History of BRAINBOX

By Gary Straughan, Chief Brainbox

1999 - The seeds are sown

We trace our origins back to a project for the NSPCC.

The project was in two parts: the installation of a brand new content management system, and the restructuring of their existing website content. This was our first experience of content management and it was plain to see the benefits it provided to the society's editors.

More of a surprise was the impact of the content restructuring. The NSPCC website was well-established and had a huge amount of content (> 300 pages), but the organisation of the content was such that few users would be able to find what they wanted. By thinking about potential users of the site and what they would be seeking, we were able to establish a new organisation - a new Information Architecture - that made much more sense and had a profound impact on the effectiveness of the website.

It sounds sad to say, but an enduring interest in content had begun...

2003 - The start-up: ContentAtoZ

By 2003 we were convinced of the need for (yet) another web business but this one where everyone was as interested in what went into each page as in how it looked and worked technically. And always asking "how will that work for visitors to the site?"

The approach served us well on one of our first projects for The Fine Line group of bars. It's a site we've very proud of: it's fast, it looks good and it gets results for the client.

2005 - BRAINBOX arrives

While content is still a very important part of what we do - we continue to manage content for most of the sites we've built - it's no longer all that we do. The range of our work has extended to include web strategy, development, email and search engine marketing... and the name ContentAtoZ doesn't really fit the bill.

So ContentAtoZ became BRAINBOX. It's a cheeky little name... that's not to be taken too seriously!