Benchmark Advertising—
Website Design & Maintenance

When the team at Benchmark Advertising, the biggest bench and sign marketing provider in Winnipeg, contacted me to create a website showcasing their services and locations, I was excited because I love working with anyone in the marketing industry. As a web design and digital marketing expert, I couldn’t wait to get started on crafting a user-friendly website that would truly showcase the company’s expertise.

While this is a fairly straightforward project, I chose to list it in my portfolio to showcase that not all the projects I work require an advanced solution. Sometimes a client needs a simpler solution. Sometimes there are more serious constraints around time, cost, and/or scope for the project (Recalling the Triple Constraint Triangle from the project management class I took in college. See the visual below.).

What I want to highlight here is that sometimes you have to make sacrifices and take short-cuts when working on a project depending on when the project constraints. Sometimes a temporary band-aid solution is better

(The ‘Triple Constraint Triangle’ of project management)

When Benchmark Advertising approached me, I typically would have designed and developed a custom website to maximize the user-experience, but since their needs were relatively straightforward, they selected one of my lower-tier website packages. To meet their needs, I decided that template was sufficient, and used one as the foundation for the website’s development, which I then extensively customized to fit the client’s specific brand and industry.

One of the main challenges I faced during the planning and design process was finding the best way to display the client’s extensive list of bench and sign locations throughout Winnipeg without exceeding their budget. I quickly realized that listing the locations in text and search format on the website would not provide a good user experience, and listing them via a PDF would be even worse.

After considering various options, I decided that pinning the locations on an interactive map would be the best solution. While I would have preferred giving them a custom interactive map, I had to keep the client’s budget in mind. Therefore, I opted to pin all the locations on a Google Map and embed it onto the ‘Coverage Map’ page on the website, providing visitors with a familiar, simple, yet effective way to view and explore all of the locations available for marketing.

When I first started out (many years ago), my projects had no boundaries or deadlines, which allowed me to really explore and experiment with different concepts and ideas. But as I transitioned into working with real-world clients, I quickly realized that there are often constraints that limit what I can do. Time, budget, and scope are all factors that come into play, and sometimes compromises must be made to deliver a quality product within these constraints.

As much as I love the creative freedom of unbounded projects, I’ve learned to appreciate the value of limitations and the challenges they present. It forces me to think outside of the box and come up with creative solutions that still deliver value to my clients.

In the end, I’ve found that a project’s success is not always determined by the bells and whistles, but by the ability to meet the client’s needs and provide a solution that works, even if it’s not perfect. Sometimes, a temporary fix or an imperfect solution is all that’s needed to keep things moving forward -and this is what I hoped to highlight in this case study.

A client walks into a web agency and says to the expert, “I don’t need a maintenance plan. My new website is as secure as Fort Knox.”

A year later, the client comes back with a hijacked website, now advertising an online casino with Slovenian text all over. The web expert sees the damage and says, “Well, I guess Fort Knox wasn’t as secure as you thought.”

The client asks, “How much is this going to cost me?”

The web expert responds, “More than a maintenance plan, that’s for sure. But don’t worry, you can always gamble your way to paying off the bill on your new casino website.”

(True story humorized by Chat-GPT. The website was a mess, but cleaned up in the end. The client proceeded to sign-up for a maintenance plan.).