Staying Ahead of the Competition | Rob May Building
He likes to be on the cutting-edge—and plans to stay there. So Jonathan McCullough sought out a website provider that could help him stay ahead of the competition.
The Challenge
If you call Rob May Building looking for Rob May himself, you could be waiting a very long time. The man in charge is actually Jonathan McCullough; he combined his two eldest kids’ middle names to come up with Rob May, due to the difficulty people have with saying and spelling McCullough. Since he and wife, Paula, launched Rob May Building in 2005, things have grown steadily to the point where they recently landed a million-dollar contract. “That’s massive for us,” says Jonathan—Jono to most. “We’ve sort of come up a peg.”
Part of the winning formula for Rob May Building has been Jono’s drive to keep pushing the business forward into new territory. Few, if any, builders in the Cambridge area had a website at the time, so Jono saw getting a site as a strategic move. “I like to be proactive. I wanted to be ahead of my competition. I saw [having a website] as the way we need to go to get another share of the market.”
A mutual friend put Jono in touch with the Rocketspark team. Despite being one of Rocketspark’s first clients, there was no “guinea pig syndrome” for Jono; he was impressed with the product and has always liked Rocketspark's attitude. “They’re not afraid to try new things.” And a “new thing” is precisely what Jono was looking to do.
The Outcome
Despite being “un-techno-geek-ish,” to use Jono’s own term, he found that getting set up with a website was pain-free. “The process has been easy because they’re easy to deal with.” But launching a website is just the beginning; it still has to be maintained. For an entrepreneurial character like Jono, staying ahead of the pack is an ongoing mission. “Then it becomes, ‘How do I keep ahead of them now?’ That’s where they’re good, in an area I don’t understand."
You needn’t look any further than the homepage to see an example of Jono’s trailblazing. Enjoying pride of place on the homepage is a compelling, beautifully-shot video. “I asked him, ‘Can we do a movie?’ and Jeremy [Johnson, Rocketspark co-founder and designer] said that, yeah, we could.” Jeremy put Jono in touch with the videography company Perspectives, and the result is a homepage experience that’s streets ahead of what you’d expect to find on your local builder’s site. And it’s the close working relationship with Jeremy that keeps the site fresh. Jono recalls recently when Jeremy called him to let him know that Rob May Building had dropped off the first page of Google search results—but that he’d already optimised the site again so that Rob May was back in the top ten. “If I have an idea, I just ask Jeremy.”
“I won’t recommend anything I don’t like,” Jono says. The fact then that he recommended Rocketspark to Turner Road Architectureand Tree Town Kitchens, both of whom have since become clients, is a testament to how much he values Rocketspark. “I just think Rocketspark does a great website.”
