Company profile

Updated 10 September 2010

Popcorn Web Design Ltd

1&2 Riverside Business park
Stoney Common Road
Stansted
Essex
CM24 8PL

www.popcornwebdesign.co.uk

Revolution through evolution

Fourteen years is an eternity when talking about the Internet, so web design
companies that don’t evolve are doomed to extinction. Popcorn has not only
survived, but developed and thrived successfully since 1996, by aligning itself
precisely with the evolving needs of its customers. Although web design is an
unregulated industry, Popcorn creates websites to industry “Best Practise
Guidelines” in usability, accessibility, security and produces programming code to
meet the highest UK standards. Popcorn websites always have the edge over their
competitors.

In 2010, Popcorn is now recognised as one of the UK’s strongest and most
innovative website design and development consultancies, with a growing and
dynamic team of diversely-talented developers, programmers and marketing people.
In its pursuit of excellence, Popcorn ensures that each member of the team becomes
the company’s specialist in a particular field, whether it be search engine optimisation
(SEO), marketing, site usability and accessibility, design standards compliance and
more. Each specialist then cascades knowledge down to colleagues, so creating a
matrix of skills and expertise. This means that when clients contact Popcorn, they
can immediately enjoy a meaningful dialogue with any member of the team. The high
level of ownership of client projects at Popcorn produces astonishing levels of
dedication and commitment to their success.

Essex CM24 8PL

Page 1 of 16
What’s included in this document
Revolution through evolution ......................................................................................... 1 
What’s included in this document ............................................................................. 2 
Your website – our business ..................................................................................... 3 
Meet the team ........................................................................................................... 3 
Why you will want to work with Popcorn ...................................................................... 4 
Why you will want to work with Popcorn ...................................................................... 4 
Not just beautiful websites ........................................................................................ 4 
For a website that delivers a real return on your investment ............................... 4 
What are the business objectives of your website ............................................... 4 
For being in good company .................................................................................. 4 
No dodgy contracts .............................................................................................. 4 
How we work ................................................................................................................. 5 
A strong business focus ....................................................................................... 5 
Total user focus .................................................................................................... 5 
Substance over style............................................................................................. 5 
What we do .................................................................................................................... 6 
eBusiness – a cunning plan .................................................................................. 6 
User-centred design ............................................................................................. 6 
Usability and accessibility ..................................................................................... 6 
Search engine optimisation .................................................................................. 7 
Programme and project management .................................................................. 7 
Website and application development ................................................................. 7 
Ecommerce shopping websites ........................................................................... 8 
Bespoke website design ....................................................................................... 8 
Equestrian Websites ............................................................................................. 8 
Schools websites .................................................................................................. 8 
Email marketing – JustAdd newsletters................................................................ 8 
Website support & management – Popcorn WebWorks ...................................... 9 
Popcorn professional hosting ............................................................................... 9 
The benefits .......................................................................................................... 9 
The features .......................................................................................................... 9 
Technical Architecture............................................................................................. 10 
Clients sample list ........................................................................................................ 11 
e-Commerce websites include; .......................................................................... 11 
Client case study examples......................................................................................... 12 
Ecommerce projects ............................................................................................... 12 
Foster Group ....................................................................................................... 12 
Rimstyle............................................................................................................... 12 
Yu Tiger ............................................................................................................... 12 
Corporate projects .................................................................................................. 13 
Vio ....................................................................................................................... 13 
Sport Beans™ ..................................................................................................... 13 
CMC Partnership ................................................................................................ 14 
Capital Shopping Centres ................................................................................... 14 
Social networking projects ...................................................................................... 15 
Lost Cousins ....................................................................................................... 15 
My Sea Mates ..................................................................................................... 15 
Taking the next step .................................................................................................... 16 

Essex CM24 8PL

Page 2 of 16
Your website – our business
At Popcorn, we are totally business-focused, so we know how important your web
presence is to your organisation, whether it’s commercial or not-for-profit. Our
experience has taught us that great websites don’t happen by chance – they are the
result of great design, built on a solid foundation. That foundation is in-depth
understanding of everything our clients want their websites to do. After all, if your
website isn’t genuinely helping your organisation, then it could actually be harming it.
We `eliminate this risk by applying a broad-based approach to site design that covers
eBusiness strategy, user-centred design, usability and accessibility, search engine
optimisation and programme and project management. Bringing these diverse
services together ensures that we deliver websites that meet your objectives by
providing an exceptional and memorable user experience.

Meet the team

Popcorn was founded by Fintan Lambe. Following a successful avionics engineering
career in the Royal Air Force, Fintan worked for several years at senior management
level in TV production and newspaper publishing, for such companies as the BBC,
ITV, Daily Telegraph and United News and Media Group.

Fintan has encouraged the company to grow organically, so that today his team
includes multimedia designers, IT consultants, graphic designers, and marketing and
project management staff. They all have extensive new media experience and know
their industry inside out. Popcorn is therefore a full-service agency, but retains the
flexibility to ensure that it can work with clients in whichever way suits them best.
Thus if you have already created your own corporate identity, Popcorn will work with
your graphic designers to make it fit seamlessly into your new online presence.

1. Fintan Lambe Sales, marketing and Search Engines

2. Joy Lambe Accounts / administration

3. Patch Lawler Project manager / senior creative designer

4. James Dean Senior creative designer

5. Richard Pell Customer service / support / maintenance

6. Andrew Brooks Senior web developer

7. Alex Chambers Web developer

8. Ben Auld Web developer

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Page 3 of 16
Why you will want to work with Popcorn
Not just beautiful websites
We’re all web users today and we know instantly if a website has been well designed
or not. It’s not simply a matter of the way it looks; it’s just as much about the way it
works. Maybe you use the Firefox browser instead of Internet Explorer and you find a
website won’t display properly, or the checkout function falls over when you’re ready
to complete your purchase. If we want something badly enough, we might tolerate a
little flakiness before we abandon the site – and the shopping cart - but if we’re
talking about your site – and we are - that’s just not good enough. A Popcorn
website balances form and function to ensure your visitors get what they’re seeking
and enjoy doing so.

For a website that delivers a real return on your investment

It’s easy for website designers to promise you the Earth and deliver you, well,
something less. Websites are all about image and image is just an illusion, after all.
This means the web design industry has been embraced wholeheartedly by
charlatans and snake oil merchants. A brilliantly-designed and attractive website can
easily make an insignificant start-up look like a mighty corporation. Internet surfers
are not easily fooled, however, so your website had better be able to deliver what it
promises. That means you need to use a reputable designer, who will match your
website to your objectives and the expectations of its audience and nothing less.

Producing such websites will never be cheap, but as long as your designer keeps
these aims clearly in view, you will get a website that does what it should and costs
no more than you expect. Our costings are therefore clear and visible. If something
happens during the development process that necessitates change or extra work by
mutual agreement, then we’ll make sure you understand the cost implications and
approve them before we proceed. Later in this document we’ll give you details of
some organisations who have taken the Popcorn route to online success.

What are the business objectives of your website

A Popcorn website is a win-win proposition. Within a few days of our initial
discussions, we will give you practical advice on making immediate improvements to
your existing website’s performance, if you have one. We will also present you with a
strategy for developing and improving your website over the following weeks and
months. If your website isn’t broken, we won’t suggest fixing it; just give you
workable options for fine-tuning it.

For being in good company

The only thing Popcorn specialises in is excellence. We develop websites for all
kinds of businesses and organisations across all interest groups. Putting the user at
the heart of our approach ensures we are always at the forefront of website design
and development.

No dodgy contracts
An important note is that everything we do on your behalf, be it photography, design
or programming, everything belongs to you. We hold onto no intellectual rights. If
for any reason you want to transfer your website away from Popcorn then that is your
right and we will do everything we can to assist.

Essex CM24 8PL

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How we work
The key point to emphasise here is that we work with you. Of course, we will do our
best to minimise the input we need from you, so once we have a clear brief, we
usually only need content – and we can even help with that if necessary. The project
can then get underway smoothly and we will alert you for comment and approval as
agreed milestones are reached.

A good website is developed holistically – a number of well-judged and balanced

elements that are brought together in just the right way, to ensure the site performs
brilliantly and exceeds your expectations – and those of your users.

Whether your website’s offering is commercial, charitable or purely information, our

services ensure that your website puts you in a dominant position – and keeps you
there.

Three benchmarks are used to keep our development aligned with your site’s
objectives.

A strong business focus

Whether commercial or not, websites are business tools and as such need
investment to maintain them at peak performance. Any work undertaken must
therefore be based on sound commercial principles.

Total user focus

Understanding your site’s audiences and users enables us to ensure that the site
meets their needs and expectations. If that is achieved, visitors will stay on your site
longer – it will become ‘stickier’, like flypaper – and whatever transactions you want
them to enter into will be completed with maximum satisfaction, leaving them happy
to return another day.

Substance over style

Today it is possible to make a website look a million dollars and do practically
anything, but is it justifiable, necessary or affordable? Finite budgets and the need to
get the site up and earning its keep are natural limiters to online extravagance. We
only recommend work that will ensure your website looks the part – but functions
beautifully.

Although Popcorn is a full-service consultancy, because we are deeply practical, we

are experienced in working in a complementary manner with our clients’ own
suppliers or in-house teams. There’s no room for prima donnas in our world.

Essex CM24 8PL

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What we do
Online branding, interface design, user behaviour………………….

Being highly creative, we relish opportunities to show off our talents – as you will see
from the client examples later in this document. Being well-rooted in sound business
principles, we don’t let our creative flair carry us away. We give greater importance
to requirements-gathering, information design and project management, because
getting these foundations right gives a website the best possible chance of success.
It’s too easy to work up some cool visuals to get you excited, and then find that they
can’t be married to the required functionality. So we don’t do it.

Instead, our services draw on the principles of User-Centred Design (UCD) to deliver
a site that is right first time, every time.

eBusiness – a cunning plan

Every website should be part of a coherent marketing communications strategy. As
such, it is a living thing that requires regular attention if it is to keep pace with your
business and make its contribution to the bottom line. How do you measure its
success; sales lead generation, number of downloads, the number of online
purchases.

Key elements of an eBusiness strategy to consider are:

 Review and development – check everything, then apply the lessons to
improvements
 Operational Management review – who runs the site, do they know and care?
 eBusiness analytics and website performance measurement – closed loop
feedback

User-centred design
Putting the user at the centre of the eBusiness strategy is critical to its success – the
customer is king, after all. UCD isn’t the fun part of website design, but it’s what
enables you – and us - to sleep at night.

In the UCD toolbox we have:

 User profiling – knowing your user thoroughly is the only route to a
successful site
 Task analysis – putting the right functions in place to facilitate user
transactions
 Interaction design – making the site easy and even pleasurable to use
 Website visualisation – seeing your website through the eyes of its users
 Information architecture and design – ensuring back office functions support
the site
 User case modelling – testing the site works with the help of virtual user
types
 Writing for the web – reaching out to users with appealing, informative copy

Usability and accessibility

Even the most visually stunning websites can fail, if all they offer is an empty or
frustrating experience. If visitors abandon your site because they find it difficult to
navigate or locate what they want, then it’s only helping to make your competitors
more successful.

We minimise or eliminate these risks with the help of:

 Expert evaluation – putting your site under technical scrutiny to search for
faults
 Usability testing – does the site deliver a happy, successful, user experience?
 Cognitive walkthrough - pushing the site to its limits; can it cope, will it fall
Essex CM24 8PL

over?

Page 6 of 16
Search engine optimisation
In an ideal world, your fabulous Popcorn website would start attracting visitors as
soon as it was launched. If only. Today’s search engines are sophisticated, fickle
and immune to your website’s siren call, which has given rise to a whole new
discipline – search engine optimisation (SEO). Just as quickly, SEO has become the
domain of former double glazing salespeople, whispering promises of Google
rankings beyond your wildest dreams. Unsurprisingly, their promises invariably turn
out to be empty and your website fares little better than if you were managing it
yourself.

Popcorn applies a number of disciplines to SEO that combine to give your website a
sustainable rise through the rankings:

 Website audit – looking at the site’s structure to see if it’s optimised for
search engines
 Keyword research – checking keyword usage for best practice and content
relevance
 Link strategy co-ordination – getting the most out of inbound and outbound
links
 SEO marketing campaign co-ordination – linking SEO to Google AdWords
campaigns

Programme and project management

All too often we hear that most eBusiness projects fall short of delivering what they
promise. It seems hard to believe, given what is now well-known about making them
work, but the facts speak for themselves. True, eBusiness programmes and projects
are notoriously problematical, challenging even the best project managers, so we
have built on our experience by putting together a range of helpful services:

 eBusiness programme review – taking your strategy back to basics

 Project recovery – if it’s not working, we will fix it
 Project management framework design and implementation – it may be big
and complex but we will distil it to manageable proportions

Website and application development

Your website is now the most critical extension of your brand. It is therefore vital that
it can make the most of the new business opportunities offered by the Web. Popcorn
keeps itself in the vanguard of new Web technologies so that we can build ever-more
dynamic websites. We find that back-end databases provide maximum flexibility;
ensuring users get what they need from our sites, while simplifying maintenance for
our clients.

Key functionality for integration includes:

 Content management systems – enable you to look after day-to-day content
changes
 Electronic newsletters – keep customers right up to date; special offers; full
opt in/out
 Shopping baskets and checkouts – work first time, every time, regardless of
browser
 Inventory management systems – your online store closely integrated with
your logistics
 Reservations systems – customers make no-hassle reservations that don’t
get lost
 Online games – keep visitors amused and websites sticky
 Intranet and extranet applications – improve workflow and employee
collaboration
 And even more – whatever your online ambitions, we will realise them Essex CM24 8PL

Page 7 of 16
Ecommerce shopping websites
During 2006 and early 2007, we undertook an intensive study of retail website
usability. Our aim was to develop a model for a retail website that:
 Provides a world-class user experience
 Has high search engine optimisation (SEO) characteristics
 Is easy to manage and administer
 Is affordable

We came up with IONA which is a low cost e-Commerce website solution using
proven page layouts and functionality. The site includes a product database updated
by the client, 2 different online payment options, optimized for accessibility, usability
and good search engine placement. Selecting IONA reduces the development of a
completely bespoke website by 3 weeks, hence the savings in costs.

We have now created over 30 Ecommerce websites some of them generating sales
in excess of £2M per year

Bespoke website design

This is our bread and butter work. Researching the users and providing a completed
website which fulfils the needs of the user as well as achieving its business
objectives. At the end of the day this is what it is all about.

Equestrian Websites
Over the last year we have been fortunate to find ourselves in demand by various
horse racing trainers, the Joint Pitch Council, the Irish National Stud, and the New
Equine Hospital in Newmarket. We have now created a very powerful database
driven website which provides detailed information on individual horses, including
their race performance, ancestry and future race dates.

Schools websites
Recent work with Head Teachers from several schools and colleges has given
Popcorn unique insight into the objectives and user requirements of a good school
website. As a result, we can now offer educational establishments our finished
product: a professionally-designed, bespoke, school website package. A Popcorn-
designed schools website is packed with the sort of features and useful functionality
normally found in high-end commercial websites, yet is available at a highly-
competitive price intended to align with educational budgets.

Much more than an online prospectus, our educational website provides a means of
communication with students, their parents, staff and the local community. The
functionality includes the latest school news, forthcoming events, photo galleries of
recent trips, internal staff vacancies and press cuttings for example. It can even
generate and send a schools newsletter by email. No additional hardware or
software is required

Email marketing – JustAdd newsletters

We use the email software system from MailBuild.com, branded for Popcorn. Our job
is to design your bespoke template, set-up your user account then train you to
create, broadcast and measure the response of each mailshot. On your website we
add the facility for customers to add or remove themselves from the mailing list.

 Emails allow you to keep in contact with your customers. It doesn't rely on
your customer remembering to visit your site, or seeing a print advertisement.
As long as the customer has signed up to receive your email it is not spam.
 You can personalise emails to suit the particular interests of that customer,
instead of sending a generic brochure. Essex CM24 8PL

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  Compared to other direct mail services email is cheap and you only pay for
people you are actually sending to, instead of shot-gunning out to the world
at large.
 You can create and send emails as often as required.
Email marketing is predicted to return an incredible £48.29 for every £1 spent
in 2009.

Website support & management – Popcorn WebWorks

At Popcorn, we recognise that investment in your website represents significant
expenditure; keeping it fresh and working properly is critical to its continued success.
Websites that are left untended start to date within months, or even weeks. News
pages with no news, or news that’s six months old or more, for instance, tell visitors
that here is a site whose owners don’t care about it. That often means they have little
faith in communication tools like the contact form – usually with good reason. If you
are going to ask us to include these functions, you need to be prepared to manage
them.

Popcorn’s Web Works package takes a lot of the pain out of keeping your website
fresh and up to date. The great range of services in the monthly package includes:

 An hour’s work on your website – new graphics, fresh news items, links, etc
 A discount on any further work commissioned – excellent value route to
improvements
 Online 24-hourly server statistics – monitor site traffic and campaign activity
and effectiveness closely
 Testing of forms, links and email – eliminate broken links and forms scripts
 Search engine health check (annual) – keeps your site on the road to search
engine success

Popcorn professional hosting

Popcorn provides a specialist solution to meet the needs of businesses requiring a
reliable dedicated hosting package. The combination of high level web facilities such
as 500MB of web space, a 5GB transfer limit and 10 mailboxes in addition to many
advanced features for advanced task processing, means you will be completely
equipped to run and maintain a fully scalable site.

Unlike our competitors, all servers hosted on Popcorn’s networks are firewall
protected by default. When your server first goes online, it is completely shielded
from all Internet traffic by a dedicated FireRack appliance.

Our primary site for server hosting is REDBUS in London's Docklands which is the
premier location for server hosting in the UK. Our facility has multiple independent
telco connections, multiple diverse mains electricity feeds, UPS and diesel generator
backup.

The benefits
 Excellent service – Full business support
 Scalable – 500MB of web space and 5GB monthly transfer limit
 Secure –SSL for secure website hosting (Additional Charges apply)
 Safe – Firewall protected

The features
 500MB web space
 5.0GB transfer limit per month
 10 POP Boxes.
 Email redirection, Email filtering
 POP3 or SMTP email delivery
 Web based email access also provided
Essex CM24 8PL
 FTP access
 Graphical web stats on site traffic

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  Raw website access logs
 Secure website hosting (SSL) additional charge applies
 Full CGI capability
 UNIX shell account
 Perl
 MySql capability
 PHP functionality
 Business technical support
 Domain name registration and DNS

Technical Architecture
Our philosophy is to produce efficient, maintainable solutions based on proven
technology. Our choices of software are based on robustness, scalability and
quantifiable success in the internet industry.
LAMP
Our technical architecture is based around the LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP)
platform. LAMP is a proven full stack of open source software and provides the
principal components to build a stable and secure web server. Due to its open source
philosophy our costs do not carry any mandatory licence fees. A breakdown of the
LAMP components is included below.
Linux
Our proposed solution should run on any modern enterprise level operating system,
but for security, scalability and flexibility we recommend using a UNIX style OS. We
use the enterprise class CentOS distribution.

Apache
Apache is the server element of the stack and is responsible for handling the
requests from a user’s browser and responding with the relevant webpage. Apache is
recognized for its speed, security and scalability. As of January 2010 Apache powers
53% of all websites.

MySQL
MySQL is the database used in a LAMP stack. It has become the world’s most
popular open source database thanks to its performance and reliability. Some of
MySQLs high-traffic users include Nokia, YouTube and Google AdWords.

PHP
Our applications are programmed in PHP – a programming language purpose built
for the web. PHP has become one the most prevalent languages used on web with,
as of April 2007, over 20 million installations. It powers some of the biggest and most
popular websites on the Internet including Facebook, Wikipedia and Yahoo!

Development Model
We use a Model View Controller architecture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-
view-controller) enabling us to create structured, maintainable and extensible
applications where the database, user interaction and presentation of the data are
clearly defined and managed. We use the PHP based CakePHP MVC framework as a
basis for our applications.

Essex CM24 8PL

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Clients sample list
With over 1,000 websites to its credit since launch, there is no shortage of Popcorn
clients to demonstrate our capabilities. From start-ups to household names, from
charities to governmental organisations, Popcorn’s rounded skills and experience
create the broadest range of successful websites on the internet. Currently, we also
manage over 200 websites on behalf of clients, using our WebWorks package
described above.

Please take your pick of the client examples below and if you feel that none of them
matches your business model closely enough, we will be happy to suggest some
alternatives that do.

www.myseamates.com www.sportsparty.co.uk
http://maps.localwildlifesites.org.uk www.redprofessionallocums.com
www.hayter.co.uk www.larkinggowen.co.uk
www.danescroft.co.uk www.theonethatyouwant.com
www.wots4supper.co.uk www.marnix-europe.com
www.mgs.co.uk www.lakeside.uk.com
www.pa-training-courses.co.uk www.mini5.co.uk
www.greatforschool.co.uk www.lostcousins.com
www.sportbeans.co.uk www.bondara.co.uk
www.yutiger.com www.hardsoftcomputers.co.uk
www.6sconsulting.co.uk www.hpctraining.com
www.braehead4business.co.uk www.cmcpartnership.com
www.elsenhamwater.com www.radleys.co.uk
www.essonprint.co.uk www.sworder.co.uk
www.kennel-maid.co.uk www.sportsparty.co.uk
www.elycathedral.co.uk www.jellybelly-uk.com
www.fostergroup.co.uk www.velofrance.com
www.holbrook-insurance.co.uk www.willinghamauctions.com
www.julianchichester.com www.mittyjames.com
www.easiski.co.uk www.metrocentre.uk.com
www.irish-national-stud.ie www.tridentmarketinguk.com
www.peacockauction.co.uk www.speedbox.co.uk
www.myfirstday.co.uk www.pellys.co.uk
www.amarnaproject.com www.njpc-ltd.co.uk
www.cavendishequipment.co.uk www.lostcousins.com
www.ceauto.co.uk www.rimstyle.com
www.dww.co.uk www.fennes.co.uk
www.cityofnorwichhalfmarathon.com www.hardsoft.co.uk
www.minitran.co.uk http://corporate.eurocarparts.com
www.pexhurst.co.uk www.summeruni.org
www.stisport.com www..europe.marubeni.com
www.wholivedthere.com www.pellys.co.uk
www.burstowandhewett.co.uk
www.kaypilsbury.co.uk

e-Commerce websites include;

www.michelherbelin.co.uk www.gpcsupplements.com
www.saffronbrewery.co.uk www.spangle.co.uk
www.recovery-equipment.co.uk www.techpart.ie
www.yutiger.com www.speedbox.co.uk
www.rimstyle.com www.bondara.co.uk
www.fostergroup.co.uk www.practicalpushchairs.co.uk
www.zapsweets.co.uk www.jellybelly-uk.com
www.europerformance.co.uk www.sportsbeans.co.uk
www.minitran.co.uk Essex CM24 8PL

Page 11 of 16
Client case study examples
Ecommerce projects

Foster Group – www.fostergroup.co.uk

Client profile:
The company already had a website focused on stitching and embroidery services for
promotional and corporate clothing. The site design was poor and it wasn’t
generating leads. Foster Group therefore needed a new and improved website, with
full e-commerce capability to cope with a huge product range of around 20,000
items. The website would also need to accept and manage product and description
data from its major supplier’s catalogue, without running into content plagiarism
problems with search engines. Foster Group was referred to Popcorn by another
customer.

Popcorn delivers:
A fresh new look was created for the Foster Group website, with product categories
clearly and colourfully defined and differentiated. With so many products available
through the site, the ‘engine’ needed to be robust, expandable and easy for the client
to maintain. The main wholesaler’s database can now be imported annually and
Foster Group’s own staff can add their own content and modify the standard product
descriptions. Searching on any of the wholesaler’s leading product offerings will
return Foster Group at the top of search results. Having avoided falling foul of the
search engines, the site is now extremely successful – sometimes requiring
nightshifts to keep up with demand - and has given rise to a spin-off site –
www.greatforschool.co.uk which allows schools to outsource their uniform supply
logistics entirely. Schools have to sign up to the site and can then issue parents with
an access password to ensure that items of uniform can only be bought by genuine
purchasers.

Rimstyle – www.rimstyle.com

Client profile:
Rimstyle sells performance-enhancing car parts online and is one of the UK’s leading
suppliers of alloy wheels and tuned exhaust systems. The company already had a
website, but it needed re-building to provide class-leading functionality and greater
capacity for the huge range of parts it sells. Scouring the internet in search of a
comparable site that offered what Rimstyle wanted, the company looked at the most
successful general car parts website and found it had been created by Popcorn.

Popcorn delivers:
With the new Rimstyle website, visitors can get straight into finding what they want
through two intuitive search routes: their car’s marque and model or the type and
brand of the parts they require. The site automatically narrows down the criteria to
offer just the parts that are right for the chosen vehicle. Once the car’s details are
entered and confirmed, all the different parts that can be ordered for that car are
displayed and can be added to the shopping basket as required for purchase. With
development complete, Rimstyle now maintains the site itself and can change any of
the 200,000 products stocked, as well as offers to be featured on the homepage, at
will through the content management system.

Yu Tiger – www.yutiger.com

Client profile:
Yu Tiger is a new start-up business with a mission to offer high-quality oriental
furniture, gifts and household accessories through its website. Referred to Popcorn
by an existing customer, the young team at Yu Tiger already had branding and a Essex CM24 8PL

product range. Yu Tiger needed a fully-functioning e-commerce website to enable

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visitors to choose products and order them easily. It also needed an accounts
system in order to build up a membership list for newsletters, special offers etc.

Popcorn delivers:
In just 15 working days, Popcorn drew up a detailed specification for the site based
on Yu Tiger’s own branding design and colour scheme and created the website’s
design and navigation. Transaction handling is provided by SagePay, which Popcorn
has found to be the simplest to integrate and offer the best value service to website
owners. The site navigation is deceptively simple, with just four categories at the top
level. Visitors can then drill down rapidly to as many sub-categories as the Yu Tiger
team wish to add, through the built-in content management system.

Corporate projects

Vio – www.vio.com

Client profile:
For around a decade, Vio has supplied ad agencies, production companies, and
media owners with advertising workflow tools and services to help them to reduce
costs and become more productive. In partnership with AdMonsters, the company
wanted to develop a new central creative resource that would provide critical
specification details for advertising through online publishers. Vio Worldwide
announced the creation of the Online Creative Portal (OCP), which would enable ad
agencies to perform real-time creative planning, testing and submission and so
reduce the cost of planning and delivering Internet advertising campaigns.

Popcorn delivers:
In order to complete the development work on the OCP as quickly as possible, Vio
turned to Popcorn, which had carried out work on other web-interfaced applications
for the company previously. Popcorn worked closely with Vio in scoping this all-new
project and defining its requirements. Even so, the project actually evolved
considerably during development and its capabilities needed to respond accordingly.
The browser-based OCP application was built from scratch, including branding and
interface design. During beta testing of the OCP, Popcorn will provide first-line
support. Once the OCP is online, Popcorn will provide second-line support for 11
th
months to Vio itself. The OCP was made public on September 25 2007.

Sport Beans™ - www.sportbeans.co.uk

Client profile:
The UK importer of world-famous Jelly Belly jelly beans already had a Popcorn-
created website. Following a successful launch in the USA, the importer was looking
to test market a new range of jelly beans – Sport Beans – in the UK. Sport Beans
contain a nutritional mix aimed at providing easily-digested rapid energy, electrolyte
and vitamin replacement during exercise. The aim of the UK site was to promote
awareness of an interest in Sport Beans, to encourage retailers to stock them and
create an online community for sports people.

Popcorn delivers:
The UK Sport Beans website successfully meets the design objectives with strong
visuals that create a real sense of explosive energy, while conveying the nutritional
benefits of the beans. For the Sport Beans community, the site enables athletes to
present themselves online, together with event news, dates, results, photo galleries
and more. Content submission by athletes can be moderated through the content
management system and there is also a press room for the latest news and
announcements, such as profiles of the professional athletes being sponsored by the
Sport Beans brand. The success of the Sport Beans website has already given rise
to a spin-off site that will be dedicated to a cycling team sponsored by Sport Beans.
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CMC Partnership – www.cmcpartnership.com

Client Profile:
CMC specialises in the realisation of business benefit through the effective delivery of
programmes and projects. Based on a core team of 15, supplemented by specialist
contractors as required, the partnership works as an integrated part of the client team
to fill skill gaps or to deliver discrete packages of work. CMC’s public and private
sector clients are diverse but share a similar need – to bring in new or changed
capability on time, to cost and specification and to realise their investment. CMC
wanted a very clean, clear, corporate website that incorporated its existing logo and
put designers through a stringent tendering process to ensure the right one was
chosen. CMC also required a content management system so that news and events
information could be updated easily, and an email newsletter system.

Popcorn delivers:
Popcorn was able to make good use of its marketing expertise in providing CMC with
market positioning assistance in planning the site. Although the design did not need
to be sophisticated, it places key emphasis on a clean, open feel and ease of
navigation. CMC Partnership’s website is an excellent example of a straightforward
site design to meet corporate requirements.

Capital Shopping Centres http://www.capital-shopping-centres.co.uk

Client profile:
Capital Shopping Centres (CSC) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of FTSE 100 company,
Liberty International PLC. CSC is the UK’s leading company specialising in the
ownership, management and development of shopping centres. The company has a
£6.3 billion portfolio of thirteen high quality shopping centres, totalling over 12.4
million square feet, ten of which are in town centres, including major schemes in
Newcastle, Manchester, Norwich, Nottingham, Watford, Stoke-on-Trent, Uxbridge
and Bromley as well as the regional centres, Lakeside, MetroCentre, Cribbs
Causeway and Braehead. Up until recently, the group developed dedicated websites
for each centre in house, but it was decided that a more professional approach was
required. Popcorn was asked to evaluate the various sites and meet the board to
make recommendations for improvement.

Popcorn delivers:
Popcorn proposed that it should take over the construction and maintenance of the
shopping centre sites and this was accepted. New branding has been incorporated
into each site and Popcorn has also carried out all the site programming. Popcorn
has been looking after the sites of the shopping centres for around eight years and
has a dedicated liaison developer who deals personally with all the centre managers,
who contact Popcorn to carry out updates. Although the centre managers can make
everyday changes like new tenancies and post vacancies themselves, Popcorn
makes seasonal changes to the sites for Christmas and can add dedicated landing
pages to suit particular campaigns and promotions. Popcorn also provides the
centres with a rapid-response online marketing design service, which includes the
distribution of numerous email newsletters to the centres’ mailing lists each year.
Centre managers can send through a concept of what they are planning to do, such
as a celebrity appearance and within a couple of hours Popcorn will have designed
an HTML newsletter to go out to the centre’s mailing list. With shopping centres
being refurbished or under construction, the websites also allow CSC to keep local
residents up to date with developments and advise of any temporary inconveniences,
such as road closures.

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Social networking projects

Lost Cousins www.lostcousins.com

Client profile:
A start-up in the rapidly-growing field of genealogy, Lost Cousins was aimed at
serious researchers looking for additional sources of information to exploit and share.
The purpose of the site is to match researchers up with other people seeking
information about the same person. The site owner wanted it to be able to work out
the relationship between two researchers automatically, just through the ancestor
information they submitted. Searching would be free, to encourage users to visit the
site and populate it as quickly as possible, while it would be chargeable to see search
results and make contact with relatives. It was calculated that it would need 100,000
registered users to offer a high enough probability of any enquiry returning a positive
result.

Popcorn delivers:
th
The site utilises information from two 19 century public censuses and Popcorn has
integrated them into the site so that the large databases that derive from the
censuses are accessible quickly and accurately. Navigation is clear and
straightforward and as a result the site has acquired over 60,000 registered users in
just a few months, with around 1 million ancestors added to the database. Most
visitors are adding in 10-15 ancestors at a time, which will typically yield one match.
By the time the site reaches its base target of 100,000 members, there will be a 50-50
chance of finding a match. The search algorithms built into the site ensure that it
offers high levels of accuracy, while being more selective than other genealogical
research websites.

My Sea Mates – www.myseamates.com

Client profile:
My Sea Mates is a start-up website offering a new spin on the established online
dating agencies. By focusing on a special interest area – in this case a love of Water
Sports and the pursuit of the pleasures of sailing and living on the seas, My Sea
Mates aims to bring together not just people seeking romantic partners who share
this interest, but men and women looking for like-minded friends, thus creating a
community dedicated to a love of all things nautical. The founders is an astute
woman with a strong sense of the value of good PR. Visitors would be able to see a
limited number of search results without registration or payment, but would not be
able to contact anyone until they were registered. Instead of a long-term
subscription, the site was to offer paid memberships of three months or more,
recognising that members of any community come and go, but long enough to give
the site a fair trial.

Popcorn delivers:
Most dating or introduction websites offer broadly-similar functionality. The site has
secure communications built in, to protect the identities and contact details of all
members, unless and until they wish to reveal them. The problem with people
travelling around the world is that they have no permanent address, so searching for
people in one location proves difficult. However this website addresses that problem
in a very ingenious way ... see the website to see how it works..

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Taking the next step
Now you’ve got this far, you should have a good idea of what Popcorn is all about.
Few web designers have taken the trouble to become as well-qualified as Popcorn to
create or improve your online presence. We promise to deliver a website that meets
the strategic objectives of your organisation by dovetailing perfectly with your tactical
communications programme.

We’re ready to talk as soon as you are, so call Fintan Lambe on 01279 812229 or
email him at info@popcornwebdesign.co.uk.

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