Hosting

Chococo have been making fine fresh handmade chocolates since 2002. They were one of the first artisan chocolatiers to lead the way in making truly fresh chocolates, using locally sourced seasonal ingredients blended with fine origin chocolate. The have won many regional, national, and international awards since opening their doors.

Our Involvement

Chococo came to us to help optimise their Magento eCommerce site and provide a hosting solution. This included:

• Updating the site to the latest version of Magento for added security
• Integrate Sage Pay online payments into the checkout process
• Making sure the site had lightning-fast response times
• Streamlining the checkout process down to one page
• Implemented form prediction using PCAPredict to further streamline the purchasing process
• Patched security holes that had led to cyber-attacks in the past

Since then we have been providing daily maintenance for them, with our team of developers only a phone-call away should they need any issues checked.

Emu Bikes is a truly British brand, backed by Delbanco Meyer & Co with 80 years’ experience. With a retro town bike styling and a strong focus on quality, Emu's electric bikes are a cut above your typical off-the-shelf eBike.

Our Involvement

Emu Bikes’ previous web developer of choice ceased trading, leaving their eCommerce platform “Mothership” unsupported. We stepped in to fill the gap so that they didn’t have to rebuild their site, and even rolled out updates for the platform.

• New modules created for previously unsupported eCommerce platform
• Full SEO audit including the implementation of Schema.org structured data
• New PPC campaigns created, returning increased traffic at a significantly reduced cost
• A hosting solution that balanced response time with cost

Cruise HQ is a fully-responsive cruise holiday comparison site built with a resilient API driven architecture and a cutting-edge dynamic frontend. It compares both cruise suppliers’ and travel agents’ pricing, tracks pricing changes, and notifies customers when cruise prices change.

The Brief

The website's core aim needed to be to keep the user experience as simple as possible and make the content easy to find for the broad range of users that would visit the website. Many challenges were faced when creating a comparison engine of this scale. The site had to:

• Have a lightning-fast response time
• Be scalable enough to be able to process and display large quantities of data
• Have up-to-the-minute pricing data and reflect any changes immediately
• Deliver a clean, modern web interface incorporating an easy to use Content Management System
• Offer an excellent user experience across desktop, tablet and mobile devices

The Result

To ensure that the design was practical, we developed several different structural and design concepts before making any final decisions. We kept the user experience simple and made the content easy to find for the broad range of users that would be visiting the website, providing them with all the information that they need to make a buying decision and plan their perfect cruise holiday.

We created a data scraper in NodeJS that was capable of processing over 10,000 web pages every ten minutes and then parsing that information into a common format to be processed by an API. The Symfony 2 API stores all incoming cruise data and outgoing messages in RabbitMQ queues in order to prevent any downtime or dropped messages. We also integrated the Apache Solr search engine into the API; this meant we see sub-150ms response times and also provided the ability to filter searches with an almost instantaneous response.

The American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) is the leading international trade association for the U.S. hardwood industry, representing American hardwood exporters and the major American hardwood product trade associations. The American Hardwood Export Council promotes a greater understanding of the true environmental benefits of American hardwoods in design and manufacturing.

The Brief

• Create a bespoke site from a pre-existing design provided by Nick Watts Design Ltd. 
• Provide an immersive and engaging experience that brings to the forefront the highly sustainable credentials of American hardwood
• Ensure that the site has low processing overheads and a small server footprint

The Result

We built this site on AngularJS in order to meet the small server footprint requirement, allowing for a large number of visitors without issue. The end result required multiple widgets to interact with each other, with a variety of web elements altering their display status in time with each other and negligible delay. The site is supported by online advertising placed within design and architectural publications, driving visitors from across Europe to the Grown in Seconds site.

The platform that we created uses statistics gathered by the US Forest Service, tracking the yearly growth and harvest rates of hardwood species and then calculating how quickly the wood used in these projects can be regrown. The final result is a memorable and slick website, offering an innovative information source to businesses and individuals across the world.

WorldFirst is a UK-based foreign exchange brokerage. It offers currency exchange services and international payments transfers to private, corporate, and e-Commerce clients in the UK and a number of other countries. It is one the fastest growing Fintech companies in Europe and has offices in the UK, Asia, Australia, and the US. 

Our involvement

We have been working with WorldFirst for the last couple of years and have built up a fantastic relationship that we are very proud of. We have so far undertaken the following projects for them:

• A microsite for a partnership between WorldFirst and the Times newspaper
• A bespoke Symfony 2 based business intelligence tool
• WordPress country specific blog rollouts with multi-lingual functionality and a clean and elegant design aesthetic
• Provided a number of newsletter templates that showcase WorldFirst’s business activities and are easy for them to update

Voice Squad represents some of the best voice-over artists in the UK, both in English and foreign languages. They have an extensive portfolio of high-calibre artists from all over the world who are UK-based. They provide voices for TV and radio commercials, corporate films, animation, audio-books, and many other forms of media.

The Brief

Zodiac Media were tasked with implementing a complete redesign of the site, including:

• Adding shortlisting and filter-by-artist functionality
• Implementing voice clip downloads and streaming
• Migrating the contents of one of Voice Squad's sister sites
• Mobile compatibility
• Optimising the site to increase search engine rankings

The Result

In order to migrate the new content, we had to synchronise the new sitemaps, add appropriate redirects and avoid any duplicate contents. The site was developed in WordPress to allow instant updates from the Voice Squad team, allowing them to change content and images as and when required.

The website was also built using a "mobile first" approach and was optimised for multiple device resolutions, with a clean and elegant look that is simultaneously modern and enterprising.

The Confederation of Timber Industries (CTI) is an umbrella organisation, representing the UK's Timber supply chain from forest to end-of-life recycling. The CTI represents producers, manufacturers, and distributors of timber across all the supply chain. Its membership includes large multinational companies as well as key trade associations, NGOs and research institutes.

The Brief

We were tasked with:

• Creating a mobile optimized website built on a Content Management System of our choosing
• Creating a clear, intuitive user interface based on a pre-existing design provided by Nick Watts Design Ltd.
• A solid and simple backend that enabled CTI to easily upload all the latest industry news, information, achievements, and work

The Result

The designs that had been devised were very ambitious, which lead to a number of challenges for our developers. Most of these challenges occurred when trying to transform the static design concept into a fully interactive experience. Planning the site with mobile first in mind allowed us to create a streamlined experience based on its potential users' most common goals.

We delivered a clean, modern web interface incorporating the easy to use Drupal 7 CMS, which gave the client full control over their content, from any device. It also made provisions for adding further functionality if needed, giving it a degree of future-proofing. The client was extremely happy with the build and usability of the interactive supply chain.

Zodiac Media designed and built Zodiac Booking to take some of the industry standard features available to large tour operators and makes them accessible to smaller companies that otherwise would not be able to afford bespoke development.

The Brief

• Provide cottage suppliers a platform for their customers to search, reserve, book, amend, and cancel their cottage and holiday bookings.
• Provide a fully transactional booking engine integrating the Carlton TABS API
• Optimised for mobile platforms

The Result

We implemented a feature-rich search engine and geo-location map search that could provide up-to-date availability and booking. A fully customisable content management system that allows even the least technical of people to manage their site with ease was designed from scratch using Symfony 2. The site is fully responsive and built from the ground up to look its best on every device.

Berkshire Biltong is a unique manufacturer, founded on a passion for high quality Biltong. They use high quality ingredients and do not rush the production process, resulting in the tastiest Biltong that the Zodiac Media team has ever had.

The Brief

• Create a brand new bespoke website that accurately reflects their brand
• Provide an eCommerce outlet for all their products
• Keep their user experience as simple as possible and make the content easy to browse

The Result

With the client’s needs in mind, we decided that Magento would be the best solution. This allowed for greater control in merchandising, promotion, and sales of the products that are available on the site. This also made browsing the site and managing the product catalogue a triviality. The site includes attractive product images and an intuitive navigation system, enabling the consumer to have all the information at their fingertips regardless of the browser used. Responsive templates and a simple Magento CMS meant that the website was ready to go in record time and sell tasty Biltong to the masses.