Project: Annabel Karmel

About

Annabel Karmel is a world leading expert and best-selling author on baby and children’s food and nutrition. Since 1991 she has written 14 books selling over 2 million copies worldwide.

Brief

To build a website that brings Annabel’s product range together with some of Annabel's articles, an online recipe area and a shopping basket to purchase Annabel’s books. In addition to build an online community around the website by providing a number of bulletin boards, private messaging and functionality for mums to search other members in a given area.

Solution

Working with Mikaela Bancroft, Aliform was responsible for building the database and server components. ASP.NET 2.0 was used to build the site, using and extending the ASP.NET Membership Provider. Community Server software was implemented for the bulletin boards and works with the ASP.NET authentication from the main Annabel Karmel site, so that there is a single sign-on point.

A shopping basket is integrated into the website with payment taken by Worldpay, users can request a signed copy. The Meet other mums section allows mothers to search for each other by postcode. On browsing a list the mums can then contact each other using the online private messaging system.

Twelve months after going live the site has 40,000+ members and is a thriving community and successful marketing portal.