Label Media Director Simon Latham said in a statement that his company, itself a design and development agency, “took the unusual decision to build and develop” its own system because Label wanted to “completely control the look of our clients’ sites and could not find a solution that met our needs.”
Yetti, After Yeti
Label also noted that site maintenance was a time-consuming task, complicated by the fact that some of the sites it was asked to maintain had been built by a variety of developers.
Label said they named the platform after the Yeti, a Bigfoot-like creature allegedly living in the Himalayas, because it was “cool” and quirky, and then added an extra “t” to distinguish the brand. The platform was used in-house on a constant basis over five years until the company was confident of its stability and utility.
The company offers the Yetti platform with ongoing maintenance, Rackspace provides hosting, and pricing is available in tiers. There are add-ons for Facebook and YouTube, and PayPal and SagePay payment gateways are supported. A Yetti Builder component allows front-end developers to create sites that conform to their own specs. Client or agency designers also have complete creative control, and are not obliged to take templates or design services from Label.
APIs, Tools
Yetti APIs enable functional customization, such as adding an e-commerce site’s own price updating system. Companies can also use their own HTML, CSS and Javascript, and there’s a private development environment for building or revising the site before going live.
Other features include a promotions tool, the ability to handle multiple languages and currency, user prompts and configurable alerts, order management and stock control, and other e-commerce functions. There are also SEO optimization tools, blogs, user feedback capabilities, media and document handling, and a revision control and roll-back system.
Based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, Label Media works in print design and branding, software development and digital marketing, in addition to Web site building and the Yetti platform. The Yetti platform has been used to build sites for Universal Live, Yorkshire Universities, Folia Landscapes, Fine Individual Hotels and other clients.