A Bournemouth web development agency is on top of the world after winning a global award.

Cold Banana, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, won the Best Cloud Solution category at the 2020 Umbraco Awards.

The 16-strong agency was also shortlisted for Best Editing Experience.

As none of the team were able to celebrate together, Luke Fribbens, Founder and Managing Director, marked the success by personally delivering bottles of champagne to everyone’s home.

He said: “It seems a very strange time to be celebrating anything at the moment, but I am super proud of the whole team and their efforts over the last 18 months to build a system to win this amazing global award.”

Umbraco is a content management system (CMS) currently used on more than half a million websites.

The annual Umbraco Awards are normally held at the end of a three-day festival called Codegarden and hosted by Umbraco.

Due to Covid-19, this year’s event was a live stream broadcast via YouTube.

The only requirement to enter the awards is that the solution is built on Umbraco.

It means everyone is able to enter their sites and solutions ensuring only the very best are recognised, celebrated and honoured.

Cold Banana received the Best Cloud Solution award for its work for Imperial Brands plc, formerly known as Imperial Tobacco Group plc.

There were a total of seven award categories with entries from across the world.

Cold Banana was founded by Luke in 2015.

The former Bournemouth University student graduated with a first class honours degree in Business Information Technology a decade earlier.

He was the sole employee at Cold Banana for the first six months.

But as projects and clients kept coming in Luke started taking on new staff at a rate of around one a month.

All the work was as a result of recommendations and referrals.

Cold Banana now counts Condor Ferries, Event Insurance, Vitality, Moneybarn and Est1897, as well as Imperial Brands, among its clients.

Luke said: “Covid-19 and lockdown has been tough on the business and the individuals within it.

“I can’t wait to get back together as a team so we can celebrate properly.”