Vistaprint 2010 Annual Report Download - page 13

Form 10-K
Our Proprietary Software and Process Technology
We rely on our advanced proprietary technology to market to, attract and retain our customers,
enable customers to create graphic designs and place orders on our websites, and aggregate and
simultaneously produce multiple orders from all over the world. This technology includes:
Design and Document Creation Technologies
Our design creation technologies enable customers, by themselves or together with the
assistance of our design support staff, to design and create high quality marketing materials from their
homes or offices. Our document model architecture and technology employs Internet-compatible data
structures to define, process and store product designs as a set of separately searchable, combinable
and modifiable component elements. In comparison to traditional document storage and presentation
technologies, such as bitmap or PDFs, this architecture provides significant advantages in storing,
manipulating and modifying design elements, allowing us to generate customized initial and later
matching product design options automatically in real time.
Our auto-matching design software algorithmically generates customized product designs in
real-time based on key-word searches, enabling professional-looking graphic layouts to be easily and
quickly created by customers without graphic arts training.
VistaStudio is our product design and editing software suite that is downloaded to our
customer’s computer from our server and runs in the customer’s browser. This browser-based
software provides real-time client-side editing capabilities plus extensive system scalability. A wide
variety of layouts, color schemes and fonts are provided and an extensive selection of high quality
photographs and illustrations are currently available for use by customers in product design.
Customers can also upload their own images and logos for incorporation into their product designs.
Our Internet-based, remote, real-time, co-creativity and project management application and
database enables customers and our design agents to cooperatively design a product across the
Internet in real-time, while simultaneously engaging in voice communication.
Our Internet-based website design and layout tool enables customers with no experience in
creating websites to quickly design and publish a website. The interface provides customers with the
ability to update their content in a simple editing environment that closely mimics what the website will
look like when published. Some of the features that customers can add to their website using this tool
include images, maps, credit-card payment processing, downloadable files and contact forms.
Customers seeking to improve their ranking among search engines can modify their content and
search keywords through a simple interface. Customers can change their website design in real time
and can choose from hundreds of different templates categorized by industry and style. In addition,
we offer a platform for customers to self-manage e-mail marketing solutions for their business.
Pre-Press and Print Production Technologies
Our pre-production and production technologies efficiently process and aggregate customer
orders, prepare orders for high-quality production and manage production, addressing and shipment
of these orders.
DrawDocs is our automated pre-printing press technology that prepares customer documents
received over the Internet for high-resolution printing. DrawDocs ensures that the high-resolution
press-ready version of the customer’s design will produce a printed product that is exactly like the
graphic design that was displayed in the customer’s Internet browser.
Our VistaBridge technology allows us to efficiently store, process and aggregate tens of
thousands of Internet orders every day. The system automates the workflow into our high-volume
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