In 1983, a small six year-old boy named Matt got his first home computer – a ZX Spectrum 48k with rubber keys. He promptly spent the majority of the next few years in his bedroom (when he should have been outside playing) learning BASIC commands such as ‘GO TO’ and ‘PRINT’ to produce some very basic flag images and black and white ‘moon landers’ (in between loading skiing games from cassette tapes). Twenty years later in 2003, having been through the BBC Micro and Commodore Amiga eras to the modern PC and Internet, the boy had become an experienced Web designer and online marketer – so he founded Firetop Ltd. That man is Matt Peskett.

Matt (owner and Managing Director) created Firetop as a Limited company to officialise and expand his own freelance online service offerings which had been successfully growing in demand. In the six years that have followed the company has recruited several members of employed staff to run the back office and developed long-standing working relationships with many freelance designers, developers and online marketers in the UK, US, Canada, Eastern Europe and Northern Africa. The flexible nature of freelancers enables the company to call on extra resources when needed, whilst retaining the experience of highly skilled individuals who work consistently on our long running client Web projects.

Our Team of ‘Super-Webbies’

Matt Peskett - Managing Director
The founder of Firetop Ltd, Matt has worked on over 200 Web related client projects in the past decade. Typically he now focuses on new business, account management and project management but he can turn his hand to anything, especially if it’s search engine marketing related. As you can imagine this all makes him a very busy person and it’s been a while since he presented at Search Engine Strategies. All the hard work does come with the odd business travel perk (Dubai, New York) so it can’t be all bad at the top can it?

Suellen Peskett – Creative Director
A graduate of Surrey Institute of Art & Design (almost ten years ago now), Suellen has worked on some of the world’s leading brands as a graphic designer – producing creative solutions in both print and digital formats. Sue’s biggest challenge is not the constant Dallas questioning but being married to Matt, however, she knew that before she agreed to marry him so it’s not come as a shock to her. Equally Matt didn’t find it a shock when he discovered that Sue continually finds the faults in typography on restaurant menus.

Peter Smith – Systems Admin / Developer
Pete is a very efficient UK-based Linux consultant, programmer, system admin, Web developer, and author. He maintains our UK and US dedicated servers (including security and back-ups) as well as doing hands on Web Development (PHP, MySQL, CSS, AJAX, Javascript, XML etc.). We like working with Pete because he always has a solution to a problem or a very good reason for why we should avoid finding one!

Martin Dzuro – Web Designer / Developer
We like to keep Martin busy by throwing functionality wireframes at him to create final website design concepts. Then he has the job of ‘cutting’ his concepts up with CSS and HTML to create SEO friendly code. Martin’s big obsession is with rich media (Flash) so we do our best to satisfy him with advertising banners and video conversion projects. Based in Slovakia we don’t get to see Martin much, he’s more of an Instant Messaging icon – but it’s always on so we think he’s possibly an insomniac.

Daniel Eastwell – Web Designer / Developer
Daniel Eastwell is a Web designer and developer. He specialises in XHTML, CSS and JavaScript / Ajax-driven interfaces, with a focus on usability, accessibility and standards compatibility. We’ve worked with Dan since 2005 and have found him to be one of the best in the business when it comes to coding standards and best-practice compliance.

Virginia Cruz – Search Marketing Specialist
Virginia is our pay per click advertising specialist, responsible for creating and managing our PPC campaigns. A Spaniard and graduate of the Foro Europeo Business School in Spain, Virginia has been working within online marketing in the UK for almost five years now and we’re pleased to have recently added her to our portfolio of freelancers.

Shirley Elmokadem – Office and Finance Administrator
Shirley looks after our invoicing and accounts, keeping an eye on the paperwork (which we try and keep to a minimum but people keep sending the stuff in!). We’re increasingly involving Shirley in web administration matters – updating Content Management System details etc. Like Virginia, Shirley speaks fluent Spanish, we’re not sure if it’s as good as Virginia’s mother tongue though – we have yet to arrange a competition.