ONE of Winchester’s newest small businesses was among four from the city to celebrate the sweet taste of success in the seventh Hantsweb Awards.

Despite only being six months old, The Sweet Treat Company wowed the judges with its “colourful” and “nostalgic” website to claim top billing in the ‘Best Small Business’ category.

Winchester’s other winners were St Bede Primary School (Children and Families), The Worthys (Public Service) and Visit Winchester (Tourism and Leisure).

Representatives from the winning websites were presented with their trophies at the awards ceremony at Intech, the hands-on science and technology centre in Winchester.

Organised by Hampshire County Council, the Hantsweb awards aim to recognise the top websites across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

This year’s awards were no exception with a record 1,400 nominations across 12 categories.

New this year was the chance for the public to vote for their favourite website amongst the finalists.

More than 5,000 votes were cast with the University of Portsmouth Students’ Union coming out on top.

Guest of honour at the event was the Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, Dame Mary Fagan DCVO JP, who officially opened the awards ceremony with this year’s host, Wave 105 radio presenter Steve Power.

Kristian Price from The Sweet Treat Company said: “The website has made a huge impact to our business growth.

“We find people from outside Winchester who visit the shop have used the website to make repeat purchases from where they live.

“Utilising social media has also enabled us to engage with our customers so we would like to thank our staff, Facebook fans and Twitter followers for helping our web presence become worthy of this accolade.”

Hampshire County Council IT Champion, Cllr Keith Evans, said: “Every year we aim to reach new heights for the awards, so it was fitting that we not only launched the awards at Marwell Wildlife, but also received a record number of nominations.

“Each of the finalists’ websites demonstrates good practice in web excellence, and both the winners and runners-up can be proud of what their websites have achieved.”

He added: “I would also like to thank all the sponsors of the Hantsweb Awards for their commitment and support to raising awareness of the importance of high quality online services in the region.”