Best St. Louis-Oriented Web Site

St. Louis -- February 15, 2005 -- Since 1999, the St. Louis Web Developers Organization has sought to recognize and publicize quality in local Web design and development by organizing an awards competition and ceremony. The "Sixth Annual Best Web Sites of the Year Ceremony" was held at the St. Louis Science Center with first, second, and third place winners chosen in eight categories. One of those eight categories was "Best St. Louis-Oriented Web Sites".

1st place winner
COCA (Center of Creative Arts) -- website:
COCA offers Arts Education and other Arts programs to St. Louis and surrounding communities. As a non-profit Arts institution, COCA needed a more visually-appealing, artistic site that represented it's arts focus. In addition, they needed a functional site that would allow them to manage all aspects of the site in-house. Their new site meets these needs and provides a high level of usability considering the great amount of data available to the user.

2nd place winner
Urban St. Louis -- website: www.urbanstlouis.com
The urbanstlouis.com website grew out of the stlouislofts.com website, which continues to grow. As more and more lofts came online... you may have noticed that many of them weren't truely lofts anymore. They were described as loft-style condos, loft-like apartments, and loft-inspired units. The one thing they all had in common was an urban feel. They were reovations of old buildings or new construction in urban settings. Urbanstlouis.com covers the increasing number of non-loft properties. Just like stlouislofts.com, this site is run with out any affiliation to real estate agents, developers or managment companies. A discussion forum is also part of urbanstlouis.com, but can also run as an independent feature and found online at urbanstl.com

3rd place winner
St. Louis Gateway Arts -- website: www.gatewayarts.net
St. Louis Gateway Arts is an on-line community portal for people interested in the St. Louis arts and entertainment scene. Featured on the site is a calendar of upcoming events, a comprehensive list of local arts groups, a discussion forum, photo slide shows, opinion polls, reviews, ticket giveaways and much more. This site is unique in that there is no other local website, which has so many features, focusing specifically on local arts and cultural events. This is a grass-roots site being built and maintained by a small group of volunteers.

Sites were judged on functionality, usability, visual appeal, and overall web site experience. Functionality criteria included the sites usefulness, comprehensiveness, accuracy, interactivity, personalization, and search capability. Usability criteria included the sites ease of navigation, page load time, concise/complete content, and browser compatibility. Visual appeal criteria included the sites use of color and consistent use of icons.

Sites nominated for "Best St. Louis-Oriented Web Sites" included: St. Louis Gateway Arts, Missouri Historical Society, Berryman Adventure Race, City of Bridgeton, Brittany Slaughter, Carol House Furniture, Coldwell Banker Premier, Creve Coeur/Olivette Chamber of Commerce, Chaminade College Preparatory, COCA (Center of Creative Arts), Custom Web Connections, Deaconess College of Nursing, fluidbyte, goplacez llc, Knopf Homes RSK Inc., LostHumans, Midwest BankCentre, Sauce Magazine, St. Louis Real Estate Solutions, St. Louis Children's Hospital, STL Syndicate, STL Weddings, St. Peters Citizens for Responsible Government, The Commonspace, Urban St. Louis, Voices For Progress in Jefferson County, and Solutia Inc./Weardated Division.

St. Louis Web Developers Organization is a local chapter of the International Webmasters Association. For more information about the 2004 web site awards, please visit http://www.stlwebdev.org/resources/awards/.

related links:
St. Louis Web Developers Organization [ ]
International Webmasters Association [ ]

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