We're excited to announce that the Beachwood Schools website, with web design and development by WRIS, has won a Standard of Excellence award in the Web Marketing Association's thirteenth annual WebAward Competition. The website (www.beachwoodschools.org), won in the School category. To date, WRIS has won thirteen WebAwards with 2009 marking the seventh consecutive year of wins.
The website WRIS developed for Beachwood Schools was launched in February of 2009 after several months of careful planning and programming. Located in an east side suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, The Beachwood City School District has approximately 1,600 students enrolled in four separate school buildings. In an effort to streamline communication, the newly designed website includes updateable news and announcements on the home page and a powerful school-wide calendar sortable by school campus and category. All of the site's content, including photographs, is updateable through a password-protected Content Manager managed entirely by school staff. The mission of the new Beachwood Schools website is to make it easy for prospective families to gather information about the school district, and provide valuable information to existing members of the school community including students, parents, faculty & staff and alumni.
The Beachwood School's website scored well above the industry average for design, content, technology, copywriting and ease of use. Judges from the WebAward competition said, "This site is a great first step toward providing better school websites." Another judge commented that the site was "well laid out and easy to navigate."
Founded by the Web Marketing Association in 1997, the WebAwards is the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful website: design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting, and ease of use. Thousands of sites were adjudicated in 96 industry categories during this year's competition. The competition was judged by a team of independent Internet professionals representing a variety of relevant disciplines of Web site development. Judges included members of the media, advertising executives, site designers, corporate marketing executives, content providers and webmasters.
The goal of the WebAwards is to provide a forum to recognize the people and organizations responsible for developing some of the most effective websites on the Internet today. Beyond validation, entrants benefit from a website assessment by a professional judging panel, which provides specific feedback on how each site ranks against standards of excellence.
