FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Collier County Web Site Earns National Award

Collier County government’s redesigned Web site (www.colliergov.net) earned the 2007 Pinnacle Award, the top honor in its population group, at this year’s National Association of Government Webmasters Annual Conference in Valley Forge, Pa.

“This award recognizes all of the individuals within the departments and divisions who have worked extremely hard to make the transition from the old site to the new site a success,” said Director John Torre, Communication and Customer Relations Department. “We launched the newly redesigned site in October 2006 with the main goal of building a user-friendly site that was both appealing and informative. The redesign included changing the original site from a department-centered to a customer-centered format and adding improved content management capabilities that allow county government information and Web services to become more easily accessible to residents and visitors. We also want residents and visitors to rely on our site as one means of receiving essential information in the event of a crisis.”

The Pinnacle Awards are judged by a group of Web professionals from government and private Web development agencies and are graded in eight different categories including content, organization, design, function, accessibility, standards, interactivity and the size of the Web team. The NAGW has more than 200 members from 29 states.

Since the launch of the redesign nearly one year ago, more than one million visitors have logged on to the county’s Web site; over 1,000 people have signed up to receive county information via e-mail using a newly implemented featured called “E-Notice”; and the Collier County Library and the Parks and Recreations sites have received the most Web hits.

“More impressively, the number of visitors to the county’s Web site has increased dramatically since the launch,” said Torre. “During the first week (Oct. 15, 2006) the site had 14,809 visitors; 12 weeks later, during the week of Feb. 25, 2007, there were 27,009 visitors. The number of unique visitors to the site in November 2006 was 81,577 and that figure climbed to 107,646 in August 2007 – an increase of 32 percent. Since April, monthly traffic on the site has averaged 106,605 visitors.”

In the coming weeks, the county’s Web site will add a new feature called Video on Demand. This technology will create a video library of Board of County Commissioners and other county meetings broadcast on Collier Television which will be archived and available for viewing on demand through the www.colliergov.net Web site. The new archive will also allow users to view video of individual items from the BCC and other committee agendas. Meetings will continue to be streamed live at www.colliergov.net/tv.

For more information, call John Torre at 252-8011.
-End-