Winner: Edelman, imc2 and PSC Group – BarillaUS.com 2010 Relaunch
Barilla, a leader in the pasta industry, is known for its quality and authenticity. Despite this brand recognition among customers, the company found that its Web site traffic was declining in 2009. Barilla brought in its agency partner, Edelman, to redesign the site with three goals in mind: leverage long-term brand equity with an extensive online recipe collection, offer recipe site functionality and educate users on Italian cooking. Edelman incorporated new elements including the Our Products section, where visitors can search by pasta shape or type, and the Recipes section, which offers top-rated recipes with an option to print it or generate a shopping list of ingredients. The new site launched on June 1, 2010, and just a month later the redesign was generating amazing ROI. In the first two weeks of July over 10,000 visitors came to the site and 350 users downloaded a recipe or signed up for a sweepstakes.
Honorable Mentions:
Associated Estates Realty Corporation, Kimberly Kanary – Website Design & Brand Alignment:
To appeal to 18-35-year-olds, Associated Estates Realty Corporation redesigned and rebranded its corporate Web site, while still catering to less tech-savvy visitors and making it as simple as possible to obtain information. The Web site includes a call to action on the home page, an interactive map to search for apartments in specific locations and “lifestyle” and property photos.
MidCountry Financial Corporation – MidCountryFinancial.com:
The redesign of the MidCountry Financial Corp. Web site—completed in less than two weeks—attracted more than 1,000 investors to the site, helping to raise $27.5 million in new capital funding.
TRC Companies – Website Redesign and Relaunch 2010:
After a three-year period of corporate restructuring, engineering consulting company TRC needed a new online image that projected a sense of profitable growth and project success for clients. Sleek design, a searchable project library and a CEO blog had led, so far, to direct, positive feedback from clients and TRC employees.
GM Western Region and Weber Shandwick – The Future Is Electric:
By enhancing the Future Is Electric site's social media features, GM and Weber Shandwick saw a dramatic increase in visitors and improved engagement. The site has averaged a 32% increase in monthly unique visitors while the average monthly page views saw an increase of 664%.