US Glass Magazine announces Supplier’s Website Winner.

USGNN announces supplier website winners in July 2008. SaftiFirst at www.stage.safti.com took 2nd place.

USGNN Announces Supplier Website Winners

USGNN.com™ is pleased to announce the winners of the First Annual Glass Industry Website Competition, in the supplier category.

In first place is www.vistamatic.com. USGNN.com/USGlass spoke with Kevin Roth, managing partner of Vistamatic in Coral Springs, Fla., about this recognition. According to Roth, the biggest focus in designing the site was on usability and information.

“I have been to so many sites where you get fed up trying to find the information you need, but find it is hidden beneath other pages or in with other information,” he says. “We wanted the site to be very easy to use and have all the information that was necessary to help all of our clients. We also decided to put the video on the site as the Vistamatic is a very unique product and we felt that unless we showed what it did the visitors who did not know of us would still not know what it really was about.”

In second place is www.stage.safti.com. USGNN.com/USGlass spoke with Diana San Diego, marketing and communications manager for SAFTI FIRST Fire Rated Glazing Solutions in San Francisco, about this recognition.

According to San Diego, “When we re-designed our site, our priority was to present accurate, relevant information in a user-friendly format. The experience is centered around the user-making sure that he or she gets the information needed in the fastest way possible. The website also had to be engaging, which is why we built several interactive tools, such as the product selector, comparison chart and quick quote, and added streaming videos such as ‘Radiant Heat Testing’ and our latest DVD, ‘A Fire and Impact Safety Case Study.'”

In third place is www.archdecoglass.com. USGNN.com/USGlass spoke with Max Perilstein, vice president of marketing for Arch Aluminum and Glass Co. Inc. in Tamarac, Fla., about this recognition.

The goal, according to Perilstein, was to make the site “look good,” but also “be easy to navigate.”

“Too many times, good sites get ruined because there’s too much flash or too many things happening on the page,” he says. “We wanted a healthy mix and I think we achieved that.”

In May, USGNN.com™ readers were asked to nominate the best industry sites on the web for the First Annual Glass Industry Website Competition. Sites were ranked by our judges based on the six criterion used by the Webby Awards, a leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet: content; structure and navigation; visual design; functionality; interactivity; and overall experience.

Look for interviews with each winner, the website features that stood out for our judges and the 11th Annual Guide to Industry Websites in the July issue of USGlass.

Source: US Glass News Network, July 18, 2008