Ball State University won Sitecore's Best Site of the Year for North America award, two years after the university re-launched its Web site with the content management system company.
The university Web site was recognized among 10 other categories from Best Financial Site to Best Entertainment and Sports Site in the beginning of January.
Ball State Web Managing Editor Julie Tuttle said the team that selected the site's CMS was pleased with having chosen Sitecore.
"Sitecore was the best fit for the university Web site," she said. "It works with a .net programming language and is very accessible."
Darren Guarnaccia, Sitecore Vice President in Product Marketing, said the process for selecting outstanding Web sites starts with asking for nominations from customers, agencies and employees, later subdivides nominees into the different categories.
"We looked for companies using innovating products and we realized Ball State had a well-integrated Web site that was relatively new," Guarnaccia said. "It is also the first year an American company won the Site of the Year award."
Ball State received four prestigious awards in 2008, including the Official Webby Honoree in the school category. The Webby award is an international award that recognizes excellence on the Internet.
The other three awards were from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, eduStyle and the Admissions and Advertising awards, in which the university Web site competed against Web sites of prestigious universities, such as Harvard University and University of Notre Dame.
Guarnaccia said he recognized the Ball State site for taking the Web seriously and for making it exciting for visitors.
"Ball State has done an excellent job on the site for recruitment and making it appealing to students," he said.
Tuttle said the team is looking to work on innovating the Web site.
"There are a lot of new things in the short and long term that people will be seeing in the Web site," she said. "We want to include more interactivity between the visitor and the site."
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