Northland Pioneer College Site wins Silver at Paragon Awards

We love happy clients. We find great satisfaction in knowing our clients are … well, satisfied. But it’s also nice to also be recognized by people who aren’t our clients, by others in the industry. So we were pleased as punch to find out the site we built for "Northland Pioneer College":/project/northland-pioneer-college (NPC) won Silver in the "Paragon Awards":http://www.ncmpr.org/paragon, the annual awards presented by the "National Council for Marketing and Public Relations":http://www.ncmpr.org/home (NCMPR). The NCMPR represents marketing and PR professionals at community colleges across the United States. This year there were over 1,700 entries, which were judged by more than 75 judges from around the country. According to Ann Hess, NPC’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations, the competition was about both form and function. “The design of the site played a very large part in our success, but the award was also about how we present ourselves and how easy the site is to use,” Ann says. “The judges were asking the question, ‘Does this site achieve the purpose you want it to achieve?’ In our case, our goal was a site that communicated information about NPC that was clear and easy to find – and we achieved that goal.” Ann admits their old site was static and suffered from extreme disorganization (picture a typical college dorm room). There was no system for organizing information or for determining who controlled what content. And because NPC has 4 campuses and 5 centres spread across Northern Arizona, trying to coordinate the site through one webmaster and without the use of a CMS was nothing short of a nightmare. The new site, complete with a Drupal CMS, fresh information architecture and modern design features, has been extremely well-received by both current and prospective students. “We have a short survey on the site that asks users about their experience with the new website and if they found the information they were seeking, and thus far the response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Ann says. “Internally, the new site is also very popular. One of our main objectives was to have as many people as possible across our organization be able to update their own information on the site. Drupal makes it easy for us to keep information current and well-organized without overwhelming our I.S. department.” Ann is now our partner in crime in spreading the word about the power of Drupal. “I get a lot of calls from other people who like what ImageX did with our site,” she says. “I have to say that from beginning to end ImageX was absolutely fantastic. It was a real pleasure working with them.” Thanks, Ann! We enjoyed working with you too. Congratulations on your award!