Building Products and ebuild Present the First Annual Vanguard Best of the Web Awards

Vanguard Awards Logo

Manufacturer Web sites range from ordinary to awesome, but who has the time to weed through them to find the good ones?

For the first time, BUILDING PRODUCTS and our Web site, ebuild.com, have done it for you.

Our inaugural Vanguard Best of the Web Awards competition singles out Web sites that will wow you with their stunning designs, thorough product information, dedicated sections for building pros, and clever animation.

The 2007 competition unearthed 14 whiz-bang Web sites, including four that our judges have deemed the best of the best. These sites display content without clutter and feature creativity that creates no extra work for the viewer. They're easy to navigate, are understandable at a glance, and include technical information about product specs and installation that is clear enough to save a building pro from having to call for help.

BUILDING PRODUCTS and ebuild asked manufacturers to submit Web sites of particular interest to building pros. Our judges spent hours clicking from page to page to determine how easy they are to navigate and how useful they are to pros. In the end, our pro judges, who possess various levels of technical savvy, bestowed Vanguard Best of the Web Awards on the sites they found most valuable to building pros and the ones they would be most likely to return to.

Indeed, one judge shied away from sites that would 'make me call the rep immediately so I do not have to use [them] anymore, 'comparing one to 'an overstuffed file cabinet that someone needs to clean out.

Another cautioned manufacturers against creating sites that are 'efficient but not inspiring.'

Large, quality photos and graphics--but not so many as to clutter the site--lend to viewer appeal, advised the judges. And the fewer mouse clicks it takes to access needed information, the better.

The judges made their selections based on the sites entered in the competition, not from all manufacturer Web sites. There are many other sites worthy of this award, so let us know about your favorites. E-mail Katy Tomasulo at ktomasulo@hanleywood.com.

--BUILDING PRODUCTS