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Belfast Waterfront Named 2016 Site of the Year by Kentico

Built for Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall Ltd. by i3 Digital—one of more than a dozen awards handed out by fast-growing CMS vendor.Built for Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall Ltd. by i3 Digital—one of more than a dozen awards handed out by fast-growing CMS vendor.

Kentico Software, a fast-growing CMS and cloud software company with offices in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America, today named Belfast Waterfront as its Site of the Year for 2016. The website showcases Northern Ireland’s world-class entertainment and conferencing venue.

The Belfast Waterfront website, built for Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall Ltd. (BWUH) by digital marketing agency i3 Digital, featured a complex list of requirements:

• Migrate the former Waterfront site—built on a different CMS platform back in 2007—to a new, more contemporary Kentico CMS platform
• Create a site with a modern, responsive, and engaging look and feel while meeting the needs of varying kinds of site visitors
• Take advantage of advanced capabilities, including dynamically changing banners and image carousels, to add depth and greater visual interest to the site’s various pages
• Use filtering capabilities to share upcoming shows and performances
• Tap into Kentico widgets to add a newsletter subscription tool and provide website visitors with access to the latest news and press releases about the venue
• Display FAQs in accordion listing formats, as well as standard HTML page content
• Draw upon a built-in media library (video and audio) so that BWUH end-user stakeholders could add rich media on demand
• Include functionality to permit BWUH staff to coordinate the venue’s events and social media activity

“We are delighted that Belfast Waterfront was recognized not only as Kentico’s Best Entertainment, Hospitality and Entertainment Site 2016 but also their Overall Site of the Year 2016,” said Catherine Toolan, Managing Director of Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall Ltd.  “The newly re-developed site is a vital tool for communicating with our key target markets and the Kentico CMS platform has enabled us to do this with ease. It is a great honor to have been chosen as Site of the Year 2016 amongst such esteemed global competition.”

“i3 Digital worked extremely closely with stakeholders from Belfast Waterfront to gain a full understanding of their needs,” added Adrian Bradley , CEO and Founder of i3 Digital. “We conducted and facilitated several user-experience workshops and trained Belfast Waterfront staff in the use of the Kentico CMS. The new site design is much cleaner, more modern, and has an exponentially more engaging look and feel than the previous site. It’s a great way to showcase this truly outstanding venue.”

“Partners and customers are taking the Kentico platform to greater heights with each passing year,” observed Petr Palas, CEO and founder of Kentico. “It’s amazing what has been accomplished with the Belfast Waterfront site. Being presented with such stunning visuals and having so much information at your fingertips makes you feel like you are literally there in person. It’s a great use of digital technology.”

One of Eighteen Best-in-Class Awards

Kentico’s Site of the Year competition, first held in 2009, is now in its eighth year. Entrants are submitted by Kentico partners, the field is narrowed down by Kentico staff, and then the final votes are cast online by Kentico users. Through this annual competition, Kentico seeks to recognize world-class accomplishment in website design in a variety of categories. Here is the complete list of 2016 winners:

More information here.