IAPA Earns National Award for Outstanding Website
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The National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) announced recently that the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association, of Springfield, Illinois, is the finalist of the 2015 Outstanding Website Award. The association was recognized Monday, July 18, at a ceremony honoring the Operational Excellence Award recipients during the NAPA Midyear Meeting in Seattle.
Involvement, Ecological, Outstanding Brochure, and Outstanding Website — recognize a company’s commitment to operations that make them good contractors, good industry ambassadors, and good neighbors," said NAPA Chairman Kevin Kelly.
The Outstanding Website Award recognizes website designs that promote the use of asphalt and the asphalt pavement industry. Websites are judged on the use of industry messages and efforts to educate the general public about the asphalt pavement industry.
The goal of the Illinois Asphalt Pavement Association’s website redesign was two-fold: to provide its members more information and ease of access, and to provide the general public the proper resources about asphalt pavements.
The website, www.il-asphalt.org, was redesigned in November 2015 to create a separate IAPA members-only sign-in portal to provide quality information to its members.
"We were able to get a secure site that allows users to maintain their own account," said Kevin Burke III, IAPA Executive Vice President. "It allows the individual member companies to maintain their own profile on the website, to add new members, and to upload their logo."
The members-only portal allows IAPA to post webinars so members can watch a recording of any that were missed, Burke said. An interactive directory is another popular feature of the updated website, allowing members to perform member-to-member business with a specific contact name and phone number in hand.
"We have the latest marketing and technical information out there for investigating asphalt benefits," Burke said. "They can go and find all the documents on the website. So that was another big emphasis — bringing all these documents together and having a mechanism to put them out in a little easier way on the website."
The association’s website is averaging 600-700 page views per day, providing the analytical and tracking information that was lacking on the old site.
"It allows us to not only actually see the number of clicks, but geographically where they are coming from," Burke said. "Most are obviously coming from Illinois, but some have been from outside the United States, as well."
Burke said the response from members has been very positive, particularly regarding the webinars and access to pertinent information.
"There’s a lot of collaboration that’s allowed now," he said. "For our technical quality control managers, we’re going to launch a technical discussion board. So it allows collaboration between technical experts."
Burke said he feels IAPA’s two-fold goal has been met. The new site allows members to interact with each other and keeps the benefits of joining the association behind the members-only portal.
"The key was to provide members services in a more streamlined, efficient manner," he said. "Second, we wanted to make sure that the people who are purchasing or considering purchasing asphalt pavements have the resources and information and the most current, up-to-date information."
Read more about the awards program and IAPA's recognition in the latest issue of NAPA's Asphalt Pavement magazine.
