When Chris Havel of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD) was put in charge of overseeing the OPRD web site, he faced a daunting challenge: How do you convey the pristine beauty of Oregon's vast array of state parks without overwhelming the visitor with the technical complexities that make the site work?
"I studied a lot of other state park sites and I knew that we could do a better job," Havel says. "I just didn't know how." Luckily for Chris, he hooked up with Amazing Online Marketing who did.
"They were the most competent professionals that I've ever met in a relatively young industry," says Havel of the Amazing team. "If you're interested in a web site that will work for you and the person you're trying to reach, then use Amazing."
What Havel liked best about working with the Amazing team was their ability to communicate at every level of the project. In fact, that's what got Amazing the job.
"We had 15 people bid on the project," says Havel, "Out of that we had three top candidates of which two were neck and neck. What cinched it for Amazing was that they were so easy to communicate with. I knew that lack of communication was never going to be a problem with them."
Havel also appreciated the level of technical expertise the team had, describing it as, at times, "frightening." Whenever he told them something that he wanted the site to do, the team would typically come back with not one but several solutions. However, all of that technical know-how would have been wasted, if the team hadn't been able to implement it in a timely way. Working with an incredible deadline, the team was able to get the site launched seven hours ahead of schedule.
"We had an amazing deadline--actually four weeks less than was originally planned," says Havel. "The timeline was the only thing that we weren't able to mess with. But they were able to integrate an array of contractors to get the job done on time."
Havel explains that another way they were able to meet the deadline was by being adaptable enough to move elements of the project that weren't critical to later stages of the project.
"I've yet to get a request for something we're not going to be able to do
sometime Havel notes. That's because Amazing had the foresight in the
planning and design phases. Of course there are always last minute
wrenches, but we were always able to identify them and fix them ahead of
the launch." That kind of thoroughness made it all possible, according to
Havel.
Has the site turned out the way he wanted it to?
"It's exceeded every expectation I had," says Havel. "We estimate that potentially six million people a year will view this site by the time we hit our peak. The goal was to get those viewers excited enough about Oregon's state parks that they'll want to go out and visit them."
Havel is convinced that the site does exactly that.
