Loft Digital Launches T3 Awards Website to the ‘gadgerati’

London, United Kingdom, July 15, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Loft has worked with T3’s publisher, Future, for many years, although this is their first project for T3, following a recommendation from the team behind the Digital Artist Awards. The initial brief was to turn the in-house design team’s ideas into reality and ensure the site was robust, reliable and capable of handling millions of page views a month. As the project progressed Loft became involved with the overall planning of the project, particularly in terms of user experience and a simple navigation through the various voting categories. They wanted to ensure that visitors voted in all 18 categories, so a quick and easy process was essential.

Kieran Alger, T3 Online Editor said "The main goal was to create a richer content experience that went beyond a pure voting process. With the inclusion of editorialised product info on 150 products, plus regularly updated Awards related features, our aim was to give users an engaging experience to make it more than a one visit microsite. We've created a strand of T3 content that goes beyond just ticking some boxes and delivered a site that lives up to the media's perception of the T3 Awards as the Oscars of the tech world."

Nick Nettleton, Director at Loft Digital, said "T3 is all about smart gadgets, high production values and technology that really works - just what we love at Loft. If we hadn't built the site, we'd certainly be placing our own votes. It's great to be working with such a high profile brand in the sector. We're already considering the next phase of development and we're excited to see where it will take us."

Loft started work on the project on the 4th June and worked closely with the design team, the editorial team and Future's server management team to deliver a workable solution that would meet all teams’ needs and ensure the site would perform well.

The format of the awards is in two rounds. In the first round, the top five products in each category go through to a short list. In round two, everyone is invited to vote again to select the winner and runners-up in each category. Loft decided early on to make this process as easy as possible by enabling users to save their votes at each stage so that if they were interrupted during the process, they could come back later to finish it off.

Holly Bowman, T3 Website Manager said "The T3 Awards are a really important part of the tech world's calendar and the site's designers produced a look and feel that really reflected the magnitude of the awards themselves. As with all similar projects, there were a lot of requirements the site had to satisfy. But, once we handed over to Loft, we were impressed at the speed with which they managed to turn the site around. Each element of the design was carefully considered by the development team to ensure that it not only fitted our spec but went that little bit further to ensure the site hangs together as a satisfying, fluid user experience. The site is going to play an important role in the awards process over the next six months, and I think it is something of which we can all be proud."

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