PRESS RELEASE Of interest to editors and journalists covering: Advertising/Marketing, Design/Branding, Internet/Dotcom, NY Business News Internet Media Review names Discover.com, Designed by Avatar New York, Best Consumer Magazine Website NEW YORK, NY - October 13, 2004 /Send2Press Newswire/ -- Going for Gold! New York based Avatar New York, an independent Interactive and Web Design agency, announces that Internet Media Review (IMR) has awarded top honors to their website design for Discover.com. Decisively out-scoring a number of larger magazine publishing companies, Disney Publishing's Discover.com has been awarded the IMR Usability Excellence Award 2004 for Best Consumer Magazine Website. Discover.com scores a 97 out of a possible 100 in the first annual website usability showdown, besting one other well-known consumer magazine website by more than double. *(Logo: http://www.Send2Press.com/photoSP/avatar-logo.jpg) According to the IMR, their research team closely examined ten leading consumer magazine companion websites from ten top magazine publishing companies. Focus was placed on the overall homepage usability and several typical user tasks. A series of expert usability reviews and actual user test labs were conducted to determine what IMR believes to be the top ten "Best Practices" for homepage web design for the consumer magazine market. Some key metrics reviewed by IMR were: brand integrity, persistent navigation, task depth, labeling and language, content density and load time. Discover.com scored a perfect 10 in each of these best practices. An in-depth, 30-page research report is available at www.internetmediareview.com. "We are pleased with this wonderful achievement," says Charles McCoy, President of Avatar New York. "Our design team has worked on numerous website redesigns and we have learned the art of creating the perfect design mix. Consumer sites must be aesthetically pleasing while integrating with the best practices of usability to achieve winning results. Having a great CMS is tantamount to achieving such results in consumer websites. Our programmers took the final designs and incorporated them into our CMS producing a site that is visually exciting and completely self-managed by the client. The amazing staff at Discover now have the ability to publish new content immediately to their site easily maintaining the Magazine's online integrity which has translated to an increase in online subscriptions." About Internet Media Review Internet Media Review: The Journal of Online Marketing & Publishing, is a website offering a real-time window into the best practices for Internet marketing and publishing. IMR's mission is to help print and electronic publishers understand and profit from the best practices used by the Internet's most successful online publishers. IMR research is supported by Digital Media Advisors, LLC, a consulting services company with over 20 years of publishing experience. About Avatar New York "Transforming Art into Technology" - Avatar New York, a privately held Internet Consultancy company, specializing in Website Design and Interactive Digital Marketing initiatives. With expertise in design, E-commerce, customized content management applications and site promotion, Avatar seamlessly partners with advertising agencies, marketing and corporate in-house departments delivering successfully strategic sites and online marketing initiatives. Some noteworthy clients include New Balance, Yamaha, Sirius, Ellen Tracy, Tag Heuer and Screenvision. For more information, visit http://www.avatarnewyork.com. Media Contact Charles Lavallée Director of Sales & Marketing of Avatar New York +1-212-361-6100 clavallee@avatarnewyork.com # # # [ Source of news = Avatar New York ] Ref: http://www.send2press.com/2archive/2004/pr04-101302-avatar.txt http://www.send2press.com/2archivePDF/pr04-101302-avatar.pdf ----------------------------------------------------------------- *IMPORTANT NOTE TO MEDIA: to reach the organization releasing this news, please contact: clavallee@avatarnewyork.com (media only) If used for publication, please send specimen copy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- S2P-NP / 0C / NY / New York, N.Y. / U.S. English (en) Copr. (c) 2004 Send2Press Newswire. This release was issued on behalf of the above organization, who is solely responsible for accuracy of content, by Send2Press(TM), a unit of Neotrope(R). http://www.Send2Press.com [www.DotComNewswire.com] references: ----------- Web Design, New York Web Design, Content Management, Content Management CMS, Interactive Development, Discover Magazine, Discover.com