A web site is never finished. You tweak, you research, you launch, you test, you re-tweak — its an ongoing process. We’re so often looking at what’s wrong and what can be better that we forget to celebrate what’s right and what’s wonderful about the sites we create.

The Oklahoma City Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America awarded our OGE.com site (Oklahoma Gas and Electric) first place in the Electronic Media/Web Sites category. Now I know a local PRSA award is far from a Cannes Lion, but it reminded me and my team that in the days of economic stress, fewer employees with larger workloads and pressure to prove that every dollar spent online is working hard, it’s important to take a step back and celebrate the little victories.

Although in looking back, I realize the OGE site is more than a little victory. WhittmanHart had been tasked with a full-site redesign—rebranding the OGE website utilizing all areas of the agency’s areas expertise: strategy and personas, information architecture, design, development, full integration with CMS (Sharepoint), copywriting and QA.

OGE’s previous URL had housed all three of OGE’s business lines—OG&E, an electric company; Enogex, a natural gas pipeline business; and OERI, the marketing arm for the natural gas business—in one site. With a strategy centered around personas, the information architecture streamlined the web site content to speak to the multiple persona groups that the site needed to address. The design then brought the OGE brand position to life speaking directly to each of the various persona groups.

We then developed CMS templates to allow OGE to fully manage every area of every page in the site. With over 125 web pages across the three sites, this was a major milestone for OGE.

We’re excited about the site and thank OGE for their partnership with us on this major brand/site initiative.