Stock Show site gallops into second place

Web site’s ag-savvy designers make it user-friendly tool

DENVER — With nearly 100 years under its belt buckle, the National Western Stock Show Association has brought its mission to the World Wide Web in an organized, user-friendly manner.

The site covers every aspect of the nonprofit organization’s operations, from the heralded stock and horse shows and rodeo to educational material focusing on agricultural issues.

The clean look, quick download time and depth of information earned National Western’s Web site, www.nationalwestern.com, second place in The Northern Colorado Business Report’s third annual Cyberstars competition.

As a 501 (c) (3) corporation, the National Western’s mission statement is ” to preserve the Western lifestyle by providing a showcase for the agricultural industry through its emphasis on education.”

From its humble beginnings in 1906 when the first show was held in a tent, National Western’s complex now covers more than 80 acres near Denver’s Interstate 25 and Interstate 70, with an expo hall, event center, rodeo arena, livestock stadium, art exhibit and even a children’s ranchland.

“We have a lot of information online,´ said Brad Ettleman, National Western’s assistant director of marketing. But many in National Western’s target market live in rural areas, where the only method of accessing the Internet is through slow dial-up modems. “We worked hard to find a good balance between text and graphics so there wouldn’t be problems downloading the information quickly,” Ettleman said. “Hopefully, we’ve reached that balance.”

The maps and directions pages are the most downloaded on the site by far, Ettleman said. That’s good news for organizers of the association’s premier events, the annual rodeo and stock and horse shows, which drew over 632,000 people last year. National Western hopes to attract even more visitors to this year’s event, scheduled for Jan. 11 through Jan 26.

To ease the process for out-of-towners, the association added a ?Plan Your Trip’ feature to the Web site, where corporate sponsors such as Frontier Airlines, Travel Organizers and Marriott Hotels offer package deals and discounts for Stock Show tourists.

Another popular feature — and one that earned National Western repeated accolades from the International Association of Fairs and Expositions — is the online premium book. It allows competitors to download rules and applications for all events, saving time for participants and thousands of dollars in postage costs for the association.

Ettleman attributes much of the Web site’s success to its Greeley-based developers, AgTown Technologies. Since AgTown took over National Western’s online presence, traffic to the site has skyrocketed from 200,000 hits in 2000 to more than 9 million in 2002.

“We feel really privileged to work with AgTown,” Ettleman said. “They understand agriculture, they understand technology, and they understand National Western. We share a common goal.”

AgTown specializes in developing Web sites for agricultural companies. Most of the staff comes from an agricultural background, which eliminates a huge learning curve other companies may face when dealing with the specialized content.

“There aren’t a lot of ag people in the IT industry,´ said Tonya Orr, marketing director for AgTown. “It helps to know the difference between a cow and a bull.”

But even with the success of the Web site, National Western plans to continue to contract AgTown for a major overhaul of the site. For the 2004 show, the site will take on a whole new look and feel, Orr said, including the ability for exhibitors to submit entry forms online.

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