The Highlands and Islands Enterprise website (www.hie.co.uk) which is powered by Sitekit CMS, scooped the prestigious International Information Award for Innovation in Content Management.

The International Award results were announced at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London on Wednesday the 29th of November. The Highlands and Islands Enterprise website faced strong competition from global brands such as HP Learning Solutions and International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy, The award was presented to Campbell Grant MD of Sitekit and Ken Porter, HIE’s Communications Executive by the distinguished BBC journalist John Sergeant.

The Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) website won the award in recognition of the site’s innovative approach to meeting the requirements of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. The website utilises several advances in content management technology to ensure that public information is readily available to any user of any ability. It is the application of advances such as metadata and taxonomies that provides the HIE portal with a series of innovative and usable solutions to making large volumes of information easily available. A key success of the site has been the application of the Sitekit CMS technology in areas dedicated to satisfying Freedom of Information such as HIE’s Reading Room (www.hie.co.uk/reading-room.html) where visitors have easy and direct access to information they are searching for.

“Sitekit makes it easy for our non-technical staff to build-in usability and search engine optimisation to every page they create – whether it’s a simple page of editorial, a rolling news module or registration form. The system is simple and intuitive to use and Sitekit offer great support.”

Ken Porter, Web Executive, Highlands and Islands Enterprise

“We are very proud that our work with Highlands and Islands Enterprise has been recognised by this prestigious International Award, it is testament to Sitekit’s commitment to delivering web excellence and working closely with customers and partners.
 The performance of the Highlands and Islands Enterprise site in search engines is particularly impressive. With all of the site’s content visible to search engines and compliant with accessibility standards, Sitekit CMS has ensured that the required public information is both comprehensive and easy to find, whether a visitor is searching for information in a search engine or on the HIE website.
Site statistics reinforce the scale of the site’s performance in distributing information and the benefits to online visitors. In the 12 month period 2005 – 2006 Google indexed the site on average every 20 seconds, resulting in 587,000 direct page referrals.” 

Campbell Grant, CEO, Sitekit

About Sitekit CMS:

Established in 1995, Sitekit (www.sitekit.net) has consistently been at the forefront of web development. Based in Portree on the Isle of Skye, Sitekit is passionate about empowering website designers and website owners, by removing technical barriers to creativity. Hosted on shared and dedicated servers, and delivered to a range of devices including mobile phones as well as computers.

Sitekit CMS currently powers more than 300 brands in the UK online. Organisations such as the Commission for Racial Equality, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, ADT Fire and Security, Caledonian MacBrayne and Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency have achieved major business benefits by using Sitekit CMS.

About Highlands and Islands Enterprise:

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is a government-sponsored regional development agency with an ambition to build stronger communities, grow businesses, make global connections, and to achieve sustainable economic growth in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. HIE's activities include the provision of business support services, the delivery of training and learning programs, and providing assistance for community and cultural projects. With over 500 personnel, HIE ensures that UK and European funding is secured and invested in the region – an area almost twice the size of Belgium.

Central to HIE’s success is the online portal www.hie.co.uk. Representing a strategic core and nine local enterprise agencies, the portal provides essential public information that is regularly updated across the region by some 50 site editors. The portal powered by Sitekit CMS v7 provides direct information to more than 435,000 individuals, 19,000 business, and 8,000 voluntary and community groups.