pakowitz

The Saints are ready to untangle the Web.

New Orleans has partnered with Louisiana-based EATELWEB to develop and design an all-new official web site for Saints fans.

They'll relaunch the team's official web site before the upcoming football season, with a new focus on quick news and an interesting feature dedicated to Saints and NFL statistics.

"Saints fans are very loyal ," said Conrad "Connie" Kowal, the Saints' senior director of marketing and business development, "and we are committed to providing them with the constant flow of information they expect and demand."

Chris Pika, the Saint's Director of New Media, will manage the site on a day-to-day basis. He said the team conducted an exhaustive search of national, regional and local companies. In the end, EATELWEB stood out because it offered everything that the national firms could, while also being based locally in Louisiana.

"When we began the internal process of examining our criteria for a web site partner, we had very exacting standards that a company would have to meet," Pika said. "EATELWEB's commitment to their product was on par with national companies that do Internet business with NFL clubs. To have that level of product and service available to us from a company based in Louisiana made EATELWEB the best choice to partner with for the re-launch of www.NewOrleansSaints.com."

EATELWEB Manager Jason Domangue said his group will design and program every aspect of the Saints site.

"We are building this new web site with the fans' needs and interests in mind," Domangue said.

A key element of the web site's redesign will actually never be seen by the public, instead hidden on the back end. EATELWEB will embed the site with custom content tools so Saints staffers can spend more time creating content and less time programming.

The content tools will make entering information as easy as cutting and pasting text from one location to another. Internal programming created by EATELWEB will then automatically format and place content in the appropriate locations.

Domangue said other notable improvements include enhanced photo galleries, streamlined registration for online newsletters, chat rooms and message boards. On game days, the main page will transform to focus on the Saints match-up with the rival team, with special information regarding history, key players and more.

"I think initially we'll be looking at two to three million page views per month,." Domangue said.

EATELWEB's contract with the New Orleans Saints gives the company its second successful high-profile sports web site client. LSUsports.net, the Official web site of LSU Athletics, was EATELWEB's first major sports client.

In 2001, the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report and the Baton Rouge Technology Council named LSUsports.net "Web site of the Year."


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