What Makes a Winner
We selected Wintergreendesigns.com because of the site’s many fine features, including its online catalog and e-commerce shopping cart, as well as photos showing people wearing their clothing. Here are some of the things we especially like about WinterGreendesigns.com:

• Easily identifiable, appropriately named Web site.
• Ease of navigation and clean, consistent layout.
• Optimized photos and graphics ensure the site pages load quickly.
• Uses an intriguing set of words for their online catalog categories—makes you want to know more about their clothing.
• Friendly, secure shopping cart system.
• Provides in-depth descriptions of their products, including the fabrics and materials they used to create them.
• Guarantees everything they sell.
• Supplies ordering information.
• Includes a size chart by height and weight.
• Presents an online form for ordering their paper catalog.
• Provides other links of interest, such as a link to the Ely Chamber of Commerce, a link to the Wintergreen Lodge, a photo gallery of their customers wearing Wintergreen Designs clothing, and more.

“One of the advantages of working for a small company is being able to perform a variety of jobs. I designed the site for Wintergreen founder Susan Schurke. Wintergreen Designs chose to go online because we wanted to give our customers an interactive medium to find and buy our products online.

“We started working on the site in March of 2000, and it took three to four months altogether—about two months to build the main part of the site, which went up, and then we added the catalog section during the next two months. Right now, our 2000 catalog is online, but we're working on the 2001 catalog, which will be online after September 11. So, be sure to check back at that time."

About Our Winner
Wintergreen Designs founder Susan Schurke and her husband, polar explorer Paul Schurke, began 14 years ago by designing gear for the Steger International Polar Expedition. Since then, their talented crew has grown to include nearly 40 seamstresses, designers, cutters, clerks, shippers, and managers.

They believe in crafting quality apparel designed to reflect the rigors and rugged beauty of their northern wilderness, a tiny northwoods town on the U.S.-Canadian border where the outdoors is a way of life. You can only purchase their clothing from their store in Ely, Minnesota, through their catalog, or on their Web site.

Why Our Winner Prefers NetObjects Fusion
Webmaster/seamstress Heather Hohenstein had this to say about why she chose NetObjects Fusion to build this award-winning site:

“I chose NetObjects Fusion because of its ease of use and because it came highly recommended at a Northern Minnesota technology seminar I attended. When I saw how easy it was to use, I bought it.

“After working with FrontPage and some basic HTML, I found NetObjects Fusion much more intuitive. The tutorial was a good stepping-off point for learning to use the basic functions. I was able to begin working on the Web site without reading the whole manual.

“Using NetObjects Fusion SiteStyles is really cool because you can modify them, and the SiteStyles keep the basic layout of the pages consistent throughout the site. Also, the forms feature was really helpful in developing our online catalog.

“What I especially like about using NetObjects Fusion is its simplicity, especially with SiteStyles, which keeps our banners and buttons consistent on each page. Plus I would never have been able to keep track of 48 pages without the Site Structure feature.”