McKinney, TX – August 20, 2008 — The McKinney Convention & Visitors Bureau Web site received a first place Idea Fair award in August during the Annual Texas Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus (TACVB) Conference.

Atomic Design & Consulting, which is based in Plano, Texas, designed the site, while the McKinney CVB staff regularly creates new material for the site and accepts event and other pertinent visitor information from the city’s attractions, hotels, businesses and civic organizations.

“When Atomic launched our site in October of 2007, we knew it was going to be enticing to visitors and the community as a whole, too. It was such a wonderful change from our old site and it’s become a popular site among visitors to McKinney as well as residents,” MCVB Executive Director Diann Bayes said.

VisitMcKinney.com has grown substantially since the Web site’s launch almost a year ago, according to MCVB Communications Manager Beth Shumate.

“That first month, we had in the neighborhood of 2,000 visits. Since then, we’ve watched it grow significantly to more than 30,000 visits a month. And our ranking with the search engines is improving all the time,” Shumate said, adding that she and Bayes regularly analyze the stats portion of the site to track the Web site’s progress.

Shumate said she adds new content to the site every week, which was one of the factors that fared well for the MCVB in competing for and winning the recent award.

“The admin controls are so easy to use, adding new material, uploading files and making revisions to existing content are all relatively simple, which makes my job so much easier,” Shumate said. “The fact that our Web site offers so much up-to-date information to visitors and residents helped us stand out in the competition.”

McKinney was named “The Fastest Growing City in the U.S.” by the Census Bureau in 2006 after its population grew 97.6 percent between 2000 and 2006. The MCVB needs to be able to easily “grow” the Web site, too, to keep up with all that is going on in the city, including openings of new attractions, hotels and meeting venues.

“We want VisitMcKinney.com to be the first place people go to learn about what’s happening in McKinney, whether they’re visiting the city, live here, or just want to learn more about the city from somewhere else in the country or the world,” Bayes said. Recent views of the Web site’s stats show hits not only from throughout the U.S., but also from European and Asian countries as well as Canada, Mexico and South America.

The MCVB Web site award was announced at the TACVB Conference held in Beaumont Aug, 5-8, and was voted on by tourism industry professionals.