Scotts Site Wins Award

MARYSVILLE, Ohio – The Scotts Company has announced that its Web site – www.scotts.com – was named “Best General Interest Web Site” by the Web Marketing Association in its 2003 WebAward Competition.

This premier annual award competition for Web site development has consistently recognized some of the world’s largest and best-known companies for their innovative use of the Internet. With close to 10 million visits so far this year, Scotts’ Web sites play an integral role in establishing the company’s lead role in the lawn and garden market.

“Our team has worked hard to build a site that meets the high standards of our brands, while providing quality lawn and garden information for our consumers,” commented Gordon Hecker, senior vice president of marketing. “It’s extremely gratifying to receive such recognition for our efforts, especially when you look at who you’re being recognized alongside – companies like Forbes, Disney, Hewlett Packard, L.L Bean and The Wall Street Journal.”

In addition to the top award in the general interest category, the worldwide industry supplier received a “Standard of Excellence Award” for its Lawn and Garden Center the company created as part of an integrated marketing program with The Weather Channel and weather.com. Judges recognized the site for the “standard of excellence by which all corporate Web sites should strive.”

The Web Marketing Association is the producer of the WebAward Competition, which judges Web sites based on their design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, navigation and ease of use. The panel of judges is comprised of media representatives, advertising executives, site designers, content providers and Webmasters.

Scotts redesigned its Web site last year to integrate all of its industry brands into one online lawn and garden destination. These brands include Scotts, Miracle-Gro, Ortho, Osmocote and the consumer Roundup brand. The redesigned Web sites include more timely, relevant lawn and garden content to help consumers create and maintain a more beautiful yard, while integrating useful product information.

This year, Scotts has witnessed a surge in Web traffic due to the new site and related marketing efforts. User sessions are up 97 percent over last year, and page views are up 310 percent over the same period. Close to 10 million users have visited Scotts’ sites so far this year.

Scotts also offers e-mail reminder services on its site, where users can sign up to receive periodic messages that will “remind” them of certain activities they need to perform in their lawn and garden each month. To date, more than 600,000 users have signed up to receive e-mail reminders from Scotts.