LabTalk editor, Christie Walker (c) presented Top Ten Website of the Year awards to Bill Heffner, FEA Industries, Imtiaz Hasan, iCoat, and Matt and Neil Iovaldi, Midland Optical.

LAS VEGAS—With 44 eyecare professional nominations, iCoat’s website makes it to the top as LabTalk’s Website of the Year for 2014. LabTalk editor, Christie Walker, announced the Top Ten Websites, and presented iCoat with the winning trophy at Jobson’s annual lab party, Labapalooza last month at Vision Expo West. Labapalooza was presented by Vision Monday and LabTalk, and the Optical Lab Division of the Vision Council. Title Sponsor, Schneider; Ultra Sponsor, X-Cel Optical; and Premium Sponsors, Coburn Technologies, Digital Vision, Essilor IDD, Santinelli International, Salem Vision Group, and Ultra Optics.

“After years of being a Top Ten website, the iCoat site took top honors, with dozens of ECP comments on the usefulness of the site, pushing the site to the top,” said Walker.

iCoat wows its website visitors with its clean, modern look, and its easy-to-find information. Here’s what iCoat customer Pamela Ramsdell had to say about the website: “It is attractive, light/bright, has eye appeal, user friendly and has moving parts that look really good without being annoying. It has a lot of useful information. We can order starting right at the home page.”

2014 Optical Laboratory Website of the Year honorees:

1) iCoat Company www.icoatcompany.com
2) Laramy-K Optical www.laramyk.com
3) Optical Prescription Lab www.opticalprescriptionlab.com
4) FEA Industries www.Feaind.com
5) Superior Optical www.superioroptical.com
6) Interstate Optical www.interstateoptical.com
7) Walman Optical www.walman.com
8) Midland Optical www.midlandoptical.com
9) Prescription Optical Group www.poglabs.com
10) Classic Optical www.ClassicOptical.com

According to the Website of the Year judges, many of this year’s sites have had obvious “facelifts” and content improvements, notably the FEA site. With a few more graphics and illustrations, the FEA site could be a contender for Website of the Year in 2015. The Laramy-K site is always a favorite, with its clean look and unique offerings. The Laramy-K blog is back and very popular with Laramy-K customers.

Many of the Top Ten sites really have improved their look and feel. They seem easy-to-use and well organized, although it’s hard to judge how useful a particular site is to the ECP without nominations and comments from the ECP community, according to the judges.