Website Update – (August 14)

Today, as we bring you up to date on the Acuity Brands website projects, we want you to know that we’re continuing to make enormous progress toward accomplishing our goals. Some of our progress over the past two weeks was slowed by technical issues that caused delays with the migration projects, but we are happy to report that the new Peerless site is now live — located at www.peerlesslighting.com, or under Brands on the Acuity Brands website. We have other accomplishments and project updates to share as well.

Accomplishments
An important achievement was the launch of redesigned web pages for the Education vertical. These pages, in the Solutions section of acuitybrands.com, are loaded with helpful information in a beautiful, new, user-friendly format. It’s the same design already used for updates of the Industrial and Commercial Office pages and to be used for the other verticals’ web pages as we continue with the long-term project of revamping each.

Another visible accomplishment is the new Atrius™ Office page. It was launched last week in conjunction with the introduction of the Atrius Spaces platform service and web application.

But there were many less-visible accomplishments too. Overall, the web team completed a total of 156 requests for resolving site issues and making content updates.

Backlog
We are continuing to experience a significant backlog due to a very heavy workload. Our current inventory total is 179 items. Two newly hired contractors — a content production editor and a user interface front-end developer — have joined the team now and are helping with the backlog and site enhancement projects, so we do hope to see a noticeable decline in the backlog very soon.

Migration of Architectural Brands
Despite some challenging technical issues that caused delays, we made great progress on the Peerless website over the past week and were able to complete deployment and publication today. In addition, work on the Mark, Gotham and Winona sites is nearing completion. User testing for Mark and Gotham should begin late next week and for Winona the following week. Here is the revised launch schedule:
• Peerless – The new site is live. Look for an update and additional information in next week’s Smart News.
• Mark – Work has entered the final stages, and launch is scheduled for the week of Aug. 28.
• Gotham – Work has entered the final stages, and launch is scheduled for the week of Aug. 28.
• Winona – Launch is targeted for the week of Sept. 4.
• Healthcare Lighting – Launch is targeted for the week of Sept. 4.

Improvement Projects
We have kicked off a new continuous improvement project for the Typicals pages, which are located under Literature and Tools in the Resources section of acuitybrands.com. Addressing feedback from agents, we are working to reorganize the information to be more user friendly and searchable, allowing users to find what they need by code and/or product.

And we continue to make progress on our big search project to improve the product selector and search functions on acuitybrands.com. We are working on the following improvements, all based on results of our VOC initiative:
• providing a suggested-search feature
• applying a search-results order logic
• expanding the “Products” menu in the top navigation to include additional product categories — i.e., Retrofit, Troffers, Cylinders, Step Lights, etc.
• adding a Product Selector
• restructuring and/or grouping the product attribute filter values

As always, we want to thank everyone who has provided input and feedback and ask that you continue to share your thoughts, frustrations and suggestions. Send feedback or meeting requests to daniel.englebretson@acuitybrands.com.

Thank you,
The Acuity Brands Web Team