School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Expands Online Content and Quadruples Web Traffic With CrownPeak

Dynamic Content Attracts Wider Audience to Non-Profit Web Site

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 09/20/2005 -- CrownPeak (www.crownpeak.com), the software service leader in content management, today unveiled the deployment benefits of their award-winning content management solution (CMS) for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), a non-profit dedicated to educating artists and fostering their creative investigation, risk-taking and individual vision.

Since implementing CrownPeak in December 2004, the Boston-based art school has expanded its Web site content to include art galleries, opportunities for artists, course listings, calendars and faculty bios. By continuously updating this new content, the SMFA has not only attracted a wider variety of visitors -- spanning from parents to the general public -- they have also experienced a nearly 400 percent increase in Web traffic.

"As a non-profit with a finite budget, our hands were tied when it came to the size of our Web staff," said Suzanne Liola Matus, director of communications for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "With only one person dedicated to the job, the biggest challenge was keeping our online content up-to-date. Today, with approximately 40 users authorized to contribute content to the Web site via the CrownPeak system, our Web administrator is able to dedicate his time to keeping the site dynamic and exciting for our visitors."

Customized to meet the specific needs of the school, CrownPeak's solution allows final edit control to be assigned to someone outside the Web staff. This eases the Web manager's workload and results in final content that is aligned with institutional messaging. This approach has proven to be quite effective for SMFA -- its newly introduced pages are currently attracting almost one third of its online visitors (31 percent) and traffic is remaining steady during the traditionally slow summer months.

"Our content management solution is helping organizations like the SMFA easily transform their Web site into an interactive and innovative resource," said CrownPeak CEO Jim Howard. "CrownPeak's elegant software-as-a-service model fosters simple collaboration, which creates dynamic results for content-rich organizations."

SMFA's site has also won several industry awards for its success. In 2004, it won in the Best Corporate Site category of the Stevie Awards, which recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Just recently, SMFA's site creator, imagistic, was recognized with a Standard of Excellence award for Outstanding Achievement in Website Development by the Web Marketing Association's WebAward Competition. imagistic sited CrownPeak's content management as a significant contributor to the overall success of the SMFA site.

About SMFA
Founded in 1876 and accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), is one of the largest and oldest museum schools in the country. A division of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and in partnership with Tufts University, the Museum School offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), the BFA in Art Education, the Five Year Combined-Degree (BA or BS with BFA), the Master of Arts in Teaching in Art Education, and the Master of Fine Arts. The SMFA also offers an all-studio four-year Diploma, and one-year Fifth Year and Post-Baccalaureate certificates. Through Continuing Education, evening and weekend courses, high school workshops, and art-making programs for teenagers also are available.

About CrownPeak
Based in Los Angeles, CrownPeak is the first company to provide world-class Web site management software as a service. CrownPeak solutions include CrownPeak CMS, an enterprise-class Web content management solution, and CrownPeak Search the first on-demand search tool designed specifically to automatically and continually learn from both the content and user's search behavior. CrownPeak delivers its unique combination of software and services to such clients as Crain Communications, Honeywell, Hyundai Motors, the University of Southern California and the State of Virginia. CrownPeak solutions support hundreds of sites, thousands of users and millions of Web pages. CrownPeak has been named to EContent's 100 most influential companies list, has won eWeek's prestigious Analysts Choice Award and InfoWorld's Product of the Year Award and is a 2003, 2004 and 2005 SIIA Codie Award finalist as Best Content Management System.