SANTO DOMINGO.- For the last two days the Dominican media has highlighted the spectacular win by Merit Designs in the Verizon-sponsored First Best Dominican Websites Competition, getting the Grand Prize and Best Media prizes for the diariolibre.com, and in Sports and Entertainment for golfdominicana.com.

Merit designed two of the  winning Internet websites which competed with 131 others in the country.

The El Caribe and its affiliate CDN television, the newspapers Hoy, Listin Diario, Diario Libre and El Nuevo Diario published articles on the competition, where Michael and Daniel Harel, of Portal Alta Technology and Merit Designs respectively are quoted on their views on the contest, web technology and the Internet in general.

For his part, Mario Nuñez, Electronic Media Production director for Omnimedia, which publishes Diario Libre, said that diariolibre.com’s success results from the application of the high technological standards which today’s readers are accustomed to, with 35 to 40,000 daily visits.

He also pointed out that the site’s true interactivity with its readers most likely influenced the jury’s decision, through the publication of the hundreds of commentaries published daily in the news articles and the op-eds.

For Daniel Harel, Merit Designs head of Programming, this prize –the first of its kind in the country- is the recognition as a certificate of quality. He stressed that the design features fast, easy and effective usage.

Merit’s other prize winner is golfdominicano.com, a recently-activated site owned by the Dominican Federation of Golf and the Omnimedia and Portal Alta Technology companies. Its primary goal is to promote golf and the country as sport tourism destination. It is a great technological and journalistic effort that summarizes the golf activities in the country.

In addition to Diario Libre, Merit’s sites already online include elnuevodiario.com.do; hoy.com.do; elnacional.com.do and dominicantoday.com in the media sector, bancopopular.com.do; supercasas.com, supercarros.com, and timehomes.com in the real estate sector and giomaniauto,com; cartelpublicidad.com and superflores.com in the commercial sector, among others.

The Merit Designs Consulting Group president Monika Harel told Dominican Today that her firm is also elaborating extensive websites for multination companies in the financial and tourism sectors, as well as for the Dominican Government.

“Our client portfolio is widely varied,” she said, adding that the firm is currently designing “very large” sites which Merit’s clients wish not to disclose for now citing reasons of publicity impact timing.