NEW YORK, Flashforward 2001 New York, July 11 Macromedia, Inc. today announced that Emerils.com, the site for well-known celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, is now more appetizing to users and easier to prepare for his Web team after integrating Macromedia Flash(TM) into their Dreamweaver site. The site offers a new, interactive Macromedia Flash navigational menu, which gives users "zero-to-one-click'' access to all main courses of interest, all of which are streamlined to provide visitors with the most tantalizing user experience possible. Within the first two weeks of the site relaunch, sales went up by 8 percent and are projected to climb by 21 percent within a year. With the new site, monthly maintenance costs were reduced by 85 percent, according to the Emerils.com Web team. "Hey it ain't rocket science, if you are looking to do or redo a Web site and want to kick it up a notch, this Macromedia Flash thing is awesome,'' said Emeril Lagasse. "With the new site, the idea was for people to quickly find the information they want in an easy-to-navigate environment, and Macromedia Flash seemed the best way to achieve that result,'' said Damion Michaels, director of Web development for Emeril Lagasse. "You want to find information on one of the Emeril restaurants, TV shows, or one of more than 3,400 recipes? Bam! You're there. That's how people like to use the Web and that's what Macromedia Flash let us serve up.'' Emerils.com is developed and maintained by a three-person, in-house Web team that has seen measurable productivity gains since standardizing on Dreamweaver and now Macromedia Flash to revamp the previously static site. The Macromedia Flash navigation components were seamlessly integrated into the existing Dreamweaver site, which lowered maintenance costs by 85 percent. For more information on the redesign, a case study is available at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/resources/integration/ . The challenge of the redesign was to address the unique needs of visitors to Emeril's site, which counts "AOL moms'' as a majority of its traffic. Online membership is expected to increase by more than 25 percent, with registered users increasing by more than 6 percent in the first two weeks. The team streamlined their workflow using Macromedia products so that tasks that previously took more than two weeks are now accomplished in one day, and the implementation of new content is now 85 percent faster than before. The productivity gains have given the team more time to address new markets, such as adding interactive games and information for kids. "Emerils.com is a great example of how Macromedia Flash can be successfully used with Dreamweaver to deliver an interactive, engaging and effective user experience,'' said Peter Goldie, general manager, Macromedia. "The Macromedia Flash navigation provides an aesthetic, compact, economical way to let users drill down into the site with the least amount of clicks -- and in many cases zero-clicks.''