The stunning 3D ‘showroom’ featured on Fiat’s UK website has been crowned the Retail and Leisure Sector Technology Project of the Year at the important 2008 CNET Networks UK Business Technology Awards.

The stunning 3D ‘showroom’ featured on Fiat’s UK website has been crowned the Retail and Leisure Sector Technology Project of the Year at the important 2008 CNET Networks UK Business Technology Awards. Known as the Oscars of the digital technology industry, the international awards, held at London’s Hilton on Park Lane hotel, recognise companies’ ability to harness the power of the Internet and turn it into easy-to-use, original websites.

The award judges said: “Fiat’s website incorporated 3D models, video and interactivity to present their product range and financing options. This site upgrade was thought to be exemplary in its attempts to harness the power of web 2.0 applications and demonstrated the result with an exponential increase in sales leads.”

Fiat’s site (www.fiat.co.uk/showroom) includes a three-dimensional car showroom, set against a panoramic backdrop, in which users can select the cars of their choice, discover more about them and even configure and compare favourite models.

“We are absolutely delighted with this prestigious award,” says Elena Bernardelli, marketing director, Fiat UK. “When we re-launched fiat.co.uk we wanted to employ cutting edge creativity to produce an interesting, exciting and user-friendly site that visitors could enjoy using. I am pleased the CNET judges have acknowledged that we achieved that.”

The CNET accolade follows last month’s US-based 2008 Creativity Annual Awards in which the Fiat showroom site won a Gold and Silver medal in the Website, Consumer category, illustrating the global recognition that the UK site has achieved. The other finalists in the Retail and Leisure Sector Technology Project of the Year category were: innocent - innocent European EDI Expansion; JD Sports - JD's Solid IT Foundations; Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons – An Emphasis on Service: WLAN at Le Manoir; and The Pier - The Pier New POS solution.