Ask the Experts, Question 2:
How can one recognise a good quality award program?
by Rob Ford, Webmaster, Favourite Website Awards
21 October 2001
Print Version
| Maggi Norris, Webmistress Nem5 Awards Program |
Editor's Choice |
The current winners should meet or exceed the rules listed to earn the awards. If they do not, the awards lose their credibility and show that the rules do not matter. If the rules do not matter, then the awards are not earned, but given away. As well ...
| 1. | The winners' list should show recent upgrades with winners for every month, unless the award is only given once a year. |
| |
| 2. | The criteria (rules) should be comprehensive and tell what will earn awards and what will keep a site from earning awards. |
| |
| 3. | The award site's design should be able to earn it's own awards. |
| |
| 4. | The judging staff should have experience and/or qualifications for what they are reviewing. |
Often the site will have ratings or belong to exclusive award memberships. These can very often show much about the quality of the award program. If rating or membership is all that is looked at to determine the quality of an award program, it is also important to make sure the rating or membership site is good quality and that their ratings have strict guidelines for qualification.
The list for how to recognize a quality award program has so many items that it could go on for many pages. The very best way to be able to recognize a quality award program is to learn about awards. There is a lot of educational material on web awards to be found online today. The more of it one chooses to read, the better one will be able to recognize which awards are good quality.
Karen Pimtzner, Webmistress
petalperfect Digital Photography Gallery (site closed)
A good quality award program has a history. It's a rich history that is constantly evolving. The program never stays the same. As the Internet grows, the program grows along with it. The program doesn't get stagnant or stale. It is constantly raising the bar and providing a challenge to those who apply for it. Its winners are an important part of that history.
A good quality award program is housed within a web site that is intuitively designed. It exemplifies the very criteria that it sets forth. It either has won or it is certainly evident that it is capable of winning its own award, as well as other good, quality awards.
A good quality award program has an evaluator or several evaluators who each add something of intrinsic value to the program. Whether it be expertise in source structure, written content or graphic artistry ... they use the award program as a vehicle through which to share their knowledge and experience.
A good quality award program has an award graphic that is attractive to the eye and one which the seeker would be proud to have on their web site.
The owner of a good quality award program knows that award seekers have questions about web design (lots of them) and works hard to provide the answers ... either through carefully crafted tutorials, gathered resources or offer of one-on-one tutelage.
One always leaves a good quality award program having learned something ... about their web site or about themselves, as webmasters.
Will Harbeson, Webmaster
The Medals Of Excellence
There are a few ways to identify a good award program. Affiliations are a good clear hint as to the quality of an award program. Subscribing to a ratings service like Award Sites! shows that someone other than the award giver has seen and approved of the program on some level.
There are also a few internationally accepted ratings services that will tell you the program's author/owners are serious about their efforts. Membership in an ethics organization like CEM/CEMA or APEX is another affiliation that shows additional scrutiny on the award giver.
The second thing to look for is the award graphic itself, is it clean, clear, beautiful and has a place for your winning name? Serious award givers are crazy about their award graphics. Hours of effort are spent making them just right. If the graphics are great then it is likely this is a quality program.
Third is the winners' list. Take a moment to look at the sites the program has already awarded. If the sites you see on those lists are wonderful and recognized in a consistent manner, then it is likely the program you're applying to is one of quality. While you are there, look also at the efforts spent on detailing the criteria. Is it understandable? Is it aimed at awarding sites like yours or does it appear they are just giving away a graphic in exchange for your linking back to them.
Finally, does the site itself present quality? If an award program exists on a site that is not complete and has all the flaws of a beginning effort then it is likely that the award program has been treated in the same fashion.
As someone that entered the awards arena haphazardly, applying for anything and everything I saw, I can tell you that I wish I had not. My ethics tells me that if I applied for it and accepted it, I should display it. Now that I've been at this for a couple years, some of the awards I won are not from the best of programs and are little better than clutter.
Bottom line ... you like the affiliations, you love the graphic and you would want to have your name posted there among the winners, then go for it. Chances are you've found a quality award program.
Alberto Paronetto, Webmaster
Sinapsis Award for
an Intellectual Attitude
A good quality award program, must have (and/or):
 |
a recognized rating level; |
|
a listing in prestigious award indexes; |
|
a winners' list compatible with its own criteria; |
|
fulfillment of its own criteria; and |
|
continuity. |
Heidi Walsh, Webmistress
Heidi's Website Awards (program closed)
It's very difficult to single out one element that adds quality to an award program. In my opinion the main characteristics of a good quality award program is harmony. For that, all of the following criteria have to be considered.
| 1. | Does the site design of the award site show that the owner knows what he/she is doing? |
| |
| 2. | Does the award site meet its own criteria? |
| |
| 3. | Is the program organized and is it easy to navigate? |
| |
| 4. | Are the criteria clear and straightforward? Are they fairly short (10 pages of criteria is torturing the applicant!)? Are they structured? Are they written in a positive way? |
| |
| 5. | Is there an application form? |
| |
| 6. | Are there necessary statements (i.e. Privacy) there? |
| |
| 7. | Is there information about the judge(s)? Is the judge or the judging team credible? |
| |
| 8. | Is the award graphic attractive? |
| |
| 9. | Do the winners meet the given criteria? Are the winners presented well? |
| |
| 10. | Are the awards the award site has won presented in an adequate way? |
If a program falls short on even one of them, it loses quality points, because it is not harmonious any more.
Kim Cole, Webmistress
World of Knowledge Awards (program closed)
I believe that there are three main identifiers for a quality award program. Those are friendliness, clarity and your winners' list.
| 1. | Friendliness is the best way to get your visitors to pay attention to what you have to say. If you are harsh, or if your program consists of nothing but "no" statements, people are going to feel put upon to continue reading. But if every part of your program, from the purpose statement to the application page, is upbeat and positive, people will be much more inclined to pay attention to what you have to say. |
| |
| 2. | Clarity is very important if you want people to understand your intentions. You need to have clearly defined terms so that they know what you mean when, for instance, you ask for no more than three clicks per page. People think mostly of criteria when discussing clarity, but it is also important to remember clarity when putting together your re-application statements, and the requirements which the applicant must do upon becoming a winner. This will help keep mistakes from happening. |
| |
| 3. | A winners' list is how your applicants will know that you mean what you say. You should be very careful to only award sites which meet your criteria exactly. Because people will check your winners against your criteria, and if they don't match up, your applicants won't take your criteria seriously. While, of course, you have no control over what a site does two, four, or six months after they've won your award, you should try and check them periodically. |
Also, if you make a major change to your program and/or the criteria, it's a good idea to segment out the winners' list to reduce confusion.
Jan Sopshier, Webmistress
Circus World Awards
Programs rated with such organizations as Award Sites! earn the right to display a banner with a rating ranging from 1-5 with 5 being the highest. These ratings are given by seasoned award veterans, called rating panel members, who recognize the worth of an award by the way the award program is presented.
None of the highly rated award programs started at the top but instead worked their way up the ladder by proving they were serious about presenting awards. And these select individuals (RPM) know their stuff when it comes to ratings. The higher the rating, the better qualified the award presenter is.
One of the best ways to distinguish a top notch award program is by the stated criteria on site. Top-rated award programs will either meet or exceed their own criteria. If a program clearly states there should be no "horizontal scrollbar at 800x600 resolution," the resident award program should comply with the same criteria point. Breaking one's own criteria is a big no-no in the awards community.
Remember being a child opening the presents at Christmas time and thinking the best presents were the biggest ones, only to be disappointed. Same thing goes for award graphics ... big is not always better. The better quality award programs will have good looking, reasonably sized graphics with no pixelated edges. Award Sites! suggest less than 20k and CEM/CEMA recommends pixel size no larger than 200x200.
Another characteristic of an excellent award program is whether or not it is kept current. The best way to confirm this is by checking out the winners' page to see if dates are listed by the winning site.
I could go on and on but perhaps the best way to distinguish a quality program is to do what I did when I started with the award scene. Surf around and become familiar with award programs. It won't take you long to learn who is serious and who is not.
Join some of the forums located at Award Sites! and Awardsville. You will find an abundant amount of information and answers to almost every question imaginable when it comes to award programs. You can post questions at both forums and never have to wait long for an answer.
Jim Docherty, Webmaster
Red Stag Awards
A quick search in either Lycos or Google using the term "web awards" will return more than two million related sites. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these are not worth even a glance. So how can you tell when you are faced with a quality program?
While certainly not a prerequisite, most award programs of value have themselves taken the time and effort to be judged. Rated award programs represent a global effort to improve the standards of judging quality on the Web. These programs have undergone significant scrutiny by various organizations to earn the ratings they hold.
Each rating organization maintains a unique set of criteria and rating designation, usually numeric. Award-givers voluntarily subject their awards to this scrutiny and must display the rating in a prominent location on their site.
Generally speaking, the higher rated programs are more difficult to win. However most have established a standard scoring and judging system by which all sites are evaluated equally.
Judges have had substantial experience in evaluating applicant sites, and a Code of Ethics declaration may also be present to warrant a fair evaluation. Many programs also offer tips and tutorials to improve applicants' efforts at development and design, and ultimately their chance at being awarded.
These programs are not for the casual award hunter. Requirements are strict and the application process is often arduous, many requiring verification that the rules have been read. They also may offer a self-evaluation area to help predict your success based on the guidelines.
In the final analysis, high quality awards endeavor to improve the Web experience by rewarding true excellence, unlike others that are free for the taking.
Luke Wright, Webmaster
LTW Site Sensation Awards (site closed)
Recognising a high-quality award program is not straight-forward, as you cannot rely on one single factor.
You cannot, for example, look solely at its award index ratings if it is a member of one or more of them, although that can be a useful "rule-of-thumb". Indeed, there are many lower-rated or unrated award programs that are just as prestigious as the higher-rated programs; however generally you will find more high-quality sites that are highly rated — and the reverse is also true.
I find many important virtues, that are common to most award programs, I consider to be of high quality.
In the area of qualifying criteria, well structured, carefully explained and fully accounted for. Consistent and credible decisions regarding recipients of its awards help, as it gives an indication that a possible applicant's site is more likely to be treated the same way. A high quality site design also adds an air of professionalism and credibility to the site, which in turn reflects itself upon the program — resulting in a higher perceived quality of the program.
Most of these virtues have one underlying idea: that the prospective applicant feels that they know exactly what is going to happen if and when they submit their site to the program owner for review. Between the lines of the site text, they read the careful attention to detail that the program owner has placed into the site. Such sites can't help but scream out quality.
www.website-awards.net
www.website-awards.net/answers/query002a.htm