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When is an Award a Reward?

Like so many designers, one avenue we've explored heavily while promoting our designs and our client designs is that of the web award. You might not have caught this particular bug yet, or perhaps you have already felt that rush upon receiving an email notice that you've won an award. Everyone likes to get a pat on the back and web awards are exactly that. A pat on the back. Someone has noticed your work and thinks your site is worthy of mention on theirs!

Feverishly you haul out your favorite html editor and try to integrate your new award icon into your website. STOP! Lets talk about it first.

In theory an award site lists those sites they feel are worthy of mention, and they give the webmaster a small image to display on their website to indicate they have won the award. People will visit the award website and see their listing, then visit your site. Thus drawing additional traffic to the site. Mind you, even the best award sites will generate traffic spikes. Its very rare that an award will result in a steady increase in traffic.

The duration of the traffic spike can usually be measured as the interval during which your listing is featured in their primary location. If an award site updates daily, expect the spike to last only a few days, weekly will last a week or two and so on.

The reality is that most award sites aren't going to bring you additional traffic, and in fact the awards themselves can hurt your site. In many cases the idea (although unspoken) is to draw traffic from your site to the award site!

There are several primary issues here which you must consider before you try to submit your site to an award web site.

Image. You’re selling a product or service via the net. One of the purposes of your site is to portray an image of competent professionalism. The image you portray to the net world is critically important, you want your clients to feel comfortable knowing they are dealing with someone that is an expert in their field of expertise. So what does it say about you when that prospective customer sees you’ve been given "Big Joe's Kick Butt web award"?

First off you need to consider the source of the award. At Northern Webs we have received more awards than we can count, but only a select few ever make it online. Why is that? Award Sites from places like geocities.com, angelfire.com or tripod.com are only transitory at best. Will the award site still be running a year from now? With the search engines now limiting submissions from most free webspace servers, how much traffic can these sites really generate for you? Generally domain level sites have a much better chance of surviving than the sites on the free servers. You don't want to find out you have a dead link because some visitor tried to leave your site by clicking on an icon.

Is the award site just handing out awards, or are they marketing some sort of service? Some directory systems give out awards, i.e. Yahoo's Daily Pick. These usually can be trusted, but other companies are handing out awards solely as a mechanism to drive traffic their way. Not to bring you traffic.

Consider how you learned you had been awarded. Recently we received notice from an e-mall telling us about a web award we had won. Since we run multiple sub-sites within our domain we immediately became suspicious when they didn't list the url which won the award. Additionally after telling us we won their award they immediately launched into a sales pitch for advertising on their mall. Upon visiting their site we discovered that they didn't even have a place which listed the winners of their own award! Obviously that's one award which will never see the light of day on the northernwebs.com domain.

So consider the source carefully, visit the website giving the award. See if its up to your standards. Web awards can and should work in reverse. Not only are they giving you an award, but you should be asking yourself if its a site you would feel good about having a link on!

The second issue which needs to be dealt with also deals with image, but from a different angle. You've spent weeks, or perhaps months, perfecting your website, the colors are balanced. The text is perfect, the images crisp and clear. And now you're going to try to figure out where you can break your design by placing an image on it which wasn't designed for your site?

If you must put these images online, put them on a page by themselves, this way you will not have to worry too much about how they affect an existing layout. This has an added effect of putting these obscure images and the corresponding links off to a lesser traveled page.

We've spent the last few minutes bashing awards pretty badly, but the fact is that some awards can be rewards!

Considering the size of the Internet and the number of sites out there, its all a matter of weeding out the chaff to get to the wheat, and there is plenty of wheat out there to be found!

There are a few select awards which can and do result in massive traffic spikes to a site. A true measure of an web award can be summed up by the potential traffic they bring in. For example our Beginners' Central was named as one of USA Today's hotsites back in Sept 98. That little mention resulted in a brief surge in traffic amounting to nearly 400% over its normal traffic levels. We didn't even learn about the award until we examined our own log files and noted the unusual traffic increase.

Award sites which are part of a publications sites, such as PC Magazine, or USA Today, or even NetGuide Magazine can result in massive traffic spikes. Well established award sites like Yahoo's Weekly Pick, or ProjectCool can also earn considerable traffic for a brief duration. But these are the elitist award sites. Earning one of these is extremely rewarding, and exceedingly difficult.

More modest award sites can still be responsible for nice gains in traffic. For example Starting Points Hotsite, or Jayde's Gold Diamond or Dr. Webster, can bring your site 50% to 100% traffic bursts.

Mind you, in the case of Starting Point, Jayde and Dr. Webster, we're talking about well established and heavily traveled systems.

Receiving an award can be a very nice feeling, but temper your feeling with an understanding of the many motivations driving these sites.

Award Websites:

Jayde Online Directory http://www.jayde.com/index.html

Project Cool http://www.projectcool.com/sightings/

USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/

Starting Point http://www.stpt.com/

Dr Webster http://www.drwebster.com/

Yahoo's Weekly Picks http://www.yahoo.com/picks/

PC Magazine's Top 100 picks http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/web100/

Founded in the fall of 1994 to help bring internet services to businesses in Northern Idaho, Northern Webs has grown far beyond the confines of its local area. Our clientele and subscribers now span more than 40 countries. During the years, Northern Webs has concentrated on building a reputation of providing quality designs and a specialization in search engine technologies. With favorable commentary from National publications, computer related magazines, and even the occasional broadcast we have strived to be more than just another design company. Currently our Beginners Central is being distributed on CD rom worldwide by the UN Commision on Technology. Northern Webs also owns and maintains Meta Medic, the net's oldest Meta Tag validator. Over 4000 unique urls are tested daily by Meta Medic. We are a little company, but we produce big results. http://www.northernwebs.com