Comments on: The Irish Web Awards – Judging Criteria

By: Frank Fullard

Frank Fullard — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:44:07 +0000

For me the criteria should be a simple one of “does it do what it says on the tin?” Have one award for best design, but overall in all other categories it should be less about design and more about effectiveness.

By: Krishna De

Krishna De — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:16:30 +0000

Could there be a special award for the most effective integration of Web 2.0 strategies around building community?

Will you also be looking at key elements of content building on Elly’s comments about ease of navigation? There would be some very specific things I’d look for in a business site.

By: elly parker

elly parker — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:20:25 +0000

Ease of navigation for a new user
Are contact details easily available?
If the site is big enough, is site map easily findable?
Accessibility should definitely be a category on it’s own – I know of several sites that GM gave up reading as the text was too small and Firefox wasn’t able to make it bigger.

By: Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » The Irish Web Awards - October 11th 2008, Dublin

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:41:46 +0000

[...] a pending announcement of the critera for the Web Awards (you can still contribute here) and the 20 or so categories for the Awards will be announced in two [...]

By: Michele

Michele — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:34:59 +0000

I think the reason so many people focussed on the validation of the Golden Spiders was because a number of past winners did not work in Firefox and other non-IE browsers.

By: keith bohanna

keith bohanna — Sun, 18 May 2008 11:30:21 +0000

For me it is important that business websites have a single focus, or at least a very limited number of objectives.
Then a measure of good and bad is the conversion rates achieved.

Quite how you build that in is beyond me – altho I guess you could ask.
1 What is your primary site objective?
2 How successful is your site in achieving that objective?
3 How do you measure it?

All the rest is flim flam

keith

By: John B

John B — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:14:38 +0000

It’s not about pretty looking code for the geeks to drool over. You wouldn’t give an award to a builder for an amazing looking house if a surveyor told you it was going to fall down in three years.

By: Mike Kelly

Mike Kelly — Sat, 17 May 2008 10:39:58 +0000

Plugins can have cross browser issues and may also then not be compatible with software updates.
Themes (especially widgets) can have numerous bugs and cross browser issues and so I feel if a blogger can work around theses issues sourcing alternative plugins and themes and workaround codes codes etc and produce a good site it should be noted perhaps.
Agree with Dennis re validation. The end user wants a quality site that is user friendly and explained in laymans terms but have a category with validation in mind.

On another note my public_html folder was hacked recently with 3 .tar files((2GB each) so I would strongly recommend upgrading to WP 2.5

By: le craic

le craic — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:06:58 +0000

I’d be in the Jazz Biscuit camp of thinking on this. Would also add that Steve Krug’s book Don’t make me think is where it’s at.

By: Dennis Deery

Dennis Deery — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:17:19 +0000

I would tend to agree with Jazz Biscuit. Most web users don’t care about validation and such. If they can read the site and get good stuff from it, it’s a successful site. So for most categories I wouldn’t worry about validation. Might be good to have an award for best validating technical entry or something, but I don’t think that should be a broad focus of the awards.

Also, I think it’d be great to have a category for “most accessible” site – that’s an area that could really use highlighting.