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It's easy to make sure your Web site gets the recognition it deserves. Mark Newman explains how to win accolades for your pages. One of the best ways of attracting attention for your Web site, and encouraging visitors to keep returning is to show them that you're committed to providing a quality service. One of the best ways to do this is to win some awards for your site. Contrary to popular opinion this needn't be difficult or time-consuming. It can take just minutes. Begin by deciding what type of awards you want to win. There are literally thousands up for grabs and these range from the excellent Star Site Award (www.starsiteaward.com) to the humble Ariana's Award. You can wade through scores of listings at search engines like Altavista and Google, but a far simpler method is to visit an awards directory like the excellent Award Sites (www.awardsites.com). It lists more than 1.700 awards and rates them individually to help Webmasters learn more about their overall quality, criteria and rules. Furthermore, you can also see the award logo that you're bidding for. See our table over the page top 12 most sought-after awards. Catching the judge's eye Here's how to get stared. It might sound obvious, but to win an award need to apply for it. With many millions of Web sites out there, reviewers are not going to visit your site unless they're told about it. Don Chisholm of Website Awards (http://www.website-awards.net) recommends that you start by "preparing a description of your site and saving it as a text file. Better still, prepare three descriptions - short, medium and long - then paste the short description into forms, when brevity is requested, and use the long one for email applications. Paste the medium description into forms when brevity is not requested". He continues: ?Your description is critical because it creates an impression in the mind of the reviewer. A compelling description creates a favorable impression. Many award sites receive hundreds of applications each week, and the reviewers don't have to visit every site. Forced to be selective, they follow the links in the applications that created a favorable impression. A well created, interesting description will get you more reviews!? It may be time-consuming but it's very important that you carefully study the criteria for every award you want to apply for. Don't waste your time by applying for those that aren't relevant. So if you have personal site don't apply for commercial site awards and also check whether the award you want is subject specific (say football only). Most award sites have a short form that you must either fill out or send by email. With these, pay special attention to the maximum word counts and don't exceed them. Chisholm suggests you take a few minutes to look around the site before applying for the award. "If possible, find out the name of the reviewer. Use the name of the reviewer in the application and mention the name of the award you're applying for. This gives your application a personal touch. Most reviewers prefer to receive personalized applications." Award winning content and design To avoid disappointment you should ask yourself "Do I really deserve an award?", before applying for dozens of the things. While awards are generally split into two categories - design and content - it doesn't hurt if your site excels in both. Evaluate your site. Your pages must, for example have a clear purpose and every element of your site should contribute to that purpose. Remove any elements that contribute nothing. Excellent content is essential. Make sure yours is well written, concise, accurate and frequently updated. Also remember that it all should be useful for the intended audience and sensibly organized. Sites with sexual, racial, sexist violent or abusive content are rarely considered for awards. To get free, regularly updated for your site, see Bring me Hits (www.bringmehits.com) Good graphics are vital for your sites presentation. Keep the use of clipart to a minimum and use original graphics wherever possible. Ensure they're clear and sharp and make sure they are always relevant to the content of each web page. Avoid excessive use of bevels, drop shadows and animations and also try to use the "height" and "width" attributes in your <img> tags to reduce the loading time. Above all, though, optimize your site's graphics to reduce their loading time. The file size of most graphics can be reduced by 30% to 50% or more by using tools such as GIF Wizard (www.gifwizard.com) or JPEG wizard (www.jpegwizard.com). Crisp Design Award winning websites will have a layout that's pleasing to the eye and a consistent design across all pages. It will be well organized, logical and easy-to-navigate. Establish a color scheme for your site and keep the amount of colors to a minimum. Don't try to cram your entire site into the first page - keep it short. Break large areas of text into smaller paragraphs with subheadings to make it easier to read. Avoid using backgrounds that makes it difficult to read the text. Keep ad banners to an absolute minimum. If you use music on your site, there should be an easy way to turn it off. An award-winning site should also be easy to navigate and visitors should know where they are in the site at all times. If you use an image map, or a menu consisting of graphical links, you should have a text version as well. Navigation should be intuitive and user friendly. Provide more than one menu on longer pages, unless you're using frames. Missing graphics and broken links, especially internal links, should be avoided at all costs. You should also remember to provide a "Back to Top" at the bottom of longer pages. Proof read all your pages, and then proof read them again. Check for grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Finally, check your HTML with validators such as the W3C HTML validation services (http://validator.w3.org) and Doctor HTML (www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML). Also check your links at NetMechanic (www.netmechanic.com) and LinkAlarm (www.linkalarm.com), then test your site with different screen resolutions, different browsers and different modem speed connections. Use the free services at Web Site Garage (www.websitegarage.com) or Bobby (www.east.org/bobby). And the Winner is? Within a matter of days you should hear back from the sites you've applied for (though some of the most popular awards take longer). If you?ve followed the advice here, you should hopefully receive good news. Once you've been awarded a few choice gongs, don't slow down the front page of your site by plastering the award logos all over it. Create a separate page instead and show off the images there. Now it's time to bask in your glory! Top 12 Illustrious website awards
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