Want to Win a Web Award?

If you have ever wondered how web experts would view your web site or blog, here is a great way to get some feedback and potentially receive some valuable recognition for your efforts...

The US-based Web Marketing Association has just announced it's 2008 call for entries to its annual WebAward Competition, with the deadline for entry being 31 May. You do not need to be a US-based company to enter. The entry costs US$195 (or US$99 for non-profits), but the sweeteners are:

(1) There are 96 (!) categories in which they typically announce several winners per category; and

(2) Every site entered receives rankings (and sometimes valuable judges' comments) across different selection criteria, so you can see just how you are doing and get some focus on how best to improve your site.

Last year, in our first year online, we entered ExpatWomen.com just to get some feedback from what we saw as 'real' web experts. We ended up winning (which they noted was primarily due to our content, rather than any super-interactive feature on our site) a Standard of Excellence award in our Online Community category.

This award was undeniably nice to show our sponsors and supporters, but more useful to us were the scores, rankings and two pages of extremely valuable feedback from their volunteer judges. That alone was well-worth the price of entry. (We will not be entering this year, but that is because we still have such great feedback to work on from last year.)

Now, in case you are wondering if they hand out awards to 'just anyone'... here is the list of the top 12 winners last year (note that Disney's name is mentioned twice), and here is the MyCoke site (aka another big name, Coca-Cola) that won last year in the Online Community category.

After approving the (exactly) 444 Expat Women Blogs on our site, I know that some of you have some really fabulous sites and blogs - so I hope some of you enter and win - then be sure to tell us, so we can showcase your winning blog here on our blog.

Good luck Everyone!
Andrea.