11 common mistakes competition organizers make on their websites
Being an editor at StudentCompetitions.com, i have gone through hundreds of academic competition websites. Some of the websites are impressive. They convey a clear competition message, excellent layout, simple navigations and are a pleasure to browse through.
Sadly, there is still a big majority of competition websites which doesn’t fall into this category. Reading through these websites gives so much frustration that it totally defines what a hair pulling experience is about.
Whether you like it or not, your competition website directly affects people’s perception of the competition itself, followed closely by sponsor interests, participating entries, media attention, and the list goes on. The point here is, a lousy website gives you more problems than you actually anticipate to have.
So work to avoid it. How to? By going through some common pitfalls of competition websites below:
1. Be contactable
No matter how information comprehensive your website is, there are bound to be areas not covered. Human overlook things ya? It is absolutely necessary to have some form of contact information posted clearly on the website, emails, phone numbers, addresses, anything. Have these information shown clearly on the frontpage or a “Contacts” tab easily found.
Try to have multiple sets of contact information catered for different purposes. It’s a lot harder for you as an organizer if all your sponsor request emails, query emails, complaint emails all arrive at info@mydomain.com. Sorting them out is a killer.
2. Keep your homepage simple
The world is already chaotic as it is. Don’t remind people of this on your homepage. Give enough information to generate interest on the first page, and that’s all. If viewers are interested in your competition, they will navigate around themselves. It is absolutely disheartening to see big and small information boxes, sponsor details, user polls, and other unnecessary details greeting users on their first visit.
Competition area/s should be clearly conveyed within 5 seconds. If the site takes a long time to load, its intentions are not clear, people are not going to stay to figure it out. Most of the time, simple homepages generate enough curiosity to play around with your website for a while.
3. Venue… Date… Time… Prize…
Yes. Solid information like these immediately tells the user whether he/she is going to stay longer on your website or not. So you have to present these information in the most straight-forward manner possible. Its very helpful if all these data are captured in one text box or sidebar, so viewers don’t have to scavenger hunt the whole sitemap for that precious submission deadline. Worse, how would you feel if the competition looks great to you in every way but only to find out 10minutes later that it isn’t available in your country?
You are not looking to frustrate your viewers. Or are you?
4. Facebook is NOT your main website
Although social media pages like the Facebook page function provides organizers a cheap and convenient way of creating awareness and hype for the competition, your main website should never be on facebook or any social media domain for that matter. Not only does it make your competition look cheap, it puts a question mark on the scale of the competition as well.
More often than not, social media websites are not catered for competition organizing. Therefore its layout is also not done with competition concept in mind. It is hazardous to try to fit into the frame when you are trying to present your competition in a prestigious and professional light. Given facebook page for example, users land at a page Wall which pushes down previous posts with new posts. Again, you expect users to scroll all the way down to find that he/she is not eligible for the competition?
To summarize, you can use facebook page as a channel of marketing. But stick to your main website. Getting a web designer isn’t that difficult.
5. Language barriers
If your competition is open to countries which practice different languages, satisfy all your target audience by tweaking your site to their language of choice with the correct grammar and spellings. Work with your site developer on this.
Granted. Google translate does work well. But its not foolproof. The last thing you want is to have your competition name translated in a funny way. How about StudentCompetitions.com seen as JuniorContests.com in another language? Nah, we are kidding. But it happens.
6. Advertise the right thing
Your competition website is about the competition, not the sponsor/advertiser. Some sponsors make unreasonable requests such as posting their elephant-sized company logo, or their company glorious history on your front page. If you are ‘lucky’ to have such a sponsor, be firm on your grounds on what you want the website to be. If necessary, dump that sponsor and look for someone else. Don’t let the dessert come before the main dish.
7. Multiple slogans
Have only 1 slogan for the competition, and stick to it. After all, you want people to relate to you with a slogan. Not a TV series of slogans. Having multiple slogan is like trying too hard to look cool. We all remember Nike as ‘Just do it’. Not ‘running pro’, not ‘comfort apparel’.
If your competitions has been held for a few years, its really OK to stick to that 1 slogan. Because that is what people remember you for.
8. An essay of submission guidelines
If people are interested to take part, they want to work on the competition with the least administrative hassle. So make your submission instructions simple, keep it in short point form. You are not grandmother, don’t write your story just yet.
9. The website is not your designer’s skill show-off stage
Don’t we all meet over-zealous web designers once in a while? They are dying to show off what they are capable of. Putting a thousand and one redundant graphic images, applications and cool 3D animations makes your site look nothing more than an online fashion show. Seriously, you really like to have a dragon flying all over the screen every time you click on the ‘About Us’ tab?
Tell your designer what you want and get them work within your frame. Below is a few design elements to stay away from:
- Blinking text and animated gifs
- Background music
- Needless use of JavaScript (pop-up windows, messages, etc.)
- Text is not readable on background
- Flash
10. Multiple competitions on a single page
Often, corporations organizes a series of competitions and place them under a tab in their company website. By doing that, its like you are saying ‘our company is more important than the competition’. While this may actually be true, but to a participant in the competition, the competition itself is indeed more important than the company.
If you have a few competitions at hand, organize them into varying categories and have a separate domain for each category of competition. It’s absolutely confusing to browse through so many competitions all at once.
11. End of competition does not mean The End
Its not the end when the competition submission deadline is over. There are still followers concerned about the outcome of the competition, some of them may not actually have participated in it at all. Keep your followers updated by constantly updating the site until the competition finally draws its curtains. Make people feel worthwhile participating in your competition. Who says there won’t be a next year?
Final Thought: User friendliness
It really doesn’t matter to how efficient your organizing team is or how glorious the competition history is. People believe only what they see, and the first showcase of a competition is its corresponding website. If you want your competition heard, it’s absolutely necessary to design your website in the most straightforward manner possible.
After all these pointers, if you still want to have a clearer idea on how to design a competition website that’s appealing to your target audience, do consult us. Because we are good at what we do.
Here are some examples of a good competition website:
Inmode International Design Competition 2011
Challenge Yourself – Challenge the World!
By Hou Guo Chen
Guochen@studentcompetitions.com
