I was thinking of this contest I tweeted and discussed with Rilla about 4 months back in April.
I’m planning a “Site Glamour” contest. It’s slightly different from the usual Site of the Month, prizes and winning criteria are different.
Every site need something interesting once in a while and seriously, I won’t consider Amour Chaleur as an interactive site at all. The usual SOTM isn’t really that interactive so I thought of something which engages the participants in discussions and other activities. A few things to note is that I’m not fond of pure voting decisions but completely removing the voting part would take away all the “fun” right? 
This is what I have plan to decide the winner:
- 20% based on my personal opinions regarding the website (layout, content, coding etc.)
- 20% based on personal opinions of 2 random real life friends of mine with no designing experience. I thought it’ll be good to let someone who doesn’t do web designing to look at a website and determine whether they like it or not. In addition, they are independent 3rd parties so their opinions will most probably be fair.
- 30% based on voting
- 30% based on their answer/discussion to a web/graphic/life related question.
I actually wanted to add more activities but I couldn’t thought of any. Any suggestions to make it more interesting and motivate others to join? 
Regarding the prize, I was thinking there could be a special illustration for the winner on top of the usual graphic award and link advertisements. Winners will be permanently listed on the winners page. =D I may do did a special icon next to the RSS link for the winner and contest page so that their link is on every page of the site.
Ivy’s suggestion gave me another idea. You know I was thinking whether to make this a bigger scale annual/semi annual “event” instead of a quarterly one. For example, there’s a few stages (with different discussions) or maybe different stages have different activities. Maybe stage 1 we have a discussion. Stage 2 could be comic/cartoon drawing (for eg.) or something else. That would something be like a talent contest except that it’s online. Of course, if it was an annual/semi annual event I think the prize would have to be more than just an illustration. Maybe a coded layout/WordPress theme?
What do you think? Tell me what would encourage you to join? I’ve love to hear your opinions and suggestions. :spin:
On a side note, I may be moving host soon due to some issues with the current host. I’ll update again about this next week.
9 August, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Hehe, that’s funny. I only thought bees would do that. It’s funny to see (and hear) them getting all angry and bang the window while buzzing like crazy.
The bird must’ve panicked, I bet. A window is like an invisible wall for little birds.
I like interactive contests and activities on websites. I think making it a “once a year”-contest or once very six months or so would make it very exclusive.
I myself can’t really think of anything to motivate or increase the interest for people to join. I advertise for my life and hope people will be interested, hehe.
Maybe, as a prize, you could do some sort of magazine-like page for the winner? You know, writing a rather flattering text about the winner and such.. I don’t know, it’d probably make me very proud to have my own page.
13 August, 2009 at 5:49 pm
It’s kind of funny how they couldn’t see their own reflection on the glass and keep “attacking” it.
A special page for the winner sounds like a good idea. Maybe a blog post just for the winner? I’ll think about it and come up with a contest page by this weekend.
9 August, 2009 at 12:28 am
I think it’s a great idea. However, I’m not sure about giving out a coded layout/WordPress theme as a prize because whoever wins the contest would probably already know how to make their own layout/theme.
13 August, 2009 at 5:51 pm
The contest wouldn’t be focus solely on graphic/designing aspect so a layout or illustration would still be a good bet in my opinion. I can’t think of any other prizes though asides from the usual advertising (links on my website) and an award for the winner to display on their website.