Australia's Interactive and Multi-Media Association (AIMIA) has announced a new awards competition for ecommerce and online services.
The awards are to be known as the AMBERS. Entry is free and larger companies, with more than 1 million users a month, will be entered automatically.
Entries close on August 20 so make sure you get your site or service entered.
If you can't find the link at the AIMIA web-site or via a Google search you can find it at the foot of my eCommerce Report story.
The awards, which are being promoted in partnership with publishers - Online Banking Media -
are in seven categories.
They include best online banking site, best online insurance, best only travel site, best online retail, best mobile commerce service and best online application process.
AIMIA's awards for web-sites, the AMY's, are now well-established and highly regarded in the web design and hosting industries.
So this new award is hoped to do the same for ecommerce.
Thats probably unlikely, at least in the first year.
For starters, AIMIA has relatively little presence in the ecommerce sector, and it is doubtful if many online retailers or online travel businesses see it as very relevant.
The online travel sector, in particular, is already well served by a large annual conference event - No Vacancy - and associated online travel publication - Travel Trends produced by Martin Kelly.
Likewise the online retail sector is gathering next week in big numbers at the Online Retailer event in Sydney.
Of course, with onlinebanking media's solid presence in the finance sector, the online banking site and online insurance site awards will be keenly contested and worth having.
But I'm not so sure about the rest.
Likeiwse I'm not so sure about the proposed judging of the awards which is in two parts.
In the first part an online survey is going to find which sites the online surfers pick as the top 5 sites in each category.
The survey is to be conducted by a Sydney based company - Brandmanagement, or, more accurately, its wholly owned subsidiary - Coredata.
In the second stage of the award judging, the top five are going to be evaluated by another Sydney company -Access Testing - for usability.
The winners will be determined by some weighted combination of the results in the two stages.
The final 5 at the end of stage one will be announced in an onlinebankingmedia publication, and the winners will be unveiled at a dinner in Sydney on October 15th.
Of course the whole awards initaitive is a commercial venture for those involved.
There are four platinum sponsorships being offered for the awards at $9000 each, and 6 gold sponsorships at $6500 each.
If all the sponsorhips are sold that'll makes $72,000 in revenues for the awards, most, if not all of which is belived to be going to AIMIA.
Certainly Brandmanagement and Access Testing are beleived to be providing their services gratis. And as dinner tickets are priced at $199 each it is hard to believe that the awards dinners is not going to be a profit maker too.
Anyway, eCommerce Report is considering whether we should inject some of our expertise into these awards to make them more credible.
Let me know how we could be remunerated for donig so and why these awards might be worth supporting.
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