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Australia’s Interactive and Multimedia Industry Association (AIMIA) has announced a new award competition, for ecommerce services and websites.
Nominations have been invited in seven different categories. Entries opened on August 5th and closed on August 20th.
The seven categories are
- online banking,
- online insurance,
- online trading,
- online retail,
- online travel,
- mobile commerce and
- online application process
Entries are being welcomed at AIMIA’s web-site where the aim of the awards is said to be to “recognise excellence in eServices and highlight the leaders in Australian eCommerce.” Larger Australian ecommerce businesses, i.e. anyone with more than a million Australian monthly users, will automatically be entered in the awards competitions.But nominations are also welcome from anyone in six of the seven categories and are free of charge. (Nominations for the online application process category is only open to sites with a minimum number of visitors per month).
According to Paul McCarthy, a senior NSW govt Department of Commerce IT executive and AIMIA member, the AMBERs are intended to be the equivalent of the association’s long-run and successful awards for online and IT businesses, the so-called AMY’s.
AMBER started out as an acronym standing for applications made for broadband. But now the idea is sort of like AMBER is the sister to AMY…But the AMBER’s are different from the AMY’s because the AMY’s are judged by an industry panel. This is a voice of the customer type of award, based on both customer perceptions and user experience.”
A paper detailing the methodology being used to judge the AMBER awards can be downloaded from the AIMIA web-site, and it reveals a two stage process.
In stage one an online survey conducted by Sydney market researchers, Brandmanagement / Coredata will invite web-surfers to vote on all the websites nominated in each category.
The top 5 will go through to a second stage, where they’ll be evaluated for usability by another Sydney company, Access Testing.
The winners will be determined by an as yet unrevealed combination of their usability rating and their online survey ranking.
Finalists will be identified in late September in an online banking publication and winners will be announced at a dinner in Sydney on October 15th.
Andrew Inwood, principal of Brandmanagement and its subsidiary company, Coredata, told eCommerce Report that he was providing services to AIMIA gratis, and that some details were still to be worked out. For example, he was uncertain as to how the competition judges will decide whether a business or service already has one million users per month and therefore will be entered automatically.
He said that the estimate would not be based on the data generated by his Coredata business and its claimed 85,000 person online user panel. Inwood was also unable to identify who would make up the expert panel that will be designing the online survey. Inwood said that Coredata is well-known as a key service provider to News Digital Media.
As this story was being prepared for publication, a number of AMBER sponsorships are still available.
Four platinum sponsorships are being offered at $9000 each, whilst seven gold sponsorships are available from the award promoters at onlinebankingmedia (one for each award category) at $6500.
To nominate your ecommerce service for the AMBER awards go to
www.aimia.com.au/i-cms?page=1.35.6049.6052.6054
For more information about the awards in general go to
www.aimia.com.au/i-cms?page=6049
