The Website Award

[user0]

What exactly do website judges look for in a "winning website"? I've come up with a short list of points but, I don't know if they are all real/legitimate points. Feedback is appreciated.

- Current year content
- past year content
- visual appeal
- ease of access to specific elements through the website (i.e. get to any page with 3 clicks)
- media including photos, videos, and sound
- back end coding
- structure of website
- browser compatibility
- ease of maintaining the website (i.e. dynamic content? or hard coded html?)
- validation at w3? (http://validator.w3.org )?

am I missing anything?

[Vikesrock]

The website criteria and grading rubric can be found here:

http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...20Criteria.pdf

[rsisk]

Some things that can be done to improve a web site:

Make sure you link to First content like manuals. Don't copy them to your site and link to your copy.

Have a properly displayed FIRST logo on your homepage that links to First.

Make sure external links open in a new window

Content to help other teams should be home grown, not just links to other sites. Make a helpful video, or a checklist of what to take to the competition. But make it yourself.

[Akash Rastogi]

Progress of the build season. See team 2775's site for a good example.http://libertyrobotics.com/

[BandChick]

There's a speech about this I give every year...

Everyone keeps neglecting a MAJOR part of FIRST websites.
THEY TELL YOU WHAT JUDGES WANT TO SEE.
The criteria/grading sheet that's included in the Website Award pdf is the SAME sheet that the judges use to evaluate your websites.

As a 5-year website judge, I encourage EVERY FIRST kid to do this, it makes a big difference if you just READ.

If you look at the Website Award section of the manual, they give you the grading process for the judges from last year. The outline of the award basically explains what FIRST is looking for.

The following criteria will be used to evaluate the Website Awards:

General
The ideal website is a genuine reflection of the team, its participants, spirit, and goals. It should not be just a bulletin board with information accessible via a menu. It should tell an individual story and also detail how it is part of the larger FIRST community.

Content and Design
The content (text, pictures, music, etc,) and design of a website should work together to provide a pleasing user experience. Good content with a confusing interface, or vice versa, will not be scored as highly as a site with better balance.

They want to see content, that's the key of any team website. They want the inside, human perspective of a team, and to see how this team interacts within both the FIRST community and their own local community. They want multimedia, pictures, video, flash animation is a nice bonus. They want up-to-date information, what the team is currently working on and how it's going.

To be honest, most evaluators don't care about the ease of your maintenance - though I don't know why you'd want to create something that was hard to update. Since Web 2.0 came around, dynamic interactivity is MUCH more accessible.

Yes, visual appeal, media, structure, and browser compatibility are HUGE, but only if you give me content to read inside all that. W3C is nice too, but there will be website judges out there that will have NO idea why that's important, or even, what it is. If you code to standards, that's great, but don't do it because that's what judges want to see - do it because it's good practice.

Personally, I'd rather be able to navigate to a subpage in 2 clicks (or less). General rule of thumb is provide THREE types of navigation. You can do this in an interesting way. For a site I'm working on now, our UI is a car dashboard. Our 3 types of navigation are a speedometer (with words /icons instead of numbers), a mock GPS, and a rear view mirror. From there, each subpage has 3 links. At most, it takes 2 clicks: 1 to switch sections, 2 to switch to a subpage. I think that's the most successful solution, but again, that's my personal opinion. If you WANT to do 3 clicks, I suggest providing a Site Map.

Here's what I explained to my kids when they were looking for examples of websites:

To be honest, the web criteria is more about the content of the site than the presentation of it. Looking professional and good is going to help your score, but over 50 points goes into how your site works, and what story it tells.

Here is 75's website.
They won the Website Award at the NJ Regional in 2009. http://www.roboraiders.org/

103's website approaches the award from a different level of interactivity.
http://www.cybersonics.org

Chiefdelphi has won the Website Excellence award EVERY year since 2004: http://team.chiefdelphi.com/

Some other good sites:
522: http://www.robowizards.com/
1980: http://team1980.org

This is the kind of stuff judges look for:
team success stories
appreciation and recognition of sponsors/mentors/volunteers
resources for other teams
photos of members/mentors/coaches

FIRST is also big on is letting people know about the impact its had on teams.

One of my favorite things to see is an alumni page. Unless you're a rookie team, you've had kids graduate from your group. So, what have they gone on to do/study? Are they working in science, engineering, or technology fields? It makes SUCH an impact to people in FIRST if they realize just how much progress your team is making in inspiration.

Team 1089 (my team) won the website award at the NJ Regional in 2006 and 2008. If you would like, please feel free to stop by our website and compare/contrast with ours (http://www.mercury1089.com ).

I worked with the students this year to develop a more cohesive identity, increase site interactivity, and try and create new homegrown resources. If you would like to talk to me more about what I personally think is important in a FIRST award-winning website, feel free to PM me.

I know this post is long, I'm sorry.
But I hope it was informative.
2005-2009 NYC Website Evaluator | 2006-2009 Philadelphia Website Evaluator | 2008 & 2009 NJ Website Evaluator Advisor

[KathieK]

Sara's right, this is like an open notebook test. Look at the rubric. Comply with the rubric and do it well. UPDATE YOUR SITE (it doesn't have to be completely up to the minute but don't update the homepage and have the rest of the site be from 2005! ).

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by user0

What exactly do website judges look for in a "winning website"? I've come up with a short list of points but, I don't know if they are all real/legitimate points. Feedback is appreciated.

- Current year content
- past year content
- visual appeal
- ease of access to specific elements through the website (i.e. get to any page with 3 clicks)
- media including photos, videos, and sound
- back end coding
- structure of website
- browser compatibility
- ease of maintaining the website (i.e. dynamic content? or hard coded html?)
- validation at w3? (http://validator.w3.org )?

am I missing anything?

I've found that coding practices don't really matter because I've seen websites that have terrible coding and that don't validate still win. For browser compatibility, it's safe to assume your judge will be using either Internet Explorer (hopefully not older version like IE6!!) or Firefox. Make sure your website works in at least those two.

The most important thing will be your content. Make sure it's up-to-date and fresh. Having plenty of pictures to supplement it is also helpful (makes it easier to read). Having a large media gallery is also nice as well. My site has been success in Michigan and we have a MONSTER-sized media gallery (3000+ pictures, 50+ videos). Organization and navigation is also important. Like you said, it should take no more than 3 clicks to get to important content.

Originally Posted by BandChick

Team 1089 (my team) won the website award at the NJ Regional in 2006 and 2008. If you would like, please feel free to stop by our website and compare/contrast with ours (http://www.mercury1089.com ).

Great post, it's very informative and I've got it bookmarked now.

However, that being said, I'm very suprised to see Website Evaluator promoting the use of tables in a layout (http://www.mercury1089.com and your profile website). Properly designed modern websites use tables strictly for tabular data, not the layout. CSS and div tags should be used to structure the layout because tables used for layout is a big no-no in the world of web design.

I design stock templates for ThemeForest.net and they don't even accept submissions that use tables for the layout.

[Elgin Clock]

::hint::
Anyone can sign up to be a website evaluator, so if you REALLY want to see the judging criteria from a judges standpoint, sign up to judge websites at a regional event in VIMS.
(A little inside info never hurt anyone)
It's all done remotely, and you don't even have to show up to a regional to do it.
(I judged the some of the Washington DC Regional teams' websites this year)

Also, a lot of the points are based on things that are missing, but are simple to include
(A simple link to FIRST's website on the homepage is a simple thing to have, yet many teams did not even have that )

Also, any website that is being judged this year will be given feedback to the team from the judges.
FIRST has implimented it necesarry to leave comments when you are a judge about the good or the bad, anything really.
I used mine to praise some awesome features or unique qualities, or comment on anything I saw that violated the rules.
You will get both positive & negative comments in your feedback this year!
Learn from the feedback!

[ChrisMix]

I hate that teams have to wait until after ATL to find out if they even so much as got the excellence award.

[Jimmy Nichols]

From the perspective of another Website judge. After the deadline don't take your website down. I'm judging Pittsburgh and one of the teams had a glitch and had to take their site down. Not sure what the issue was, could have been a major one. But many of judges were not able to judge their site because of this.

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Nichols

From the perspective of another Website judge. After the deadline don't take your website down. I'm judging Pittsburgh and one of the teams had a glitch and had to take their site down. Not sure what the issue was, could have been a major one. But many of judges were not able to judge their site because of this.

Team websites should be up all year in my opinion, not just for a couple months so it can win an award.

[BandChick]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Also, any website that is being judged this year will be given feedback to the team from the judges.
FIRST has implimented it necesarry to leave comments when you are a judge about the good or the bad, anything really.
I used mine to praise some awesome features or unique qualities, or comment on anything I saw that violated the rules.
You will get both positive & negative comments in your feedback this year!
Learn from the feedback!

Okay, I'm not going to lie, that's not entirely true.
YES, evaluators have to leave comments with their scores, NO you do not have to receive them. It depends on the Website Evaluator Advisor for your regional whether you get comments or not.

Even I'm guilty of that. Last year I didn't give my teams their comments, but this year I created a spreadsheet and made sure everyone who submitted got one.

My suggestion: If you want comments (and I don't know why you wouldn't, constructive criticism is the best way to improve), make sure your regional planning committee KNOWS. That way they can make sure your Web Advisor knows and does whatever he/she can do to provide them.

[KathieK]

Actually, Sara, it is not up to the Advisor to give the feedback. If a team wishes to see feedback they must request it from FIRST. Contact frcteams@usfirst.org and request feedback for your team's website.

[BandChick]

Originally Posted by RyanCesiel

However, that being said, I'm very suprised to see Website Evaluator promoting the use of tables in a layout

Agreed Ryan. I'm trying to branch out into more DIV tags with CSS, but when I learned to code it was just post-frames and into tables for HTML with some CSS. Give me some time! XD

[RyanCesiel]

Originally Posted by BandChick

Agreed Ryan. I'm trying to branch out into more DIV tags with CSS, but when I learned to code it was just post-frames and into tables for HTML with some CSS. Give me some time! XD

Okay, sounds good. Hope I wasn't too harsh.