The Philippine Blog Awards Site Needs Work

Posted on April 15th, 2008. Written by Rico.

Update: An anonymous reader sent us an email, telling us that the organizers have opened nominations. But he also expressed frustration: “Now they tell us! I wasn’t sure of when the nomination would start or end, so I nominated a blog a few days ago. So now I’m supposed to renominate?”

Visually, we find nothing wrong with the website of The Philippine Blog Awards, now on its second year. But visitors looking for information may be a bit confused. Continue to see what our usability expert had to say.

“I can’t immediately find the information people usually look for concerning awards, like ‘When is the awarding?’ I know the date hasn’t been set yet, but they could’ve least made an estimate obvious on the main page.
“How exactly do I nominate a blog? That also wasn’t immediately clear. I found a link to “Nomination Process” on a menu, but that led to a page detailing the nomination process. I wanted to actually nominate someone.” (Editor’s note: the nomination forms are here, here, and here)
“Lastly, the awards up for grabs isn’t obvious to new visitors. That’s all detailed here, here, and here. But again, they’re not immediately available to people visiting for the first time.”

Our usability expert, who makes a living from making websites easier to navigate, understand and process, had one more point: “I know it’s the Philippine Blog Awards, but maybe the organizers shouldn’t have relied on a blog to share information? That’s fine for people who’ve been following the website from the beginning. But again, how do we make information easily available to new visitors?”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is filed under Editorial, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Rico

Rico Mossesgeld is the founding editor of Technograph. Learn more about him at rico.mossesgeld.com/about.

Nag aasar ka ba Rico?

Nag aasar ka ba Rico? Ikaw kaya mag design?
JJ

Lolol-ulol, sino ka ba?!
http://lightchasersphotography.com/ Luis Cruz

I’m no usability expert, but I still have something to say. Aside from the fact that there is no deadline or nomination schedule listed on the site, I just found one big problem with the nomination process.

It asks a few too many questions.

Yes, I know they’d like to automate most of the processes, but most readers might not be savvy enough to know when a blog started, or even what the email address of the blogger is.

Take for example, what a regular (i.e. not really a techie) user will have to go through to nominate Technogra.ph for the awards:
- Click on the Monthly Archives for November 2007 and click on the previous link several times to find the first post. This gives a rough idea of when the blog was established.
- Wonder who in the world writes for Technogra.ph when there are no author profiles immediately available. At this point many might give up and decide not to nominate Technogra.ph anymore.
- On top of this, wonder what email to put on the nomination form. Technogra.ph has a contact form – that way you don’t have to reveal your email address to the world. Even if the user did know the address, they would still wonder… what in the world gives them the right to submit somebody else’s email address to another site? At this point, many users will either not care and submit anyway, or not bother to nominate.
- If they still care, they might look for an email address or a contact form on the PBA site, fail to find one, then decide to rant on another site (that has posted something about the said nomination process) about how difficult it is to nominate a blog.
http://technogra.ph Technograph

You make very good points Elber. The process as outlined by you can be very daunting for the first-time visitor. Do the organizers want to limit this nomination process to only those who are net-savvy and patient enough to browse through everything?

Unfortunately, if the first comment of this post is any indicator, then at least one of the people involved in the Philippine Blog Awards isn’t open to constructive criticism.
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