Judging
The AWA judging process is simple and thorough, performed by some of the industry’s leading experts.
Express your interest
Process
Australian Web Awards entries are assessed using a combination of ‘judging disciplines’, such a content or development, and ‘judging criteria’ which is a scale from 1 to 5. Each site is reviewed and judged by multiple judges.
Judging disciplines
Each entry will be judged in up to* five disciplines, and they are:
- Design
- Development
- User experience
- Content
- Accessibility.
*Depending on the category – if it’s a social campaign or SEO – an entry may not need all five disciplines.
Judging criteria
Each judging discipline contains criteria based on a simple 1 to 5 scale. Here’s how that works:
- 1 is the minimum level accepted – if an entry doesn’t get at least a 1 for each discipline it won’t qualify for the awards.
- 3 is the midpoint – this is where an entry would need to be to be considered as a finalist for an awards.
- 5 is considered excellence – an entry that goes above and beyond and is outstanding (ideally what look to award in each category).
Each entry will be judged on its performance against the criteria and awarded points in each discipline to accrue a combined score. As an example, if there are 5 disciplines, an entry could have a total score between 5 and 25.
Case Study: Accessibility
Here is a sample of the specific questions a judge might ask to determine how many points to award an entry in the judging discipline of Accessibility:
- 1 point: ‘Have you considered the basics of web accessibility, and can you demonstrate at least five WCAG criteria that have been met?’
- 3 points: ‘Have you reached WCAG AA compliance, if not why not?’
- 5 points: ‘Have you gone above and beyond to consider a variety of users’ abilities and situations, and can you demonstrate how this has contributed to the overall user experience?’.
Judges

Daniel Zuccon
Daniel has over 20 years of experience within the web industry and is a co-founder of SEO agency, Optimising.com.au. Having been an AWA judge for the past few years, Daniel is proud to support and celebrate the most innovative Australian websites.

Steven Jaenke
Steve Jaenke has been involved in the digital world for over 2 decades. Seeing the power of SEO early in the market he pivoted his business to focus on assisting SME to understand and leverage the power of Google. He was a finalist in the 2021 Global Search Awards, and a judge for the Australian Web Awards awards.

Eddy Eau
Eddy found Square18.com.au in 2004. He is currently the Managing Director of Square18.com.au and is also the Brand Ambassador for a WA building materials supplier. Under his leadership, Eddy and his team holds a proven track of records on consulting, designing, building many successful online stores in WA, digital value chain automated websites and Application, and strengthening many clients search market share nationwide.

Tracy Sheen
Tracy Sheen is the author of “The End of Technophobia” winner of The Australian Business Book of the Year Awards in 2021 and Best Technology Book. Recognised as a Certified Practicing Marketer (CPM) through the Australian Marketing Institute (AMI), she is a speaker, commentator, and small business digital coach. Tracy has over 30 years experience in marketing, sales & small business technology.

Michael Bollig
Meet our judges! Michael is a creator of digital experiences, awarded sites & apps. He is Senior Digital and Experience Design Consultant at Empired Ltd, mainly for enterprise, retail and government customers. He’s obsessed with UX, inclusive design, product, strategy and learning.

Chris Burke
Chris Burke is a senior digital consultant with a wealth of experience finding innovative outcomes for clients across various sectors, including banking, retail, NFP, government, education, health and startups. Chris takes a holistic approach to digital product development, encompassing the areas of discovery, strategy, marketing, UX and accessibility.

Sarah Jee Watson
Meet our Judges! Sarah is a business minded user advocate, and works as a UX Consultant & UI Designer.

Bob Croft
Bob is the owner of the digital marketing agency EZMarketing Australia. He had over 10 years of experience in digital marketing. He and his team have designed and developed the websites for a variety of clients as well as assisted on accessibility testing, SEO and UX improvement projects.
He is passionate about what he’s doing and he delivers above and beyond his clients’ expectations.

Sharon Latour
An experienced marketing professional, board consultant – I founded Sydney-based award-winning agency Marketing Bee. We specialise in powerful emerging digital strategies for retail products that connect with customers and grow business whilst working closely with brand and marketing managers.

Amanda Mace
Amanda Mace is AbleDocs’ Vice President for Australasia. She’s also one of only two Australian-based W3C evangelists and the W3C Australian Western Region office manager.
Amanda is a leader in web accessibility, and has co-authored a book chapter for the textbook, “Web Accessibility A Foundation for Research.

Michael Thomas
Head of Development at Numeropro / Kidsoft.
Ex-Principal Engineer at WeAreFlio.

Nic Gordon
Nic is an experienced full stack web developer with a penchant for projects that benefit society. For more than a decade he has been operating out of Melbourne, breathing life into large projects in his capacity as technology lead at Inlight. Recently, Nic has moved to HTHA where he continues to produce quality mobile and web applications.

Jarrad Langdon
Jarrad has always had an interest in computers and design. When he was offered an apprenticeship at a local design firm he keenly embraced the opportunity presented to him. After completing several TAFE courses Jarrad’s talents have resulted in success both locally and internationally. The pinnacle of this success was his gold medal in Website Design at the WorldSkills International Competition, Helsinki 2005.

Pamela Alison Meagher
Pamela, a Certified Practising Marketer, is an award-winning digital marketing strategist. She has delivered results for over 600 local and global products/services; gaining award recognition for content development, website strategy, and innovative digital solutions.
Pamela’s industry leadership includes mentoring for the Australian Marketing Institute and guest lecturing at Swinburne University. In addition, she has contributed as an SEO Meetup Organiser, Australian Marketing Institute Award Judge, and Australian Web Awards Judge.

Ryan Djurovich
Ryan Djurovich is passionate about the web, starting his career as a teenager building a new Open Source CMS and running his own web dev business. He later joined Melbourne-based digital agency Evolution 7, where he worked across a range of web dev and e-commerce projects. His passion for software engineering led him to San Francisco for 3½ years, where he joined Cloudflare, helping to build a better internet. After moving home to Melbourne, Ryan worked at Xero, leading their DevOps engineering teams. In May, Ryan starts his new role as CTO at Flippa, where he’ll help the team build and scale their marketplace for buying and selling online businesses.

Jason Arnold
Jason has spent over 16 years in the digital industry, championing user experience across a number of different roles while working on digital solutions for well-known brands like Toyota, Subaru, Caltex, the University of Sydney, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Virgin Money, Sanofi, and government clients across NSW and Queensland.
He has a unique skillset based on his experience as a developer, producer, technical manager, project manager, account manager, and user experience consultant. Jason’s passion for delivering the simplest and most elegant experience and focusing on the human experience coupled with his diverse digital experience, ensures that all stakeholders are engaged with and considered in any project outcome, using proven user research and usability techniques to find and refine the best solution.

Angela Craft
Angela is a Product Designer at Coles Supermarkets and has experience spanning across boutique, consulting and in-house environments.
Having worked for some of Australia’s leading brands, Angela is passionate about celebrating digital experiences that utilises technology to help end users work smarter.

Matthew James Oxlade
Matt has a lengthy history with digital solutions and strategies, most notably with Brisbane City Council during their infancy with social media during times of natural disaster, with the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games rolling out the first ever Commonwealth Games mobile messaging solution and overseeing the digital team’s social media management of 608,000 subscribers and 69.2 million impressions, and delivered a platform for Urban Utilities which saved 1,000 hours annually for service crews and achieved a 98% satisfaction rating for residential users.

Doyle Buehler
Doyle Buehler is a world authority on digital transformation, a best-selling author, podcaster, teacher and entrepreneur. He has consulted, coached, taught and inspired many in the areas of digital leadership, online marketing, social selling, social media marketing & digital strategy.
He designs, develops & deploys high-performing digital foundations for businesses to transform how they deliver their value in this disruptive, digital economy.
Doyle plays at the intersections of entrepreneurship and digital innovation, and has spent the past 20 years in the business world with multiple businesses and startups from around the world. He positions digital leaders to think in a clearer, logical, more strategic manner for evolving & growing their business.

Colleen Gao
Colleen is Head of Growth at Askable, Australia’s fastest growing UX testing participant recruitment platform

Ray Kwong
Ray is a seasoned UX designer with experience across digital and advertising agencies and now specialised in Health-tech & AI, aiming to help men detect cancer early and save lives.

Abdul Hafiz
Abdul Hafiz is the founder of Purplesoft, a boutique digital marketing agency that focuses on increasing online visibility, traffic, conversion, and retention for businesses of all sizes. With over 10 years of experience in digital and experiential marketing, Abdul Hafiz has helped business owners streamline their marketing strategies to get more eyeballs on their content and generate more sales. From Fish n chips to Sigma Healthcare- a leading network of independent and franchised pharmacies, Abdul has worked on filling the missing puzzle piece when it comes to marketing products and services for his clients.

Fiona MacPherson
Fiona has over 10 years of experience in User Experience and Human Centred Design. She has worked in Federal Government and in Technology Consultancy Companies and loves working with businesses of all sizes to design and deliver user friendly digital products and experiences. She is a founding member of the Brisbane Global Service Design Jam & can often be found at local meetups and events.

Simon Wong
Simon is founder and director of Team Content, a content and design consultancy. He spends his days (and many nights) helping some of Melbourne’s biggest brands with their content strategy needs, as well as working with his team to create engaging content of all shapes and sizes.

Callum Shand
Callum is an award winning designer with over 10 years of experience working with big brands, government, startup and in-house product design.

Andy Howard
Andy has designed and implemented digital innovations on a national scale and consults to private and public organisations Australia-wide. His work has helped organisations achieve outstanding commercial results and has been globally recognised for its effectiveness.