10 reasons of successful voting contest with NorrCompetition

Organizing of a voting contest on your website will noticeably increase an interaction between users and website and let you get a snow avalanche effect. NorrCompetition can extend model agency, city portal, women magazine, school or university website and any other type of website where voting contest can be used.

Currently, there are no components with similar features for Joomla! CMS.

What benefits you will get using NorrCompetition:

• Implement an effective tool for organizing voting contests on the website.
• Expand auditory and attract new users on the website.
• Help contestants to get recognition (students, musicians, fashion models, etc.).
• Use contestants' potential for promotion (they will attract friends to vote).
• Use website as a marketing tool for further advertisement (emailing, e-store).
• Stimulate students with prizes and attract potential sponsors.

Let’s consider step-by-step which benefits you can get organizing contests on your website with NorrCompetition.

1. Build an infrastructure

Install and set up the component according to your requirements. The extension comes with detailed documentation including screenshots, so there shouldn’t be a problem (otherwise we provide technical support). Using NorrCompetition modules you can display latest or random contests and entries in template positions and use different combinations - some modules can be displayed on the home page, some on internal pages in other positions, etc. For instance, you can display entries in nice carousel style using an additional module, which is good for the home page and attracts attention. As a final result, the website will become much more user-friendly and ready for the voting contest.

2. Contests strategy

You should think about strategy and schedule current and further contests. Set up Start and End date, prepare images and description - all basic information about each contest.

3. Use custom fields

You can create and manage custom fields to be added to each contest that is good for grouping and displaying additional information. For better understanding, please open the demo page and go to the entry page.

Photographer, Stylist, Age, About me - all these fields are custom. You can change it to other fields according to your request. Let it be:

• Grade (college or school)
• Teacher (teacher’s name and surname)
• Authors (if the video is made by a group of students)
• Description

You can assign these fields to a specified contest and create new fields and assign them to another contest.

4. Grand Prix

NorrCompetition has a Grand Prix feature. There is a special block of entries above the list of winners highlighted with another style and coming with special text-area to be used to express an opinion of the jury. It means you can display the opinion of jury in text-area.
You can see how it looks like in "Closed contest” section on NorrCompetition demo.

5. Get a database of registered users

NorrCompetition allows guests to vote, but you can change settings and let only registered users vote for entries. It means the user should register on your site, log in and then vote for entries.

Here is a hidden benefit for you: the website will get a huge list of users. You can install AcyMailing - best e-marketing extension for Joomla. New registered users will be assigned automatically on your newsletter and this is a great marketing tool for you to send newsletters to all registered users. You can inform users about recent contest news.

6. Socialisation is a power!

Every contestant will ask their friends, classmates or colleagues to vote for his/her entries. This will help to promote the website by contestant personally, and you get snow avalanche effect when motivated contestants do the best to attract visitors for voting. These visitors are your potential auditory.

7. Make the voting process easier with social authorization

Signing up to the site means filling out the following fields: Full name, username, password, e-mail and then its confirmation via a link that will be sent to user’s e-mail. A little bit boring process. You can use a special component to get registration/authorisation via social network profile.

SLogin can help with it. This extension is free. Now it’s enough for a visitor to click on preferable social network icon, confirm the action and log in on the website just in few clicks. This add-on will save the time for new visitors who want to vote.

8. Motivation for participants

It’s good to award winners with prizes, which depends upon contest sponsors. Contestants will be motivated to do better self-promotion and ask friends to vote more actively in a cause to win and get awarded. You’ll get more registered users.

9. Video content

NorrCompetition supports online video content and that affords you more in the organization of voting contest. For instance, the best video made by school students, etc. The best promo video or authors’ short cinema.

10. Make money on sponsorship

Attract sponsors for awarding and promotion. Sponsors will get good promotion since a lot of people will come to the website and examine all the stuff, especially users who are going to vote.

You can discuss with a potential sponsor and offer them pricing plans. Afford advertisement to sponsors within the website:

• Article advertising the company in the sponsors section
• Send information about sponsors within E-mailing newsletter
• Announcement within social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google+1, etc)
• Sponsors Logo to be displayed on different pages of the website
• Permanent banner on your website in different positions according to page layout

Define your pricing policy and prepare a commercial proposal to the sponsors. Sponsors can afford prizes to the winners (i.e. software license, t-shirts, some devices, etc.).

Are you a developer?

Integration with 3rd party extensions. Using NorrCompetition API and developer documentation you can create own plugin for integration with 3rd party extension or take any of the existing ones (check out our recent news).

Following these steps, you can reach the best result and organize voting contests on Joomla based website effectively.