How The Ecom Awards will be judged

Awards are only worth winning if people trust how they were decided. So we are publishing how judging works before entries open, not after.

What follows is the plan for Edition 01, which runs in 2027. The dates and prices below are drafts. If anything changes, we’ll update this page and say what changed.

Who judges

Judges are operators: people who run an online store or ship ecommerce work for a living. Every judge is named publicly. The Edition 01 panel will be announced soon.

Every entry is read by at least two judges. Both write feedback, whether the entry is shortlisted or not. If you enter, you get something useful back.

The rubric

Each entry is scored in four areas. The weights are fixed and published in advance.

• Results, 40%. What changed, with evidence.
• Craft, 30%. Design, build quality, speed and accessibility.
• Strategy, 20%. Why the work was the right answer to the brief.
• Evidence, 10%. How well the entry shows its working.

Results carry the most weight because these are ecommerce awards. A store exists to sell, and the work should have made a difference to that.

Craft is still close behind. Speed and accessibility sit inside it, next to design and build quality, because a store that looks good but loads slowly or shuts people out isn’t well made.

Strategy asks whether the work fitted the problem. Evidence is scored on its own. It rewards entries that make the judges’ job easy, for example by saying where the numbers came from and over what period.

Results carry the most weight because these are ecommerce awards. A store exists to sell.

Reported versus verified

Results you give us are shown as “reported by entrant”. If the judges check your evidence and are satisfied, the result is marked as verified. On a results receipt, verified lines carry a tick. That way, anyone reading a case study later knows which numbers were checked.

Conflicts of interest

Judges step out of any entry they are connected to. A judge never scores work for their own business or its clients.

There is one more rule. Businesses connected to the organisers can be featured in the Showcase, but they can’t win an award.

Sponsors

Sponsors can put their name on a category. They never judge it, and they never see scores before the results are announced. Sponsorship buys visibility, not outcomes.

A category can have no winner

If no entry in a category reaches the standard, we can leave that category without a winner. We’d rather do that than hand out an award nobody earned.

The categories

There are ten categories in four tracks. Entry is open worldwide, for work on any live online store. The work must have been live or delivered in the 12 months before entries close.

• Open: Best Checkout.
• Brand: Brand of the Year, Best Customer Experience, Best Retention and Loyalty, Best New Store.
• Agency: Agency of the Year, Best Store Build, Best Replatform or Migration, Best Conversion Improvement.
• Joint: Agency × Brand of the Year, one entry with both names on it.

The categories page has a short description of each.

What every entry includes

These come with every entry. None of them is sold separately.

• Written feedback from two judges.
• A digital Judged & Verified badge for shortlisted entries and winners.
• Use of the winner logo, with no licence fee.
• A trophy for each winner.

There are no surprise fees at checkout. You pay to enter, and that’s it.

Draft dates and prices

These are the current plan and still to be confirmed.

• Entries open: 15 February 2027.
• Super-early price ends: 14 March 2027.
• Entries close: 30 April 2027.
• Shortlist announced: 10 June 2027.
• Winners announced: 8 July 2027.

Entry prices per category, excluding VAT, are £95 super early, £125 early and £165 final. A joint Agency × Brand entry is £195. You can enter a project in up to four categories, and the fourth is free.

Online first

Edition 01 is online-first. Winners will be announced online, not at an expensive dinner. If the first year goes well, a live ceremony may follow in year two.

Questions

If something here is unclear, or you think a rule should work differently, email hello@theecomawards.com. It’s easier to change the rules before entries open than after.