Keying into the Academy mindset
Site home page simple, straightforward
"Oscars.org is a year-round site where we have information about the Academy and everything it does," says Web site editor Paul Carroll. "We include as much extensive information about the Academy as we can, not just about the Oscars."
The Academy bowed its site three years ago to electronically post press releases. Since then, it has grown in both size and scope.
The Web site's home page is simple and straightforward. Up top, users can access well-marked links to concisely-written information about the Academy Awards' rules and regulations, check out an events calendar or search the site.
Below the site's featured event (at the time, it was the Marvin Borowsky Lecture on Writing for the Screen featuring Kevin Smith), users can scroll through three main categories: "Events and Services," "Information" and "Education and Preservation."
Events and services offers information on lectures and seminars, financial grants, as well as retrospective tributes and salutes.
The Information section links to pages about the Academy's history, legal regulations such as the Guidelines Concerning the Promotion of Films Eligible for the 73rd Academy Awards, and administration info.
The Education and Preservation section offers the most comprehensive tool; the Academy Awards data base. Users can search by keyword or film title. There is also a database for the Scientific and Technical Awards.
As Oscar season heats up, the site will contain more up-to-the minute information as it is released by the Academy, which Carroll says will increase traffic significantly.
"Right now we're doing around 400,000 hits a week," says Carroll. "When the Oscar season gets closer in February we'll experience around 4 million hits a week." According to Carroll, about 20% of that traffic is international.
However, for those not satisfied by no-nonsense information, the site hyperlinks to ABC's Oscar.com.
"Oscar.com is solely dedicated to the Academy Awards presentation and information about that," says Carroll. "It's a commercial site produced by ABC, but the Academy has its hand in approval of the site's content."
Aside from articles about topics such as the dress Ashley Judd wore this past year ("amethyst silk chiffon"), another big difference between the two sites are the ads. "Staying in line with our non-profit objective, we don't sell ad space," says Carroll.
"On our site, users are not really looking for fashion or celebrity related information," Carroll continues. "They are looking for information about the Academy. When we release the list of eligible films, that's by far the busiest page we'll have for weeks. When we put out the rules, and they are long and technical, people download them."
Carroll concedes that there aren't a lot of bells and whistles on the site because, quite frankly, the Academy doesn't need them.
"There is no special section on the site where members can get exclusive information, take care of their interests or vote," says Carroll. "Online voting has been discussed, but I don't think that the powers that be are too interested in doing it. The methods that we use now work very well."
