How we struck out in the competition
Listen to this, it is an interesting story (at least to us); you may find it pathetic, who knows... Back in January there was a vote for several E-commerce categories, including best SMALL ONLINE STORE in Serbia. We entered because it cost us nothing and we had nothing to lose, and surely we're the right fit: we focused on quality, not quantity, barely have about 20 products, put a lot of effort into the site and offer 5-star customer support. Surely that's perfect for that competition category, right??
I said, it costs us nothing, right?! Well, it did cost us — just not money.
You know that feeling when you enter a competition just for fun, then keep checking the results? You tell your friends you don't expect anything, but the refresh button says otherwise.
Call to vote
We shared it on social media in this post.
We did not want to bother people by email, because email is sacred and "we will not bother our valued customers with unimportant stuff". The response was good, we know we got plenty of votes, but now the jury had to decide whether we were worthy of the glorious title.
After all, we'd recently launched and improved a new website. Surely it's at least somewhat more functional than the average shop. Maybe even a little interesting. Not every shop has kilometer-long product pages, so surely someone will notice the effort.
But no such luck
Another online shop won, one with about a zillion products in its range. And that is not all. They also have 7 (yes, seven) offline stores. None of this would matter if they hadn't won in the category for SMALL online store...
Well, maybe the jury made a mistake. Let's see who else won an award... What?! D Express won "My favorite courier"?! Their Google rating is barely 2.0. Our parcels with them seemed to take the scenic route. We solved that a few years ago by switching to Post Express. Now 98% arrive on time.
We took a closer look at the judges and the organization behind the awards to understand how the competition was put together.
Our team's reaction deserved a headline of its own: SHOCKING RESULTS, UNEXPECTED TWIST, DRAMATIC FINISH (PHOTO, VIDEO).
Others did recognize our quality, though
Still, our teammate Živan had a surprise for us: he'd quietly entered us in another competition, where our work received recognition. That certainly gave the team a lift.
Here is the post that delighted some of our followers, so be sure to see the honor we received.
Update
Later we got an email from that association inviting us to collaborate, offering services and whatnot. We just pasted the link to the Pakistani, thanked them and said we were already working with a more credible ecommerce association.
Well, that is it. It seemed funny at the time, and it would be a shame not to share this little story with our dear customers and followers.