Privacy Policy

The Web Excellence Awards values your privacy and is committed to protecting it. With this Privacy Policy, we want you to understand how we collect, use, protect and share your personal data, and which choices and rights you have.

When you submit an entry, we collect your name, email address and any backup email address, phone number, invoice name and address, VAT number, website and social media links, company name and the names of your clients and of the people you credit, together with the information and materials you provide about your project, including any login details the judges need for a password-protected project. We use this information to process your entry and order, to have it evaluated by our judges, to notify you about the status of your submission and the announcement of the winners, and to publish the winners.

If you tick the box on the entry form to be kept updated about new seasons and winners, we add your email address to our mailing list at Brevo. You can unsubscribe at any time, free of charge, using the link at the bottom of every email, or by contacting us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

Payments are processed by our payment provider, Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card details.

When an entry wins, we publish the winning project on our website, including the project name, the entrant's name, website and country, the award categories, the images and links provided with the entry, and any credits listed in the entry, which may include the names of people who worked on the project. A summary of every winning project (project, entrant, website, categories, country and season) is also available as an open dataset under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. If you would like a published detail to be changed or removed, contact us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

The names of people credited on a winning project are sent to us by the entrant, who must inform them. If you are named and would like your name changed or removed, contact us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form; we act within 30 days. The open dataset does not include the names of credited people.

When you subscribe to our newsletter, we collect your name and email address and the consent you give. We use them only to send you news and announcements about the Web Excellence Awards. Our newsletter is sent through our email marketing provider, Brevo. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of every newsletter or by contacting us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

When you contact us through our contact form, we collect your first and last name, email address and, if you provide them, your company name and website, together with your message. We use this information only to answer your message.

When you apply to join our judging panel, we collect your first and last name, email address, city and country, company, company website and role, the profile links you choose to share, your areas of expertise and the information you tell us about yourself. We use this information to assess your application and to contact you when a judge position becomes available.

If you are selected, we publish your name, role and company on our website and in our social media channels, because a public, named jury is part of the role. Your photo and profile links are shown only if you provide them. When you step down, or whenever you ask us, we remove your profile within 30 days.

When you order trophies or certificates in our store at store.we-awards.com, we collect your first and last name, email address and delivery address, your phone number for trophy orders and, if you provide them, your company name, company email address and VAT ID, together with the names, project titles and categories you want on your trophies or certificates. We use this information to produce and deliver your order, to send you the order confirmation and tracking details, and for our accounting records. To deliver your order, we pass your name, delivery address, phone number and email address to the shipping carrier.

If you order with the personal link from your winner email, the store checks the link with our main website to show the categories you won and to make sure that each free certificate is claimed only once.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card details. To protect the order forms from spam, we use Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks signals from your browser and device, such as your IP address. While you type your street, the text you have entered and the selected country are sent from your browser to the Photon address search of komoot GmbH (Germany, based on OpenStreetMap data) to suggest addresses; komoot therefore also receives your IP address. You can ignore the suggestions and type your address yourself. When the trophy order page opens, it loads the engraving font from Adobe Fonts, which receives your IP address and the address of the page. Cloudflare, which delivers our website, also counts page visits without cookies and without identifying you.

If you tick the box to be kept updated about new seasons and offers, we add your email address to our mailing list at Brevo. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of every email or by contacting us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

We use cookies and similar technologies. Cookies that are not strictly necessary are only placed with your consent, which you can give, refuse or change at any time through "Manage consent" at the bottom of every page of we-awards.com. Our entry and store sites use only cookies that are strictly necessary. Our Cookie Policy lists the cookies and services we use.

• To run the competition, process your entry and payment, notify you and publish the winners: to perform our contract with you.
• To produce, deliver and invoice your store orders: to perform our contract with you.
• To answer messages you send us: our legitimate interest in replying to you.
• To protect our forms against spam, to suggest addresses while you type and to show the engraving preview: our legitimate interest in secure and easy-to-use forms.
• To publish a selected judge's profile: to perform our arrangement with the judge.
• To publish the names of people credited on winning projects: our legitimate interest in a complete public record of the awards.
• To send our newsletter, the store updates and the entrant news you ask for and to use cookies that are not strictly necessary: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To keep our website secure and to meet our legal obligations, such as keeping accounting records: our legitimate interest and our legal obligations.

We share personal data only with service providers that help us run the website, the competition and the store, and only as far as needed: hosting and security, payment, email, shipping, spam protection, our judging platform and, if you consent to them, analytics, advertising and embedded videos. Our judges see the entries assigned to them for evaluation. We do not sell your personal data.

Some of these providers are based in the United States, where our website is also hosted. For these transfers we rely on the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework or, where it does not apply, on the European Commission's standard contractual clauses, as adapted for Switzerland. You can ask us for a copy at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

We keep personal data only as long as necessary for the purposes described here or as required by law:

• Invoices, payment and store order records: 10 years from the end of the financial year, as Swiss accounting law requires (Code of Obligations, Art. 958f). Card details are processed and stored by Stripe under its own privacy policy.
• Entry details that are not part of our accounting records: up to 10 years after the end of the season you entered, the period in which legal claims can be raised under Swiss law.
• Login details you give the judges for a password-protected project: 3 years after the end of the season you entered.
• Entries that are started but not paid: your personal details (name, email addresses, phone number, billing name, VAT number, address, login details, the names of credited people and your IP address) are deleted six months after that season's winners are announced. We keep only anonymous project information for statistics.
• Published winners, including the names credited on a winning project: for as long as our winners archive is online, as part of our public awards record, unless you ask us to change or remove a detail.
• The email address used to submit a winning entry: kept with the winner record for as long as the winner page is online, so we can contact you about it.
• Newsletter, store updates and news for entrants: until you unsubscribe.
• Contact messages: as long as needed to handle your request, and no longer than 10 years after our last exchange.
• Judge applications that are not selected: up to 5 years, so we can contact you when a position becomes available. Details of selected judges: for as long as they are members of our judging panel.

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect personal data against loss, unauthorized access, manipulation and destruction.

If a security breach affects your personal data in a way that is likely to put your rights at risk, we will inform you without undue delay and explain the steps we have taken.

Our competition and services are intended for adults and businesses. To enter the competition in your own name or to apply as a judge, you must be at least 18 years old. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If we learn that we have, we will delete it. If you have reason to believe that this has happened, please contact us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

You have the right to access your personal data, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to its processing, to receive it in a portable format and to withdraw any consent you have given at any time. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority: in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), or in the European Union, the authority of your country. To exercise your rights, contact us at info@we-awards.com or by using our contact form.

We may update this policy from time to time. The current version is always available on this page.