‘Best in Class’: RT.com wins prestigious Interactive Media Award

The RT website has grabbed one of the most prestigious awards in the online industry, outperforming 36 other competitors and winning “The Best in Class” nomination in the News Website category of the contest set by the Interactive Media Awards.

The Interactive Media Awards competition, held since 2006, recognizes the highest standards of excellence in website development and design and seeks to “elevate the standards of excellence” on the Internet.

The “Best in Class” nomination is “the highest honor” bestowed in the contest and was shared between RT.com and the CBS News website.

In the News section, the 37 rivals were judged on five different criteria, with a score of 0-100 in each category. The judges gave RT 100 for content and 99 for feature functionality, 95 for usability and 93 for both design and standards compliance – totaling 480 out of a possible 500 points.

The committee which hands out the award said overall RT showed the best professionalism out of all the entrants.

“It represents the very best in planning, execution and overall professionalism. In order to win this award level, your site had to successfully pass through our comprehensive judging process, achieving very high marks in each of our judging criteria – an achievement only a fraction of sites in the IMA competition earn each year,” the committee said.

Previous winners in the News websites category include CBS, NBC, CBC and the Examiner. In the entertainment category past winners included Disney, Universal Studios and the Discovery Channel.

RT.com is an online platform of the RT media group, which broadcasts 24/7 TV news channels in English, Spanish and Arabic.

Following a comprehensive redesign of the website in 2013, for the year to March 2014, it nearly doubled its audience to more than 50 million page views – and more than 100 million for English, Russian, Arabic, Spanish versions of the site combined. This was a major factor in winning The Best in Class award, the board said.

The site includes live updates on breaking news stories, to in-depth analysis of current affairs and links to episodes of RT television news’ most popular programs.

The Interactive Media Council, which runs the contest, is a non-profit organization headquartered in New York. Leading web designers, developers, programmers, advertisers and other web-related professionals make the beat in the INC.

As a global news channel, RT has also received two nominations for the prestigious Emmy Award for TV news.