Thank you for taking a few minutes to read our voting guide. In this section we will explain the voting process from start to finish.

Browse the Award Categories and finalise your votes. You can only submit one voting form per awards, so it might help you to write down your votes for each category before using the voting form. Each Award Category information page includes advice on what is, and is not, eligible for each award. If you're unsure about certain categories, you can skip it when you vote (you can vote for as many or as few as you like) or, wait until you have decided on all your votes before using the voting form - you cannot add votes later, even if it is for a category you did not fill in the first time.

As in political voting, you must prove who you are before you can vote. You do this on our voting form by filling in your real-world personal details. We require enough information to prove you are a bonafide voter, to contact you to complete the voting process, and to contact you if we wish to confirm your identity. We do not accept anonymous voting, but we have a very strict privacy policy and ONLY use your information to validate your votes or to contact you about them. We never pass your details on to any third party or even use it ourselves for any other purpose than in connection with your votes.

We also have terms and conditions for voting. These explain what we require from you to ensure that your vote is accepted and other important terms and conditions.

Submitting a voting form is acceptance of our Privacy policy and our Voting Terms. You can read them in full here.

If you have any questions after reviewing our terms you might find our FAQ page helpful.

Now you have finalised your votes and read our terms, it is time to vote! You must use the official on-line voting form as we do not accept postal or e-mail votes.

After filling in your personal details, you can then vote for as many or as few awards as you like. It helps us, but is not compulsory, to enter a reason why you have voted in a particular category. We may use this information when publicising the winners. For example, if lots of votes come in for the same reason, we would like to publicise this so the winner knows why their service or product is highly rated.

Remember, you can only vote once per awards, so make sure you have finalised all your votes before using the voting form.

Before pressing the "submit" button, take a minute or so to check your entries in particular your personal details. These fields are mandatory. Please note that entering incomplete data in the personal information fields will render all your votes invalid. You should also check our terms if you have not already done so, as submitting a vote is acceptance of these.

When you have completed the voting form and are ready, click "submit"!

After submitting the voting form, you will be sent an automatic e-mail. This e-mail is sent for several important reasons.

You must validate your votes before we will accept them. You do this by following the instructions in the e-mail. All you have to do is to click on a link (or cut and paste it into a browser) which we provide in the e-mail, and this link will be unique to your votes. By clicking on this link, you are confirming that you have received an e-mail from us and that your e-mail address is genuine.

The e-mail will also confirm what votes you have entered so that you can check them.

The e-mail will give you an option to cancel your votes. You should only cancel your votes if you spot a mistake or change your mind. Cancelling your vote is the only circumstance in which we will then allow you to vote again, subject to our voting terms.

IMPORTANT: You only have a limited time in which to validate your votes. This will be advised in the confirmation e-mail to you. You MUST validate your votes within this time. If you do not, your votes will become invalid as we will assume that a fake e-mail address was entered or that you have changed your mind. In this case, you are not allowed to vote again, even if you did not confirm the first votes. If you wish to cancel your votes, you must also do this within the time specified.

If you have neither validated nor cancelled your votes within the set time, your votes will become invalid.

Once you have validated your votes, congratulations and thank you for voting! You shouldn't hear from us again, however, as per our terms we may contact you if we need to check your vote, or to prove your identity.