Did you know there are awards for professional website design? The Awwwards nominate and award sites for several categories, from stellar UI design to mobile optimization. From last year’s winners to honorable mentions, this site offers a world of the most exciting web design available.
One category that often goes overlooked but remains extremely relevant to today’s changing media landscape includes sites that excel at optimization. More web traffic than ever before happens on mobile platforms. Modern web designers have honed their creative strategies to create responsive sites that perform beautifully on a wide range of mobile devices. If you’re a new web developer looking for inspiration or are simply interested in some of the sites best optimized for mobile, check out the following recent award winners.
How Does the Awwwards Rank Mobile Websites?
Web development is a constantly evolving field. One of the most critical recent evolutions of modern web design is the massive shift to mobile. Modern smartphones are more powerful than desktop PCs were only a few years ago and capable of delivering user experiences on par with full computer systems with high definition displays, lightning-fast processing, voice recognition, and countless other quality-of-life features. When phone users cannot make full use of their devices’ capabilities due to poor website construction, it erodes the trust between the user and the site and will ultimately push the user away.
The Awwwards acknowledges leaders in modern web design across various categories and uses four criteria to rank websites for mobile optimization:
- This metric gauges a mobile site’s user-friendliness based on page legibility, content scaling, contrast, and viewport configuration to ensure compatibility with a wide range of mobile devices.
- This metric judge a mobile website’s page loading speed, document completion rate, and the time it takes to fully load a page after two full seconds of no network activity as a baseline.
- The Awwwards also judge mobile sites for overall user experience and ease-of-use details like endless trailing paths with no navigational dead ends, multi-device support, streamlined form information entry, and other touches that make the site easier to use.
- Progressive Web App (PWA) best practices. This metric involves the structural integrity of a mobile site and the programming behind the user experience. Good PWA best practices include avoiding geolocation tagging permission and notification prompts from appearing on page loads, the use of HTTPS, valid robots.txt file, and more back-end details.
The following sites earned top scores in these four metrics and hold the overall highest scores for mobile optimization in the Awwwards.
Ocean Vagabond
The Awwwards ranked Ocean Vagabond with top marks in Friendliness and PWA best practices. The Ocean Vagabond mobile site configures the viewport and adjusts content to scale correctly within the viewport. Tap targets and text are sized appropriately for easy use and legibility, and the design contrast enables maximum readability on a variety of mobile devices. While the site struggles a bit in the performance and utility department, the Ocean Vagabond mobile site still provides acceptable page loading speed and prevents layout shifting when loading media content.
Uruoi Japanese Skincare
The mobile website for Uruoi Japanese Skincare received top marks across the board for Friendliness, Performance, Usability, and PWA for an overall rating of 88, one of the highest scores for mobile optimization in the Awwwards. The Uruoi Japanese Skincare mobile site earned a perfect score in Usability, indicating the site offers a fantastic user experience with filtering tools, zoomable and blur-free product images, autofill support for all form fields, and intuitive product details for every entry in the mobile catalog. Users can also convert without signing up for an account using the guest checkout feature that many modern sites eschew to increase conversions more forcibly.
Big Eye Deers
The UK-based Big Eye Deers may have only received slightly above-average scores for Friendless and Performance, but the mobile site earned top marks for Usability and PWA. The Big Eye Deers mobile site checks all of the boxes for top scores in PWA best practices and has a fantastic user interface without obtrusive pop-ups and geolocation requests upon page load that bog down the user experience of other sites.
Bundle News
Many people browse news stories on their mobile phones, and the Bundle News mobile site earned above-average scores in Friendliness and Performance and high scores in Usability and PWA. Users can browse the news easily with a very fast page load speed with full autofill support for text fields, real-time highlighting for mistakes in form fields, and no ending trailing paths, image carousels, or layout shifting. These features make it fast and simple for visitors to navigate the site to find the stories most relevant to them.
Designers at Finsweet.com
While the mobile site for Designers at Finsweet.com struggles a bit in the performance department but received top marks for Friendliness, Usability, and PWA best practices. The site sizes all content appropriately for the user’s viewport without any layout shifting. Visitors to the Designers at Finsweet.com mobile site can seamlessly locate tap targets and all text is easily legible. This mobile site also features solid back-end development aside from an invalid robots.txt file.
Pontus Rudolfson
This mobile website is the official gallery for Swedish photographer, cinematographer, and time-lapsing artist Pontus Rudolfson and won top marks across the board at the Awwwards. The Pontus Rudolfson gallery mobile site earned perfect scores in Friendliness, Usability, and PWA best practices and an above-average score for Performance. Visitors to the Pontus Rudolfson mobile gallery can enjoy a stunning display of professional artwork in an intuitively configured, responsive, and beautifully arranged mobile site.
Digital Marketing Conference
The mobile site for Digital Marketing Conference by Possible Moscow from Russia earned top scores in Friendliness and PWA but only average scores in Performance and Usability. Visitors to the Digital Marketing Conference mobile site can enjoy easy and intuitive site navigation with solid back-end construction without any aggravating layout shifting or permission prompts at page loads.
Veley/Ross Wedding
The Awwwards doesn’t only acknowledge business websites, but all sites optimized for mobile. The Veley/Ross Wedding mobile site earned fantastic scores across all four metrics thanks to its beautiful and simplistic visual design and intuitive user experience. A perfect score in Friendliness means all visitors to the site enjoy an intuitive experience backed by solid construction and responsive design elements to prevent layout shifts and slow page load times.
Pat Kay
This independent professional photographer from Sydney, Australia showcases his robust photography portfolio and blog on an incredibly well-built mobile site. The Pat Kay mobile site earned above-average scores across all four of the Awwwards’ scoring verticals. Visitors can enjoy stunning visual stories and information-rich blog posts in an intuitive, responsive site optimized beautifully for mobile viewing.
Find Inspiration and Tune Up Your Mobile Website
The Awwwards are a great resource for any web developer looking for new ways to approach mobile design. These sites earned recognition from the Awwwards for mobile optimization, and more brands should strive to achieve similar scores. The vast majority of internet users also use mobile devices, and more people are adopting mobile web browsing as their preferred method of enjoying online content. Browse through the awards and think of ways to enhance the user experience for visitors to your own mobile site.
