What Makes an Award-Winning Website? 10 Features Every Business Website Needs

Open ten business websites back to back and you'll struggle to tell them apart. Same hero banner. Three service boxes, a contact form at the bottom.

Then one loads and it just feels different. You know where to look. Nothing hangs about, and whatever you came for turns up in a few seconds without you really trying.

Usually that's down to detail rather than budget. Sites that pick up awards tend to get design, functionality and a proper read on their audience into the same build, which is harder than it sounds.

Looks won't carry it on their own, mind. The thing still has to behave itself on a phone, keep text readable, and leave nobody in any doubt about what to do next.

What follows is 10 features that separate award-winning websites from the rest, along with how they feed into business growth and the questions worth asking when you're picking a design team.

What Makes a Website Award-Winning?

An award-winning website is one that's been scored highly by independent judges, against criteria they publish up front. Not just a nice-looking site, then. Judging differs from platform to platform, though the same themes keep coming round.

• Visual design and creativityConsidered, and suited to the brand? Or a template with a new logo dropped on it?
• User experienceDoes anybody have to stop and think about where to click next?
• PerformanceHow fast it loads, how smoothly it responds, phone very much included.
• AccessibilityDifferent abilities, different devices, rotten connections, and it still has to work.
• Content qualityClear and relevant, written for a person rather than a crawler.
• Technical functionalityThe unglamorous bit. Do the links, forms and features do what they're meant to?

10 Features That Set Award-Winning Websites Apart

Sites that win tend to have a handful of things in common, and none of them is much of a secret. Design somebody actually thought about. Navigation people can follow. Performance that holds up, and content aimed at the audience it was written for. Ten of those are worth getting right.

1A Clear and Memorable Website Design

A first impression forms before anybody reads a word, which puts a fair bit of weight on the design. Consistent colours. Fonts that don't fight you. Layouts with a bit of room in them, and pictures that have something to do with the work you actually do.

Keep the layout simple, though. If you can't say what an element on the page is for, and usually that job is helping somebody work out what your business does, it's only taking up room.

2Easy Navigation and User Experience

Nobody wants to dig through several pages for what they came for, so menus work best kept short and labelled the way everybody else labels them. Services, About, Contact. Boring works.

The small stuff counts as well. Buttons that look like buttons, forms that don't ask for your life story, pages laid out in an order that makes sense. None of it gets noticed, which is rather the point.

3Mobile-Friendly Website Design

Desktop, phone, it needs to be the same site either way. Responsive design handles that, shifting the layout to fit whatever screen it's landed on. No zooming in. No sliding sideways to finish a sentence or reach a button.

Run the pages that matter across a few devices before you call it done. Contact details and enquiry forms especially, since those are the ones people go hunting for.

Professional website design and development ensure your site looks great and works smoothly across desktops, tablets and mobile devices, giving every visitor a consistent experience.

4Fast Loading Speeds

Pages are expected to turn up more or less straight away, and when yours doesn't, you tend to lose the enquiry rather than hear about it. Google's Core Web Vitals put numbers on it, with measures for loading speed, interactivity and visual stability.

The fixes are dull. Compress the oversized images, bin plugins nobody uses, go easy on heavy scripts.

5Strong Website Branding

The rest of your brand has settled this one already. Colours, fonts, visual style, all matched, and a tone of voice that holds still from page to page.

Same treatment for social media and email campaigns. Joined up, the whole thing gets recognised without anybody stopping to check.

6SEO-Friendly Website Structure

One structure, two audiences, visitors and search engines both, which is rare enough to be worth the bother. Page titles describing the page. Headings describing what sits under them. URLs kept clean, and internal links tying related pages to each other.

Content has to say what you offer and answer what customers ask. Sort it during the design, too, since bolting SEO on afterwards is a far worse job.

7High-Quality Visual Content

Images and short form videos do the explaining text can't. Real photographs where you can manage it, of the team, the products, the services, jobs you've finished.

Quality up, file sizes down, a trade-off you'll be making on nearly every page. And each visual wants to be earning its place and looking like it belongs to you.

8Clear Calls to Action

One obvious thing to do next, and only one. Request a quote, book a call, go and read the services, whichever suits the page.

Then say so plainly on the button. And park that call to action where it makes sense rather than dropping a rival option into every section, which only leaves people stuck between them.

9Accessible Website Features

A good site works for people with different needs, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are what you plan against.

Basics first. Text you can read without squinting. Enough contrast. Alt text that says what's in the image. Form labels with no guesswork in them. Then check somebody can get round the whole thing on a keyboard, no mouse.

10Content That Speaks to the Right Audience

Three things your content has to land, and land fast. What you do. Who you help. Why would anyone pick you over the next lot? Plain words. The questions that come up most, answered. Service details, examples of your work and whatever background somebody needs before deciding.

And keep it current. Businesses change, websites tend not to, and the gap between them gets embarrassing quickly.

Our content marketing services help keep your website relevant with useful blogs, guides and service pages that answer customer questions and give people more reasons to visit.

How Award-Winning Websites Help Businesses Grow?

Rarely does a website win the customer by itself. It shapes nearly every step of the journey though, and this is where everything above starts paying you back.

• Trust, because a tidy and consistent site that works properly tells people this is a business paying attention elsewhere too.
• First impressions. For plenty of customers the website is the first real contact, and it happens well before anybody speaks to a human being.
• Engagement, which is what clear layouts and content worth reading end up buying you, since people click past that first page.
• Lead generation. Fast pages, short forms and a visible call to action take out the spots where an interested visitor quietly drifts off.
• And an easier next step, with click to call buttons, opening hours where you can see them, and booking tools that don't fight you.

How to Choose the Right Website Design Agency

Hiring a website design company is a big call. A portfolio full of nice screenshots tells you less than you'd hope, so these are the things to ask about before you commit.

• Relevant workNot pretty screenshots, but projects with a goal like yours.
• Their processAnd specifically how they get from discovery and planning through design and development to something that actually launches.
• SEO and performancePlanned on day one, or patched in later?
• AccessibilityWhich means asking how it gets tested and whose standards they work to.
• ContentWho writes the copy, who finds the images, is any of that inside the quote?
• OwnershipSo the domain, the content and the files come to you with nothing awkward at handover.
• Communication and revisionsHow feedback reaches them, how many rounds you've got, who you actually ring.
• After launchThere's either updates, fixes and ongoing support, or there's you on your own. Better to know which.

Slip in a question about how success gets measured, too. Talk of enquiries, bookings and what visitors actually do means your business is in mind, not just the design.

Why Website Design Needs More Than Good Looks?

A website doesn't work on its own. People usually run into a business somewhere else first, then go and check the site before deciding whether to bother getting in touch.

SEO services and content do the bringing over. Search engines want clear structure and pages worth reading. Visitors stay put when the content answers whatever they turned up with. Articles, guides and service pages built around real customer questions, then, which is the foundation content marketing rests on.

A good share of first visits arrive from social media. Somebody spots a post, clicks through for a closer look, and where the site feels nothing like the profile they've just left, the thread snaps. Social media management works best sharing the look, voice and message of whatever it points at.

Then the platform-specific side of it. Visual businesses tend to start on Instagram management services, while professional and B2B brands more often build their trust through LinkedIn management services.

Point design, search, content and social one way and each of them makes the others work harder.

Frequently Asked Questions

Build a Website That Works for Your Business

At The Social 99 website design sits alongside branding, SEO and user experience, so what you end up with supports whatever the business is actually trying to do.