Top 10 Website Designs

Adding to the difficulty is the fact that the web is dynamic – about as dynamic a medium as there is. Things are always changing, new sites being put up literally every second, and keeping abreast of them all is an impossible task. The best reviewers can do is try to keep tabs on the sites that both have staying power (which includes being updated regularly) and also have lots of visitors (as determined by search engines such as Google).

Standards for the Top 10 Website Designs

One way to try and categorize the top 10 website designs is to look at one of the pioneers of web interfaces, Jakob Nielsen. On his UseIt website he lists the top ten design errors made on the web, as well as listing the ways to avoid them. It follows, therefore, that the top ten sites on the web would be those that avoid these mistakes the most.

Ben Hunt takes this approach in his Web Design From Scratch blog. Even an experienced, professional designer like himself admits up front that his top ten picks are personal preferences, not to be taken as gospel. He then goes into depth about why he judges each site to be good, usually based on his amusing and informative design manual, "Save the Pixel."

Most of the criteria for his choices are based on clean interface, coherent image design, and excellent user experience. He also takes into account the difficulties that various sites may have in fulfilling their purpose – for example, his number one choice is Apple.com. He applauds the company not only for the design but also for the graceful solution the company finds to the problem of so much information needed on one screen.

Of course, since Apple is known for pioneering user interface, it's no surprise that the website would stand out. Likewise, Hunt's second and third choices, Mozilla.com and IconBuffet.com, work in the web industry and in some ways awarding them for website design is like awarding fishes for swimming.

Peer Review

Since the beginning the web has been all about communication and connection, and designers are no different in wanting to share ideas and give and receive feedback. Open Web Design is a gathering place for designers to show off and share their latest designs, and the top ten best designs (as determined by downloads per day) are featured with information about the author and more. The inclusion of the techniques used to create each design – CSS, javascript, whether the site is W3C compliant or not – help other designers choose whether or not to emulate or, in some cases, simply use the designs. Many of them are free for download and available under a creative commons license.

Other Technologies

In the web 2.0 universe, there is more to life than HTML, CSS, and other code-based pages. There is Flash, and it would be completely unfair to compare Flash websites with the more traditional HTML websites.

While there are many websites that talk about Flash and highlight the sites, one that stands out is eBizMBA's Top 10 Flash Website Designs. Presented in a "countdown" format, each site is given a small screen capture illustration along with a description of why it is a choice for best Flash design. It is ironic, of course, that the page itself is coded in HTML, but it is a good look at the top of the field in Flash websites.

It is fair to say that the best website designs – top 10, top 100, whatever – are constantly changing, and as designers learn from each other, better ones are being designed right now, ready to launch and take their place amongst the best of the web.