With so many eye-popping websites online right now, it’s hard to say which are the best – but we’ll take a stab at it! Here’s our top 20 (12) of the most beautiful websites online in 2016 and what makes them so stunning.
ETQ
ETQ is a shoe company, and it uses bare backgrounds and wonderfully shot, detailed photographs to truly highlight their products. See how ordinary items can look extraordinary when the right photography, lighting, and design come into play. Simple but effect text animations help highlight each product. All of these factors allow for the site’s very minimalistic e-commerce design to work beautifully for visitors.
Kenshoo
Kenshoo’s website proves that they understand design trends; they’ve mastered the micro-interaction and made navigation wonderfully simple. The site is also truly beautiful, making it stand alone visually as it delivers information simply and effectively. The design also proves that the business has value to add, as a marketing firm, by using its information delivery system to maintain web traffic on the site and display things in an eye-catching manner.
Mikiya Kobayashi
Product designer Mikiya Kobayashi creates stunning photographs of his product work and his website is fueled by them. The cleverness of the site’s design, though, is in how subtly it allows the visitor to simply take in the work while maintaining some interactive features such as simple animations and the ability to scroll to see different perspectives on the same product, all with smooth transitions throughout the site.
Juliana Bicycles
With great attention to mobile users and high quality photography, this site is a winner in terms of being on point with trends and visuals. There are so many different facets to this site, as you get the sense of being on a travel site, a blog, and an e-commerce site within seconds. This one is also very easy to navigate on almost any device.
Desktime
Desk-time, a shared space and co-working directory, utilizes a clean and organized user interface, which gives information that users would be looking forcing them to search or click.
Just scroll and enjoy lots of pleasantly placed white space, simple graphics, micro-interactions, and a coordinated color scheme that is calming yet interesting and helps provide information as the main concentration.
How far is it to Mars?
Creating a visual representation of physical distance between us and Mars, this site is a lot of fun. Using a high concept design and a JavaScript scrolling library, connecting pixels and distances in space to produce a meta experience that goes to show – the technicalities of web design can be part of the experience.
SWISS airlines
Utilizing a web trend of parallax elements, this page brings storytelling elements and navigation together into one immersive experience. One of the best parts of this site is its seamless integration of animation and photography.
Easter Egg – Check the source code for a little ‘hi’ from the creator.
One of the reasons one would travel to Switzerland is surely the breathtaking scenery, and the SWISS airlines site takes you over the Swiss Alps as you browse.
Etch Apps
This website uses photography that’s very warm and personal placed against a cooler color scheme. Sections of content all placed inside a block layout, resulting in a unique yet familiar look in the Metro style that is user friendly and eye-catching with easy to read elements. A constant header at the top of the screen makes it easy to explore and return to previous navigations.
L.A. Times
This site is easy to use, and although it looks just as simple and buttoned down as you’d expect, it’s far simpler to navigate than most of its peers. This site provides clear visual differences between articles to help differentiate all of the elements going on while still allowing room for the developers to provide a different experience with each visit. Kudos for good navigation.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is masterful with its communication of information in multiple ways. It uses everything from animations and talks to straight quizzes and statistics to get the learning mission done, and done in bold, colorful style. The site is also well organized and user-friendly enough to be great even for younger kids, even across the device spectrum.
Builtbybuffalo
This site wins for its hexagons alone, which looks far more appealing than the basic squares and circles that grace most sites. Combined with the site’s flat design (not to mention the canine team member photos) and beautiful layout spacing, this is a great result.
Impossible Bureau
The first thing you notice about this site is its four column landing page and easy navigability provided within the context of each column; a unique experience. Next you’ll enjoy the parallax scrolling and various micro interactions which make for a great user experience.
Conclusion
If you haven’t notice there are only 12 sites mentioned. Some of the sites from 2016 have been moved. These remaining websites stand out among the rest for so many reasons. They all feature stunning photography, interesting micro-interactions and other user experience features. Scrolling that’s a soothing part of the experience rather than an annoyance, and a simple, clean navigability. They are all also perfectly designed to present the reason they exist: the products, people, or services they’re showcasing. For overall aesthetic appeal and fantastic functionality, these are the top 20 (12) most beautiful websites online in 2016.