Awwwards is an international website competition where work is judged by professionals in web design and development. The daily Site of the Day award highlights the best work of the day, while the Developer Award separately assesses the technical side: markup, performance, accessibility. The votes are cast not by designers but by developer judges, and in the case of this site there were five of them.
Artem Pyvovarov's website went through a series of awards over several days. On 23 August 2017 it received CSS Winner Site of the Day with a score of 7.6, on 24 August — CSS Design Awards Special Kudos with a score of 7.63, and on 25 August on Awwwards it simultaneously received Site of the Day, with a score of 7.13, and Developer Award, with a score of 7.17. Such a sequence shows that the work is noticed in several competitions at once, not just one.
Six criteria and their spread
The final score is made up of six criteria. The highest were animations and transitions, as well as accessibility: 7.6 points each. Loading speed, that is, performance optimization, which in the assessments is designated as WPO, and markup with metadata scored 7.4 each. Responsive layout received 6.8, and semantics and SEO — 6.6, the lowest result in the table.
The difference between these figures is understandable. Animations and transitions are immediately visible to the user, so they are the first thing viewers notice. Accessibility, that is, usability for people with visual and motor impairments, depends on code that is not directly visible. Semantics is responsible for how the page structure is read by search engines and assistive technologies, and in this point the work received the fewest points. For a technical award this is an important benchmark: strengths and weaknesses are visible in the numbers, not in the overall impression.
What a separate award for markup means
Site of the Day answers the question of which site was best overall, but does not say how it is built inside. The Developer Award was created so that the technical part does not dissolve into the visual. For the client, such a result means that the code and adaptation to different screens have been checked separately from the design. For colleagues in the profession, it is a clear benchmark by which solutions can be compared.
The award came at a time when the Sponge studio, founded by Bohdan Hnatiuk, already had a notable track record. In 2015, the bureau's website received Site of the Day on Awwwards on 8 August with a score of 7.03. In the Golden Site 2015 rating, the studio's website took first place in the category of digital agency websites. In 2017, the bureau took fourth place for creativity in the Runet Rating with a result of 23.32 points.
Neighboring awards of 2017
This year's assessments were not limited to one work. On 16 January BizzGrid received Awwwards Honorable Mention, and the next day CSS Winner Site of the Day. On 4 February the M1 Club Hotel website received two awards at once in one day: CSS Winner Site of the Day and BestCSS Site of the Day. In May Arbeko received CSS Winner Star, and in September Style Whisperer was noted with Awwwards Honorable Mention on 13 September and CSS Winner Star on 16 September.
The next award in this series came on 28 September, when the Helicopter View website received CSS Winner Star.
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