What It Actually Takes to Build a Site Worth Submitting to Awwwards
We've submitted work and we've watched plenty of over-designed sites get passed over. Here's the process that gets a site noticed, and the honest list of things that never win no matter how many particle effects you add.
We've submitted work, we've watched competitors submit work, and we've seen plenty of sites that clearly spent a fortune on visuals get passed over anyway. Building for Awwwards isn't about stacking trend after trend into one page. Judges notice intention: the typography choices, whether the interaction logic actually makes sense, accessibility, and whether the site feels inevitable for that specific brand rather than borrowed from someone else's.
Read the scoring sheet before you design anything
Most people assume these awards are won on visuals alone. Awwwards publishes its evaluation criteria, and the weighting is more sober than the winners' gallery suggests:
| Criterion | Weight | What it really tests |
|---|---|---|
| Design | 40% | Art direction, typography, layout, and craft |
| Usability | 30% | Navigation, clarity, responsiveness, accessibility |
| Creativity | 20% | Originality of the concept, not the number of effects |
| Content | 10% | Whether the writing and media are worth the wrapper |
Usability and content together make up 40% of the score, exactly the same as design. That's why a beautiful site with a broken mobile experience loses to a quieter one that works, and why accessibility isn't a compliance chore you bolt on at the end.
How we actually approach it
- Lock the concept early: one idea strong enough that it lets you say no to every weaker idea that shows up later
- Define the motion language before building anything: rules come before the fireworks, not after
- Engineer it properly: performance and resilience, tested on real devices, not just the studio's own laptops
- Run real critique loops: kill cleverness the moment it stops serving the brand, no matter how proud someone is of it
- Polish for submission: loading states, sound design if there's any at all, empty paths, and the SEO basics that a lot of award-chasing sites skip entirely
What consistently does not win
- Copying trends with no actual narrative underneath them
- A broken or half-finished mobile experience
- "Art direction" that's inaccessible and traps keyboard users
Building something you would actually want to submit? Award-caliber work needs the concept settled before the craft starts, and the accessibility work done as you go rather than at the end. See projects we have shipped or tell us what you are planning.
Frequently asked questions
How are Awwwards sites actually judged?
Awwwards publishes its scoring: design 40%, usability 30%, creativity 20%, content 10%. Usability and content together carry as much weight as design, which is why visually striking sites with broken mobile experiences or thin copy lose to quieter, more complete ones. A jury of at least 18 members scores each nominee, and the three most extreme scores get thrown out.
Do I need 3D or WebGL to win a design award?
No. Creativity is only 20% of the score, and it rewards originality of concept rather than the number of effects on the page. Plenty of award-winning sites are typographic and restrained. A strong idea executed cleanly beats a weak idea buried under WebGL, and all that heavy technique usually costs you on the usability third of the scorecard anyway.
Is submitting for a design award worth it for a business?
It's worth it when you'd have built the work that way regardless. The recognition helps with hiring and with pitching bigger clients. It stops being worth it the moment you're adding scope purely to impress a jury, because award-chasing scope tends to produce sites that are slower, harder to edit, and worse at converting than the brief ever needed.