28 Best Websites That Are Killing It in 2023

Nowadays, every business needs a website. But what makes a website really good? The difference between the best websites and the rest can be enormous. Let’s explore the best websites in 2023 and what makes them successful.

From small businesses to multinational corporations, organizations across the globe recognize the vital role that website design plays in establishing an effective online presence. 

But why is that? Here are some reasons why a beautiful website can also mean a more successful business.

• According to Stanford Web Credibility Research, 75% of site visitors judge a company’s credibility based solely on the design features of the website.
• According to a study by Zippia, 88% of users do not return to a website if they have a bad user experience.
• If you have an online store, you must pay extra attention to page designs because, according to Brandignity, 42% of users will not buy anything from a poorly designed website.

So, the best website designs quickly deliver the necessary information and effectively communicate their value proposition. 

Along with that, you must have a fast-loading website that’s optimized for mobile devices. The website must have an SSL certificate to keep user data safe and a contact form to collect leads. 

What are the best websites in 2023?

But even after choosing the best website builder, how do you get the inspiration for the best website layouts? 

Here are the best websites to take inspiration from and make your website effective for your business.

Girlboss

This is an ecommerce website and an online community targeted toward women. The most remarkable thing about it is how well it speaks to its target audience. The fun color scheme, photos of real women from their community, and playful design elements create a powerful sense of brand identity. This ecommerce website design was built on Shopify.

Knapsack Creative

This Squarespace website design agency really hits the nail on the head with a web design that’s both simple and fun. This website is a masterclass in how small elements, such as illustrations and image backgrounds, can make a simple template stand out.

Grette

This is a business law firm, so it is essential for the website to exude professionalism and inspire trust with potential customers. 

The minimalistic design creates a sense of trust, as well as the professional headshots of the team. However, the best web page element is the search bar at the top of the homepage, which urges users to search for attorneys and navigate easily through the website, leading to an enhanced user experience.

Curious & Curious

Let’s switch gears with a website that’s nothing if not intriguing. This creative agency’s website is both stunning and fun to use. With playful micro animations and different designs on every page it really shows that the best website designs sometimes break the rules and go with the “more is more” approach.

Switch

If you need ideas on how to include lots of content into a website, but still keep it user-oriented, this is a great example to learn from. One of the most important aspects in this respect is choosing the right website font, which looks classy and has high readability.

Ready

Looking for best website designs in the minimalist category? Here’s one that will certainly tickle your fancy. Ready packs all the vital information in a single effective landing page, along with a single CTA - get ready. If you decide to go with this bold approach, this website demonstrates how you can make vital information stand out using graphic design (lines, arrows, fonts, etc.) and information architecture.

Hyer

Hyer is a private jet booking service with a stunning website. You won’t see loads of bells and whistles here, but it’s clear that every element was selected with care and a particular brand image in mind. Everything from the color palette, to minimalist sans serif typography, and even destination photos exudes the same sense of elegance and style.

Michael Kors Collection

The name Michael Kors is closely associated with stylish fashion, and their website follows suit. This website is built with Webflow and exudes style with memorable photographs on a dark background, giving it a sleek, monochromatic look.

Superlist

This productivity app has one of the most fun websites, thanks to great content and the use of micro animation. The hero section has two versions, which change when you move your mouse from left to right, to suggest the app is suitable for both professional teams and personal arrangements.

Slite

Slite’s website might seem somewhat cookie-cutter at first sight. However, if you look carefully, you’ll notice a bunch of details that make this website a fun online experience: custom illustrations (which are also part of their brand identity), slidebars, and micro animations.

Digital China University

Just like businesses, modern educational institutions need great web design. This design project shows how to transform a digital brochure into a relatively simple yet visually stunning site.

Lacoste Heritage

This website is a beautiful tribute to an iconic brand. As you scroll through, you’ll keep seeing the recognizable logo, but thanks to fun animation and good proportions it doesn’t diminish the user experience, but rather helps to enhance it.

Chiara Luzzana

Although you might be deceived by its minimalist design, this personal website is anything but that. The website’s visual elements (fonts, animation, 3D graphics) are perfectly paired with sound, making it a match made in heaven for this sound designer.

Makhon

Design and architecture studios are known for stunning design, but this one takes it to the next level. The homepage features an intriguing illustration that prompts you to explore the studio’s creative work. The rest of the website is a little more minimal, allowing for high-quality content (photos and videos) to shine.

The Pathway

Since they often deal with pretty serious topics, many nonprofits resort to pretty conventional, even drab websites. But that’s why some of the best website designs are precisely those that show thinking outside the box in a particular industry.

Moooi

Beautiful aesthetics combined with easy navigation make this one of the best website designs on this list. The homepage menu looks beautiful and user-friendly compared to lengthy dropdown menus.  

Sections such as “Products” and “Gift guide” are useful, as well as a search bar that allows visitors to find what they’re looking for in seconds.

The Octopus

Design blogs are great places to learn about design and marketing, and get inspired creatively (just take a bit of time to browse through our own blog!). However, great design can truly enhance the reading experience, and this site proves it. You won’t find a lot of gimmicks on this site, such as animation or immersive videos - but each custom graphic, carefully selected colors and fonts create a beautiful digital environment.

Bruno Simon

Gamification is a popular strategy in the best UI/UX design. This creative concept demonstrates perfectly why it’s so successful. The game prompts-like user experience boosts engagement and makes users stay longer on the website, thus making this an SEO-friendly website. 

Simply Chocolate

One of the best ecommerce websites to learn from, Simply Chocolate has created a beautiful website that provides a seamless user experience.

Although the packaging of the chocolate bars is quite simple, great layout and simple animations (chocolates “open” when you hover over them), make browsing through their virtual shop a very fun experience.

I-Spy

Ever wanted a digital version of Where’s Waldo? Here’s a website that allows you to play the character-finding game. Responsiveness is one of the biggest issues with gaming websites, but I-Spy has beautifully designed its website with extra attention to responsiveness for a great user experience.

Mubasic

Mubasic provides an ever-growing collection of high-quality children’s music created by talented musicians from all over the world. The website design perfectly encapsulates the musical theme of the company with its stylish logo, easy-on-the-eyes color palette, sans serif font, and shapes that resemble piano keys.

Nomadic Tribe

This website takes wholehearted advantage of how videos can help keep your site visitors on the website. 

The Nomadic Tribe website is a perfect example of CTAs done right. Throughout the homepage, you will see various CTAs like “Read More,” “View Article,” and “Watch Now”. The Login | Register buttons urge the visitors to put their email addresses in without getting distracted.

Zillow

Zillow is a giant in US real estate and sees a lot of organic traffic due to its immense content marketing efforts. The website’s simple hero section caters to everyone - home buyers, home sellers, renters, agents, advertisers, and even Zillow account users - without being overwhelming.

The perfect placement of the search bar urges users to do what they are here for - look for a house. The images add a stellar contrast to the white background.

Tore S. Bensten

Tore S. Bensten is an award-winning website creator, co-founder, and interactive designer at BASEBORN. Due to his reputation, his personal website HAD to do justice to his impressive portfolio, and it did!

The parallax scrolling makes this website more engaging and interactive, and the fading animation on Tore’s image is just perfect. The ideal mix of white space, bold visuals, and engaging fonts creates a seamless user experience.

Fat Choy

This “kind of Chinese also vegan” restaurant in New York City hits the perfect mark when you land on its home page. The website design is made with Squarespace - one of the most popular content management systems.

The custom illustrations in the background and the bold font in the front create a great contrast and showcase the restaurant’s personality. As you scroll down, you will find the restaurant menu and photos of the dishes that will make you just hit that order button.

Okalpha

Okalpha combines the magic of animation with clean aesthetics and tops it off with a bold palette of colors. This minimalist approach looks simple and creates a striking and memorable visual identity.

Spring Invest

This company helps startups with much-needed guidance and sales acceleration. The website combines organic shapes with interactive animations. 

The yellow dots act like a cursor that helps users change the shape of the forms. These shapes add a moment of delight and help reinforce the brand's identity and value proposition to shape the future of commerce.

ETQ Amsterdam

For online stores, product photography is critical, and ETQ knows that. They directly show the trending or on-sale products in the hero section of their homepage. This helps in locking the user’s attention and also urges them to buy the product with a Shop Now link.

Final Thoughts

So, now you have seen what are the best websites in 2023, and the first step you take to design the best websites is to choose a good website builder. 

What are the best website builders? 

Some of the most popular website builders for building a website are Wix, Shopify, WordPress, and Squarespace. All of these website builders allow you to create a professional website with dragging and dropping, with no coding or design experience required.

We hope this list of some of the best 2023 websites offers plenty of ideas for your next project. While you can wing it and turn to DIY design with website builders, the most memorable and nicest websites are usually custom-made.

Check out ManyPixels’ easy and affordable flat-rate web design service and let our team of design experts create your new site!