A Webby Award Winner's List of the 12 Best Websites in the Universe

Last year, we won the award for best financial services website. In the weeks afterward, we decided the best way to celebrate would be to completely redesign the site to make it more intuitive, simpler, and a lot more beautiful. So we were pretty surprised to learn that we'd won for the second year in a row. (Does this mean we have to re-redesign our site for next year? It's a question our engineers are dying to know the answer to).

We're smart enough to know, though, that there are a ton of sites that are insanely creative, brilliant, pleasing and cool out there that did not win a 2017 Webby. How do we know? Because they're the sites that have inspired the team that built our site (and where we've spent way too much time when we should have been working). To celebrate those websites, we've compiled a list of twelve websites the Wealthsimple team would give Webbys to if we could. Drum-roll, please...

It's a great showcase for what's new in the art and design world. But it never feels trendy. It’s the kind of site you strive to see your work on someday.

— Mike Giepert, Wealthsimple Executive Creative Director

MarketWatch provides the right amount of market context I need to get a quick pulse on what’s going on in the financial world.

— Karney Li, Wealthsimple Vice President of Engineering

There's plenty of places that help me do my job better. But this is great for a little mental vacation.

— Michael Katchen, Wealthsimple CEO

The navigation is incredibly simple, and the photography is amazing. It really feels like a print magazine.

— Elsa Chiao, Wealthsimple Art Director

Fantastic idea and great execution. It's maybe the best resume I've ever seen. I'm not trying to hire anyone but it's still really fun to play around with.

— Jeff Shin, Wealthsimple Product Designer

I happen to love data, so this type of thing makes me really happy. Finviz provides a wealth of financial information in a visually appealing format. Check out their ETF heat map — it's great. [Note: Those of us who composed this Magazine post have no idea how to read that, either.]

— Yasser Mawji, Wealthsimple Head of Research

Shopify’s design system is considerate not just of visual components and UI elements, but the deeper important stuff: principles & communication.

— Tom Creighton, Wealthsimple Director of Product Design

Ableton — the music software company - just released Learning Music. It's an interactive tutorial that's trying to help making music accessible to everyone. I’m a fan of stripped-down experience — it's really focused on helping you learn that one thing. (I'm also a fan of the Ableton design language in general).

— Eric Akaoka, Wealthsimple Product Designer

It's a site that's meant to get you to buy software to help you run a business, but it's so much more than that. The super cool animation really captures your attention.

— Peter Graham, Wealthsimple Principal Engineer

Focus on the shorts. Full-screen play, scroll down and the short pauses so you can read peacefully, scroll back up and it picks up where you left off.

— Calvin Cheng, Wealthsimple Product Designer

On April Fool's Day, Reddit conducted this pretty incredible grand social experiment - there was a giant digital canvas and everyone was invited to pick the color of one pixel. A struggle of messaging and cooperation and anarchy ensued. It was and is a remarkable picture of internet culture.

• Jason Goldlist, General Manager

This online dictionary uses analogies instead of definitions to explain technology in easy-to-understand ways. It's a project by The Washington Post and Google, designed by Hello Monday.

— Sharman Ordoyne, Wealthsimple Director of Production

Written By

The Editors

Wealthsimple's education team is made up of writers and financial experts dedicated to making the world of finance easy to understand and not-at-all boring to read.