Top 10 best UX experiences for most popular sites in 2020

There's an astoundingly large amount of websites out there. It's not easy to stand out from the crowd, with the possibility of thousands of different sites covering the same topics and niches. Each site looks for their own unique way to stand apart, whether it's by offering new features, offering more insightful and detailed content or by implementing customer-focused approaches.

It has become clear that businesses need to improve their services not just in one area, but in all areas that the customer interacts with. This is the essence of customer experience design. But yet, while many businesses and websites are starting to leverage UX design to improve their customer satisfaction and ROI, there are far more of those that don't and are left behind curve.

But it's not just small websites that are struggling with this issue.

Even the largest corporations can struggle to tackle UX issues. Even the most popular sites in the world can have UX flaws. Even services that you use every day could be optimized for simplicity, accessibility and customer satisfaction.

Does your favorite website frustrate you? Does a website you need to use frequently feel like a hassle, not a benefit?

Our team at Attractive.ai has looked into the most popular sites there are, and evaluated the UX experience of each different one. We've assigned each of them a unique score, calculated by over 100 different factors, evaluated by our UX reviewing robot Poe. This score is called the Attractive Index, and will be used to compare and benchmark these sites.

For the purposes of this article and experiment, we've analyzed 287 sites that are within top 500 of most highly ranked sites globally on either Alexa or Moz. (commonly accepted as best ways to rank sites) These are the sites that could generate the biggest net value by incremental UX improvements, and we hope our reviews could very well become a step in creating that improvement.

Another thing to note is that we only conducted a first impression analysis for these sites. This means a light analysis conducted by our robot Poe, which looks at fewer sub-pages and other linked content when giving a UX rating for those sites. Poe also supports deep analysis, which you can learn more about by checking out our website!

Without any further ado, here's the Top 10 highest Attractive Indexes: 

#10 Github - score 89

The developers love it, and so do we! Github scored a remarkable 89 points out of a 100. The site is clean, elegant, and designed with modern best practices. There remains room for improvement in layout and accessibility.

#9 Flickr - score 89

Flickr is well known for its role in image sharing and collaboration. It's fitting that their service also excels in visuals and design clarity. This puts them also at 89 points and makes them the 9th best UX site.

#8 Pinterest - score 90

Pinterest is designed as a hub for creativity, style, and inspiration. It serves as a great inspiration for UX designers - not only is their home page sleek and straightforward, but it's also frequently visited for UX specialists to improve their design thinking.

#7 BBC - score 90

BBC has built up a name for itself in journalism where it receives ubiquitous recognition and has received endless accolades to their name. Perhaps ranking #7 on our ranking could also be one of those accolades? BBC keeps a healthy balance of visual elements to text and makes sure to not overwhelm its user. Keep it simple!

#6 Harvard - score 91

Harvard University has been around since 1636 and has been rated one of the most prestigious learning institutions in the US. Harvard also features a comprehensive Digital Accessibility Policy, and it's clear that many accessibility best practices have been featured on their site.

While there could be some improvements within navigation of the site (and one broken link!), Harvard is still a great example of success in accessibility and UX.

#5 European Commission - score 91

Should government websites be left out from the shift to UX? The EU says no, and the website of the European Commission is a joy to visit on both desktop and mobile devices. While some governments remain outdated, the official website of the European Commission has clearly earned their spot at rank 6.

#4 Medium - score 92

Medium is a wonderful example of User Experience design. Their website is as sleek as can be, and they've also adopted a no-nonsense in their service design too. The end user can focus what is important - the articles they came to read and enjoy.

#3 Apple - score 93

Coming close to the top, we have the official Apple home page. It's the first impression for many visitors, and it sure does leave an engaging response to the user. Visual clarity and simplicity are at the core of the design, and it's truly deserving of rank 2 on our score.

#2 Yahoo - score 94

A lot has changed over the years. Yahoo went through many, many variations of their design over the years. And with each step, there have been lessons learned, and Yahoo nowadays feels like a completely different beast. With the site following very many of UX and accessibility best practices, it justifiably earns itself the 2nd best score on the rankings.

We look forward to seeing Yahoo continue their path of design improvement, as it definitely has been fruitful so far.

#1 MIT - score 95

The Massachusetts University of Technology has done an amazing job in designing a true experience for its users. The university has kept its site remarkably accessible and makes great use of UX design best practices.

It's clearly evident that they've placed a lot of thought into these design decisions and in keeping the website as inclusive as possible. Although some usability issues remain, they've still earned the highest score for our UX ranking list in 2020.

Congratulations, Massachusetts University of Technology, for having the best user experience in our 2020 Attractive UX ranking!

Attractive.ai is proud to provide one of the best and most affordable solutions to tackle UX problems for your organization. Hire Poe to get the most important insights and assist your organization in enhancing user experience for better conversions and customers who keep coming back.