Awwwards vs FWA. What drives more traffic? Code & Pepper website case

I would like to share our experience of being featured at Awwwards and Favourite Website Awards and provide information on:

• traffic increase on the website
• users geolocation,
• type of devices,
• additional business benefits.

#1: Awwwards

Awwwards.com — the awards for design, creativity and innovation on the Internet — is claimed to be the most visited online awards platform in the world.

On Oct 6th, 2014 Code & Pepper web-site submission to Awwwards was approved and then posted in „Nominees” section and was evaluated over 7 days by international jury and Awwwards’ users.

During those 7 days Code & Pepper website got 5,922 visits performed by 5,296 unique users.

We were stunned when we analyzed visitors geolocation. Code & Peppers website reached almost every corner of the globe; it was visited by users from 112 countries! I believe it is worth revealing the top 10 countries.

Of course Poland is so high in the rank only because Code & Pepper is located in the country and it is quite well known there. Besides that it’s good to know that the top 10 include mainly European and North American countries.

It’s interesting to look at the traffic in the light of devices that are most widely used.

So it seems that Awwwards is visited mainly by desktop users, and that is something good to know when you’re thinking about featuring your website at Awwwards.

Also there is precious value added when featured at Awwwards — most likely your site will be published at other portals and additional traffic driven to your website. These are few channels which were most valuable in Code & Pepper case: patterntap.com, webcreme.com, jqueryrain.com, art-spire.com, visitresponsivewebsites.com, flatdsgn.com.

It should be stressed that the above figures were generated only in the first seven days on Awwwards. A bit later Code & Pepper website won Honorable Mention and this resulted in yet another incredible wave of interest.

To summarize: when you are on Awwwards, be ready for heavy traffic from around the globe, a lot of nice feedback (emails, calls) and new business inquiries and partners (it happened to us!). So it’s definitely worth to be there at Awwwards, also in terms of marketing value and new business opportunities.

#2: FWA

thefwa.com — Favourite Website Awards (FWA) — is claimed as an industry recognized award program and inspirational portal, one of the World’s leading website recognitions.

On 12th Jan, 2015 Code & Pepper website submission to FWA was approved and then posted in „Public Votes: Latest Submissions” section and was evaluated over 7 days by FWA users.

We were surprised that during those 7 days traffic driven from FWA was so poor in comparison with Awwwards. We only got 181 visits performed by 160 unique users.

Also users geolocation wasn’t very impressive. Code & Peppers website was visited by users from 43 countries. The traffic came mainly from:

And again — Poland is so high in the rank only because Code & Pepper is located there. The same as with Awwwards — the top countries includes mainly European and North American countries.

Also percentage of devices that users use is similar — 98,9% desktop, 1,1% mobile (phones & tablets).

Looking at other referrals which were stimulated by FWA there was one little funny thing — when published on FWA, the Code & Pepper website was also featured on Chinese cwd.68design.net and got 531 visits, almost 3 times more than from FWA.

To sum up: the obvious winner in this comparison is Awwwards. I hope this post will help you decide where to submit the website to get better results.

Do you need team for web or mobile app development? We’re happy to help.