Ranking the Websites of the 50 Nifty United States
From best to worst
I’m a Colorado native, born on the western slope in Grand Junction and raised on the northeastern plains. I’ve moved a number of times, but returned a few years ago, likely to spend the (vast) remainder of my days in the state I love. It’s gorgeous here. There’s great energy, wonderful people, tons of sunshine. It’s a truly beautiful state.
Today, I went online to the “Official State Web Portal” to register my vehicle. In the midst of dropping a few bills to cover my Mazda, I thought just how hideous the website is, in comparison to the beauty of the state. Being a good cynic, I thought I’d do a comparison with other states to validate my opinion. Turns out, Colorado’s website is still not pretty. But it’s certainly not the worst.
Without further ado, I present the official website ranking by design of each of the 50 states in the union.
Tier 1: The Best
- Arkansas — Great layout, fantastic navigation, beautiful photos, easy to read. Arkansas has Bill Clinton, Siloam Springs, and one hell of a nice website.
2. Hawaii — Gorgeous, thorough, thoughtful. Has a Windows 8 feel, but in a good way. The worst part is the state seal logo.
3. Utah — Beautiful photos, shows the heart of the state. Lots of graphics, well organized. This site has won an incredible amount of awards, though I certainly don’t think it’s the creme of the crop.
4. Virginia — Easy to navigate, big entry photo on cover, highly functional.
5. Ohio — One of the simplest, cleanest, and most presentable state websites. Not the fanciest, but it does the job so much better than most.
6. Arizona — Nice, but has that feel of a car salesman. I imagine all the people of Arizona to be similar in look and feel.
7. South Carolina — Took a really long time to load. Overall a nice looking, original site. Can translate to German and Spanish if you’re into that sort of thing.
8. Alabama — Won a lot of awards, but not particularly easy to read or use. Lovely photos on reloads and great use of HTML5.
9. texas — Gotta hand it to texas. They made a pretty clean website, even modernized their logo with the lowercase “t”. That’s damn progressive, ladies and gents.
10. Montana — Ripped off from Alabama — still a nice-looking page though.
Tier 2
11. Pennsylvania
12. Indiana
13. South Dakota — Badass eagle.
14. Maine
15. North Carolina
21. Rhode Island
22. Nebraska
23. Missouri
24. Alaska — Be sure to check the flag status!
26. Nevada
27. Washington
28. Colorado — Nothing awesome happening here. On the site that is.
29. West Virginia
30. Michigan
31. Vermont
32. Idaho — HEY Butch!
33. Iowa — The life preserver is a symbol of help.
34. Minnesota
35. Oklahoma — If I never saw this site, this is exactly what I would imagine for Oklahoma anyway.
36. Georgia — Really great…theme? Most viewed agencies sounds fun.
37. Kansas — The vector logo on top reminds me of vacation bible school, so I’m uncomfortable.
38. Wyoming — The eGovernment site. I’d almost rather have an eGovernment than a physical government. Robots know best.
39. Delaware — Looks like a shell company. One of those companies you accidentally find online when you search ‘human resources’ in Google. Beautiful stock photo.
Tier 3: The Worst
40. Illinois — Chicago is one of the world’s greatest cities. And they put that photo of Springfield? I realize that’s the state capital building, but that’s a disgrace to the people of the state of Illinois.
41. North Dakota — Without a doubt the most kickass logo. That much is true.
42. Connecticut
43. New Jersey — Horrible mix of type, colors, governor photos, and graphics. A total mess. Also, the Superbowl graphic was likely created on MS Paint.
44. Massachusetts — Despite this being a relatively new design, it’s terrible. Why do so many of the states insist on early 90s bowling alley font?
45. Oregon
46. Florida — I really do love that “myFlorida.com” is a registered trademark.
47. Lousiana
48. New Hampshire
49. New York — If only Bloomberg had been governor and not mayor of NYC, then maybe this site wouldn't be so blindingly ugly.
50. Wisconsin — Wow. Really not expecting that. Hard to even comment on this.
