Websites Still Rock: Kentico’s 2025 ‘Site of the Year’ Winners Push the Boundaries of Digital Experience

For anyone in the website business, building something beautiful is literally the top of the mountain. 

You know what I mean. There’s nothing more satisfying than designing, coding, and pushing a project into production – then seeing a bump in traffic, an increase in performance, and a wave of adoration across social media. 

But adding an award to your mantle? That just takes it to the next level. 

For Kentico, celebrating these efforts is a big point of pride, especially for a platform that powers over 90,000 websites across the globe. For almost a decade, the DXP has highlighted the very best work of its partners and clients with its coveted “Site of the Year” Awards – and they just released the winners of its 2025 edition.

I’ve covered this program previously, and I’m always impressed by the quality, complexity, and bold ambition of the finalists. 2025’s crop once again demonstrates the daring and prowess of organizations and their partners to push the boundaries and redefine modern digital experiences built on Xperience by Kentico – the multichannel content management, marketing, and digital commerce solution packaged in one cohesive platform.

This year’s class showed up with some stunning, full-scale UX redesigns that deliver visual awe and impact. But there were feats of engineering as well, with a myriad of use cases featuring AI-powered marketing transformations and complex workload migrations.  

Kentico’s “Site of the Year” program is categorized by industry, spanning wide cohorts like B2B as well as verticals in financial services, commerce, education, hospitality, healthcare, government, and NGOs. 2025's submissions came from across the planet, including North America, EMEA, and APAC – illustrating the flexibility and extensibility of Xperience by Kentico.

In addition to these examples of partner and customer-driven excellence, 2025 was a big year of milestones for Kentico. With global demand growing for it signature platform, the company’s continued investment in AI was crystallized by the launch of AIRA (Artificial Intelligence Recommendations & Assistance), a native AI agent that unpacks and understands content and customer data to help streamline the creation, optimization, and time to deploy for digital experiences. 

Building on its AIRA momentum, Kentico is once again aiming to transform expectations in 2026. The company recently introduced its Agentic Marketing Suite, extending its AI strategy to power teams with specialized agents, each designed to execute marketing and content tasks that unlock operational efficiencies in team workflows. 

Honoring creativity and innovation

Let’s talk about websites – because they’re still the center of gravity. More than ever, the world’s leading brands rely on unique, high-performing digital experiences across multiple channels, hoping to dazzle visitors and convert interest into action. 

Even amidst the shifts in traffic and the rise of AI-powered answer engines, smart consumers still value a business’s website as a central source of truth. At the same time, websites are essential to arming the new frontier of GEO and AEO by delivering a foundation of well-structured content.

Kentico’s “Site of the Year” honors its clients and partners by focusing a spotlight on their remarkable work – websites and digital solutions that achieve the highest levels of creativity, innovation, content strategy, and technological implementation.

A bit of level-setting on the rules: Only projects that first earned Kentico’s “Site of the Month” banner were eligible to compete, making these finalists a true “best of the best” compendium. Winners were selected by an internal Kentico judging committee based on overall excellence and measurable impact.  

You can explore more about this year’s winners and honorable mentions on Kentico’s website, where they drill into the details. For each category winner, they provide a well-rounded rationale that showcases the innovative thinking, stellar design, and AI-enhanced solutions that put them in the top spot.

If you’re interested, you can also vote in Kentico’s Community Choice Awards through March 6th. This crowdsourced portion of the program is handled entirely on LinkedIn.

Without further ado…

2025 ‘Site of the Year’ Winners and Honorable Mentions    

Man, this was a dynamite grouping of sites – and all deserving of kudos. 

For me, there were certainly some standouts. In the B2B category, LeShuttle Freight’s elegant, high-performance, multilingual experience was top-notch. In addition to simple, intuitive navigation, it has a tricked-out, real-time service update that provides critical visibility for time-sensitive logistics. The mobile experience is also lightweight, prioritizing the right elements in the UX. 

Implemented by Crafted, a long-standing U.K.-based Kentico partner, LeShuttle is a solid design that streamlines the customer journey for logistics partners, drivers, and customers – so they can keep truckin'.

Source: LeShuttle Freight website

In the Entertainment, Hospitality, and Tourism category, I was also keen on the Bob W. site, which made me want to book my next trip to Amsterdam today. The gestalt was right up my alley, offering a clean, minimal design with clear pathways to explore short-stay apartments in a variety of locales. Agency partner IDHL did yeoman’s work on developing the “Bob” identity and persona, delivering a charming and inviting vibe to the experience. 

Along with some killer frontend features like smart filtering and a little backend magic with reusable content, Bob W. personifies what great UX is – and I love how it all supports a corporate commitment to sustainability and a stay that’s 100% offset. It’s hospitality that's more hospitable to the earth. 

Source: Bob W. website

To say that Oppenheimer made a “bold” move to Kentico would be an understatement. As the winner in the Financial Services category, the wealth management leader successfully migrated from CrownPeak in only five months, with the goal of optimizing their content ops via single-source content management across multiple digital channels.

Implemented by Kentico partner Sagepath Reply, Oppenheimer’s slick design captures the essence of a trusted financial partner while simplifying navigation to key topics like capital markets. They also introduced new AI-driven tools focused on marketing and content optimization. It feels powerful yet approachable – and evokes confidence and stability at every turn. For a financial institution, this was a winning investment.

Source: Oppenheimer website

Winners By Category

B2B

• Winner: LeShuttle Freight (Implemented by Crafted)
• Honorable Mentions: ZAG Interactive (ZAG Interactive), Westport (ALYKA Pty Ltd) 

Commerce

• Winner: Translink (MSQ DX)
• Honorable Mentions: Rhythm Japan (Interesting Solutions), Elkov Elektro (Bluesoft) 

Consumer Goods and Services

• Winner: MND Energie (Bluesoft)
• Honorable Mentions: Best Best & Krieger LLP (BlueModus), Contact Energy (AKQA) 

Education & Careers 

• Winner: ROC van Amsterdam & Flevoland (TrueLime)
• Honorable Mentions: Join Blakes (E-Cubed Media Synthesis Inc), The Gordon Institute of TAFE (DDSN Interactive) 

Entertainment, Hospitality & Tourism

• Winner: Bob W. (IDHL)
• Honorable Mentions: Aurora Expeditions (Devotion), LA Opera (iMedia) 

Financial Services

• Winner: Oppenheimer (Sagepath Reply)
• Honorable Mentions: Atomic Credit Union (ZAG Interactive), United Federal Credit Union (SilverTech) 

Government & Municipal

• Winner: Cleveland Metroparks (Americaneagle.com)
• Honorable Mentions: Réseau de transport de Longueuil (Inorbital, Inc.), Great Parks (Synoptek) 

Healthcare

• Winner: LivaNova (BlueModus)
• Honorable Mentions: Integris Group (BizStream), Hatch Private Maternity (Zeroseven) 

Manufacturing

• Winner: Pierret (Delaware Consulting SCRL)
• Honorable Mentions: Nichicon (EETech Group), Renson (Blastic) 

NGO & Associations

• Winner: American Society of Landscape Architects (BlueModus)
• Honorable Mentions: National Association of Independent Schools (ByteMinds), Eat Pecans (Rise, a Quad Agency) 

Setting new standards for excellence

Each year, I’m asked to judge awards programs, so I’m accustomed to seeing amazing work. What I love about these competitions is that I’m always surprised, intrigued, and often floored by the creativity. 

If you’re embarking on a brand or digital transformation quest, finding the right agency partner is critical to success. But harnessing the right CMS or DXP at the foundation is equally as important – and awards programs like Kentico’s “Site of the Year” are a great place to window shop the possibilities. 

This 2025 crop is a testament to the full potential of Xperience by Kentico. It’s not just about breathtaking UX, it’s also about leveraging a future-ready digital ecosystem to power multi-channel experiences across devices, languages, locations, and more. From hybrid headless implementations to secure member portals and complex third-party integrations, organizations are using the platform to unify content, marketing, and commerce into a single solution. 

As Kentico continues to invest in a steady stream of innovation, its partners and clients will be the first beneficiaries to access new features. Case in point: Kentico’s new Agentic Marketing Suite is ushering in a new era of intelligent orchestration, helping marketers automate decisions, personalize journeys, and optimize campaigns at scale. 

Digital experiences are no longer static. They continue to evolve – and so do our expectations. Even as websites morph into agentic experiences that serve both humans and bots, only people can be inspired by a brand's imagination and storytelling.

Kentico’s “Site of the Year” reminds us that websites still have this power and potential. That's why they still rock – and the most beautiful, magical, and innovative sites can really bring down the house.

Read more about the winners here. 

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