Each year, the crème de la crème of the web industry gathers in Dübendorf (a suburb of Zurich for the uninitiated) for the Best of Swiss Web Awards. This well-established tradition, as this year's edition celebrated its venerable quarter-century milestone. For reasons unknown to me, winners leave with a golden buoy. Leaving no stone unturned, I conducted some research—well, I asked ChatGPT. Buoys symbolise a lifesaving tool, a symbol of protection in an occasionally unpredictable environment—much like the web.
However, Best of Swiss Web might be better termed Best of Swiss German Web, as Romandie had minimal representation among the awarded projects (except for Chopard).
Fortunately, we are not short of great projects and our teams in Basel and Zurich had impressive projects to showcase: The new website for Basel-Stadt and another with the Swiss leader in stainless steel HANS KOHLER AG.
Launches of New Large Complex Websites Not in the Spotlight
It seems that this year, large-scale website relaunches received a bit less attention. Unfortunately, neither our two projects nor those of our client La Mobilière were shortlisted for the Master Award. Instead, the nominees this year leaned even more towards marketing campaign websites.
But not being a candidate for the Master Award adds some suspense to the evening. Would we leave with an award? Would my Swiss German skills be enough to follow along smoothly? Would our clients share our enthusiasm, win or lose? What project will win the Master Award? And of course, would Gottéron win their match against Lausanne? Plenty of interesting questions to discuss over a pleasant dinner.
Silver Award in the Technology Category for HANS KOHLER AG
We're delighted to highlight some good news from the evening! The jury for the Technology category recognised the precision and robustness of the website we developed for HANS KOHLER AG, awarding it a silver BOSW. This award deeply resonates with the very core of our DNA as custom developers.
Double Win in the User Experience Category
Alongside technology, User Experience is another category dear to our hearts. We won not one but two bronze awards: a second accolade for HANS KOHLER AG and a well-deserved award for Kanton Basel-Stadt (whose user experience impacts not only Basel citizens but also the hundreds of content editors involved).
Our client La Mobilière also won a silver BOSW award in the User Experience category with their new corporate website. We are thrilled to to see the excellent UX work by La Mobilière's internal teams recognised. We also contributed to this new site and greatly enjoyed celebrating this success with them.
After all these emotions, it was time to head home and finish this blog article. Congratulations to all the winners, with a special mention to Bucher for their Master Award.
