A luxury website is generally aimed at wealthy customers and offers premium products, services, or experiences. These sites prioritize user engagement, ensuring fast speeds, high-quality videos and images, and a tailored experience. A luxury site will also highlight brand storytelling, showing the heritage and exclusivity of the brand in question.
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Zarla checks that sites meet basic web standards for mobile and desktop. We also use Google's PageSpeed Insights, and WAVE, a service that evaluates accessibility for individuals with disabilities. PageSpeed scores and accessibility are important factors for search engine rankings. PageSpeed scores may not match user experience and can vary substantially.
https://desertstarconstruction.com/
Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.
Desert Star Construction specializes in design and construction services for custom homes and boutique resorts. The site ticks the minimalist box, with a clean design that emphasizes high-quality images and text blocks providing important information. The services offered by this site can be considered exclusive in that the business custom designs each build to suit the needs of the customer.
While site navigation is easy, the large images sometimes caused lags in the loading time, and the only interactive elements were the YouTube video and the slide show gallery that I needed to click through. So, I found that the user engagement and brand storytelling of this site could be improved.
The site showcases a number of impactful images with short text blocks to give needed information about the business. I found the video that showcases the company's building processes, teamwork, and past projects to be informative, and I enjoyed the addition of a team introduction.
WAVE reported a large number of contrast errors on the home page, as the light gray text was difficult to read against the white background. I was also left wondering why the "Contact" button in the top-right corner was so small, and not a part of the main menu. The brand storytelling was lacking on the site.
The desktop website has a polished look, with the gray and dark blue brand colors lending an air of sophistication that effectively depicts the company's ethos of impeccable craftsmanship.
In my real-world tests, I found the images were a bit large for most screens, particularly laptop screens, and these larger images sometimes loaded slowly. This was confirmed by Google's PageSpeed Insights test, but the desktop site still scored an impressive 92/100 in the performance category.
The hero image is enticing on the mobile website but doesn't show the whole house as on the desktop screen, which is a bit of a letdown, I found. The text is a touch more legible than on the desktop site, having a darker color palette, and the images in the gallery fit the screen better than on the desktop site.
This meant fewer lag times in loading speeds in my real-world tests. However, PageSpeed Insights didn't agree with this assessment and awarded the mobile site a performance score of 58/100.
Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia
Lan Spa provides personalized spa treatments, including luxury facials and body massages designed for optimal relaxation and rejuvenation. The site reflects the company's ethos of luxury and tranquility in the refined color scheme, and the hero banner and introductory video showcase the spa's welcoming atmosphere and high-quality services.
The site perfectly highlights the brand story through the consistent use of the logo, typeface, and chosen color palette. I found the user experience intuitive, with plenty of information provided and well-placed CTAs.
Client testimonials lend credibility to the site and the introductory video depicting a day at the spa with a selection of relaxing treatments effectively advertises the brand, while enticing customers to try it themselves. I also liked that when selecting a product to make a booking, there's a pop-up block listing what the package entails.
WAVE picked up several instances of insufficient contrast ratios on the home page. The online shop page displayed slow loading times in my real-world tests, and the booking system also showed some delays in loading speeds.
The desktop site exemplifies the brand story of this business, making sure the logo is front and center and the color palette is used consistently. The hero video held my attention, showing me what to expect at this spa.
While the images used on the site are good quality, I don't think the background images in the middle of the home page suit the links they're advertising. For example, the image of a woman in a bikini on the beach seems to advertise swimsuits rather than massages.
The mobile site's slimmed-down version makes a nice impression on the home page, with the hero image and welcome message being visible together. In contrast, the hero image on the desktop site is large enough that on most desktop screens, I needed to scroll to see all of it.
The hamburger menu on the mobile site is more involved than on the desktop site, which diminishes the user experience a touch. PageSpeed Insights gave the mobile site an excellent performance score of 96/100.
Topeka, Kansas, U.S.
The Cyrus Hotel is a boutique lifestyle hotel with a classic mid-Western charm. The first thing I noticed on the site was the clean, modern logo and the hotel's Best Hotelier award, offering a trust symbol sure to attract customers. The design offers sophistication and elegance, perfect for a luxury brand.
The business uses its site to show customers how they take care of all the customer's needs. The menu is well laid out to ensure good navigation, but the lack of interactive elements impacts the user experience. However, the site does have great branding, with the consistent use of the logo and argyle pattern at the top of each page on the desktop site.
The site embodies a luxury aesthetic with elegant brand storytelling, exclusive services in a contemporary boutique hotel, and a strong user experience. The detailed information available answers all customers' potential questions, and the high-quality images show off the rooms and amenities.
The site is blocked on WAVE and is only semi-compliant with assistive technologies, according to accessScan. Some inconsistencies in the background design of the site impact the luxury appearance that is otherwise conveyed in this design.
The desktop site's clean design and minimalist layout immediately make an impression of luxury and class. I especially like the use of a hamburger menu with a clear reservation CTA on the left side of the page, but I found the date search for reservations to be less intuitive. In fact, it didn't seem to work at all.
However, the site offers in-depth information on personalized services and easy user navigation with quick loading times. PageSpeed Insights did note slower loading times but awarded the desktop site an excellent score of 90/100.
The mobile site features a different color palette than the desktop site and is missing the argyle block and logo at the top of certain pages. This lack of uniformity impacts the brand storytelling of a luxury website. However, I thought the addition of a call button was perfect for a mobile site.
The navigation is slightly different, featuring a sticky bottom banner with links to directions, the gallery, and the booking page, improving the user experience. I was pleased to find that I was able to properly use the booking system. Despite my strong real-world tests, PageSpeed Insights reported slow loading times on the mobile site but awarded it an above-average performance rating of 63/100.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, U.S.
Grand Luxe Custom Cleaning caters to high-end homes in Sioux Falls and surrounding areas. The site advertises customized cleaning plans to fit the needs of the client, contributing to the luxury aesthetic of this web design. This style is carried through the high-quality images related to the topic.
I found the clean design and soft gray color palette exemplified a luxury business, while the simple menu laid out all the information I needed, including in-depth descriptions of their services. While the addition of a blog page is great in this design, the current page is empty, making it unnecessary. Also, the images used were stock images, but I actually thought it worked well, as I wouldn't necessarily want images of the inside of my home online.
WAVE reported one empty heading and a handful of contrast errors on the home page, and the clean layout and color palette create an overall luxurious aesthetic, highlighting the brand message. The list of services is concise and includes subtle CTAs.
The site is only semi-compliant with assistive technologies. The blog page is empty and should be excluded from the site. While the contact details are included in the top banner, they should be much more prominent.
The desktop site's spacious layout provides an easy, polished experience. I thought the minimal use of images and small text blocks led to a great user experience, while the staggered layout of the images created visual interest. However, I would have liked more interactive features.
The amount of scrolling needed on the site is significant, so I appreciated the floating menu. According to Google's PageSpeed Insights report, the desktop site loaded a touch slowly and received an overall performance score of 80/100.
The mobile site manages to maintain the spacious layout, but the banner image has been cut off by the banner text, impacting the visual aesthetic. However, all other images remain clear and high quality. I found the CTAs to be a bit more visible on the mobile site but I thought a click-to-call link on the phone number would be a great touch.
PageSpeed Insights actually rated the performance of the mobile site slightly higher than the desktop, despite slower speeds and large content, and gave it a score of 81/100.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Sushi Yugen is an omakase (dishes selected by the chef) sushi restaurant in Toronto, voted one of Canada's top 100 restaurants for 2024. Some pages are a bit text-heavy, with a small font that is sometimes difficult to read, but I found the site design to be beautifully done, with great background images that highlight Japanese culture.
I think this site exudes luxury because it offers customers a unique experience that is chef-catered and served in intimate settings. The site's easy navigation adds to the user experience, and the images hint at a hushed, elegant restaurant aesthetic.
WAVE reported only a single image missing alternative text and some contrast errors on the home page. I found that the site highlighted the high-end aesthetic of the business and the exclusivity of the service.
The site is only semi-compliant with assistive technologies and is quite text-heavy, with only some images in the hero banner and background images on the other pages to offer some visual relief. I was also a bit taken aback by the link titled "Our Story" opening a YouTube video rather than an about us page.
I found that the desktop site made good use of the available screen sizes by organizing the information in such a way that I didn't need to scroll much — everything was available at a quick glance. Some of my real-world tests showed slow loading times on the desktop site, which was noted on PageSpeed Insights, but all-in-all, the desktop site scored exceptionally well, with a performance score of 92/100.
The mobile site welcomes visitors with beautifully resized images and I easily found the CTA for reservations. While some of the pages are still quite text-heavy, I thought the addition of a Japanese translation to be on brand and in keeping with the elegant aesthetic. PageSpeed Insights reported slow loading times, with a performance score of 55/100 for the mobile site. However, my real-world tests were smooth and the pages loaded fairly quickly.
A luxury website is a site that prioritizes user experience and aesthetics. A luxury website should have a high-quality design with high-resolution images and videos, quick navigation, fast loading times, and interactive elements. This style should also offer a tailored user experience that provides a product or service, answers a question, or entertains customers.
There are a number of website builders available online that offer customers templates to work from. These sites typically charge a fee and offer hosting for the completed website. Zarla's AI website builder is an example of such a site.
We've curated a list of great luxury website examples for you to browse. We've reviewed each site's pros and cons, as well as their desktop and mobile versions to help you in designing your own website.
